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Riverkeeper challenges fish kill consent order
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STATESBORO —Ogeechee Riverkeeper has challenged a decision that it could not challenge a consent order between the state and a Screven County plant that is believed to have caused a massive fish kill in the river last spring.

Its appeal was filed Wednesday in Bulloch County Superior Court, asking for reversal of an administrative law judge's decision that prevented riverkeeper from challenging a consent order between the state Environmental Protection Division and King America Finishing. King's discharge into the Ogeechee River has been associated with the biggest fish kill in Georgia history.

"At the heart of this dispute is that the state continues to fail to protect people from dangerous pollution from King America Finishing," riverkeeper Dianna Wedincamp said. "We brought up half a dozen witnesses to Atlanta who live and work right on the river. As business and property owners, surely they have the right to challenge and correct the state's failure to protect them from pollution."

In May of 2011, a discharge of pollutants from the textile plant is believed to have killed more than 38,000 fish beginning near the discharge point and extending 70 miles downstream. An EPD investigation alleges King America had been operating two lines without proper permits and that the lines discharged ammonia and formaldehyde.

"Even though the EPD concluded that the illegal release was an 'unauthorized discharge' that was 'harmful to aquatic life,' the EPD and King America engaged in behind the scenes bargaining to produce a consent order," Hutton Brown, attorney at GreenLaw, said. "This back-room decision making allowed King America to continue to discharge illegally into the Ogeechee and imposed a requirement of a 'Supplemental Environmental Project' which did nothing to address the pollution coming from the company."

The riverkeeper tried to file the challenge to the consent order in the Office of State Administrative Hearings in Atlanta in October. The consent order imposed sanctions on the plant and required it to pay for unspecified environmental work along the river.

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Book review: Author digs into mining's complicated past and present in 'River of Lost Souls'
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Jonathan Thompson will speak about his book "River of Lost Souls" at the King's English Bookshop on Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. - photo by Amanda Olson
"RIVER OF LOST SOULS: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Spill," by Jonathan Thompson, Torrey House Press, 275 pages (nf)

Plenty has been written about the very small world of a mining town and the very broad reach of a beleaguered industry. From Loretta Lynns iconic song "Coal Miners Daughter," to the 2010 nail-biting coverage of 33 trapped Chilean miners, to the hit Broadway musicals "Paint Your Wagon" and "Billy Elliot," mining is a global story, and its one of heartbreak, hard work and hard times.

Jonathan Thompsons "River of Lost Souls" examines the many facets of risk involved in taking resources from below the earths surface. An environmental journalist, Thompson has reported on southwest Colorado for over 20 years. This book is special, however, because the Four Corners area of Colorado is his current and ancestral home. Thompson is writing about minings ecological, social, financial and political impact on his land, his landscape, his water, his people. That makes "River of Lost Souls" more than a regular reporting job.

Thompson begins with the Gold King Mine wastewater disaster of 2015, which the EPA caused while attempting to drain water near the mines entrance. The spill sent 3 million gallons of waste and tailings into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the San Juan River watershed which drains into the Colorado, affecting the Utah, Colorado and New Mexico parts of that watershed as well as the Navajo Nation.

From there, Thompson jumps into far stretches of time to 1765, when a Spanish explorer named the Animas River; to 10,000 years earlier, when Paleo-Indians roamed the rivers valley; to the meridian of time, when the ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo people inhabited the land for 500 years; to the mid-1800s and the Swedes who came to Silverton, Colorado, to mine.

Its a grand scope, but telling any story of landscape is telling a very grand story.

It also makes a complex story difficult to follow. Thompsons time warps are important, but they are jarring. His time jumps need clear dates, and Thompson doesnt always make them available. A map would also be useful. Thompsons writing is good, but his sentences can be dense and require readers to do their own mining for the riches the writing embeds. The work is worthwhile, however, as there are many moving parts in any story about mines land, culture, policy, history, money, inevitable disaster and Thompson works to examine all of them.

"River of Lost Souls" is a thoughtful read, but not a quick one. Because Thompsons writings come from 20 years of his newspaper reports, the overall feeling can be disjointed and sparse, which is distracting if one is expecting to follow a tenable thread. This is not a typical narrative with a cast of characters and a traditional story arc. Readers should approach this text as the investigation it is: puzzle pieces of a larger-than-life story that is eons old. If you are the kind of reader who wants it laid out cleanly, this is not that book. But, to Thompsons point, nothing is clean about mining that has never been the case.

Thompsons best writing is in his descriptions of people and places. His telling of how he came to Silverton is familiar and engaging. If readers approach the book with care and attention, they will be rewarded with savoring these descriptive passages when they happen.
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