The world's a dirty place when you are poor DIANE ROBERTS That strange smell Taylor County seems determined to become Florida's poster child for environmental racism and classism, illustrating that once a place gets landed with a polluter or two, others follow. Taylor County is one of Florida's poorest counties and one of its most beautiful. It's also in peril from development, industrial degradation and sheer greed. The county has long been home to the state's most shameless polluter. Buckeye Cellulose, which spews pulp mill effluent into the Fenholloway River and the Gulf of Mexico, has been blamed for a host of environmental nightmares, including contaminated ground water, poisoned sediments and that rank odor announcing that you are nearing the river. The dioxins and endocrine disruptors Buckeye spits out kill marine life and even cause female fish to grow male genitals. Then there's that 10-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf-all this along what is supposed to be Florida's "Nature Coast." The powers that be (Buckeye, the Chamber of Commerce, the County Commission) seem to have decided that Taylor citizens will accept any old daft scheme, no matter how destructive, as long as there's money in it. However, they've met with resistance. One bright idea, now abandoned, was to turn the vast piney woods into a bombing range. A planned resort megalopolis on a still-pristine section of the coast is in trouble. A proposed coal-fired power plant, which would have coughed out mercury and other heavy metals, has been defeated. The locals now rise up and fight! snipped from http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09/09/Opinion/The_world_s_a_dirty_p.shtml
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