Fenholloway Project: Reviving a River, Sustaining an Ecosystem, Building Partnerships, 1997 Biological Sciences Symposium Proceedings

Ray Andreu & Dave Weeden--By the mid-1940’s, Taylor County, Florida, experienced significant economic and population decline due to the loss of a large lumber industry. In response, the citizens of Taylor County petitioned the state legislature to designate the Fenholloway River as an industrial stream in an attempt to attract industrial or manufacturing interests to the area. The county leaders recognized that the intermittent and minimal flow characteristics of the Fenholloway River would not allow the assimilation of even trivial industrial discharges. In 1947, the Florida legislature granted Taylor County its request. Procter & Gamble became interested in the area and purchased an existing sawmill site at the town of Foley and about 600,000 acres of surrounding forest land in 1951. The Foley pulp mill was built by 1954 to produce dissolving kraft pulp, and a second pulp line was added by 1958. With the emergence of the Clean Water Act and its implementing regulations by the mid-l 970’s, the Fenholloway River retained the industrial use designation--a Class V stream under Florida’s classificatio n system. The Clean Water Act, however, requires that surface waters that do not meet the “fishable/swimmable” goals of the Act (Class III classification by Florida standards) must undergo study every three years to determine if an upgrade in classification is technically feasible. This study process is known as a Use Attainability Analysis (UAA). Despite the industry-leading improvements in wastewater quality achieved by the Foley mill since the 1960’s the flow limitations of the Fenholloway River have prevented its reclassification to Class Ill. Previous UAA’s confirmed this status. By the late 1980’s, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a heightened interest in reclassifying Florida’s only remaining industrial stream. As a result, the UAA, completed in 1994, represented