Good Morning, 99%'ers! Today's Open Thread is a short vignette (thank you, Smiley). Because this is an Open Thread, please feel free to post whatever you wish.

Last week, I drove to central Florida to visit my mother and meet up with a group of 50 former high school classmates for a lunch in St. Pete. It used to take only four and a half hours. The trip now takes me least five to five and a half hours. The main reason this trip takes longer now is because the southern end has become tedious due to a lot of stop and go traffic resulting from all the development in central Florida.

The northern part of my journey is still mostly very rural as I wend my way through 52 miles from the rolling hills and live oaks of Tallahassee to the slash pine forests of Perry which is home to a pulp mill, now owned by a subsidiary of Gerogia Pacific (Koch brothers). Despite being over fifty miles away, there are days if the wind is blowing the right direction, that even those of us residing in Tallahassee can get a whiff of the noxious odor emanating from pulp mill. The pulp mill has long been the major cause of pollution to the Fenholloway River and ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the river.

On a boat in the Gulf of Mexico southeast of Tallahassee, he cheerfully and profanely recited his testimonies against polluters in court. Approaching the Fenholloway River, his mood darkened. Since the 1950s, the river has bubbled with nutrients, blackness and stench from a paper mill.

At a boat ramp not far away was a sign that describes the rich beds of sea grass along the Gulf Coast and warns anglers that gouging the critical plant life with an anchor or propeller is punishable by a state fine of $1,000. But after decades of research, Livingston and his students have concluded that the mill's state-approved pollution alone has already wiped out 10 square miles of sea grass.

The pollution of the Fenholloway and the Gulf of Mexico at its mouths continues to this day.

In Florida, according to the report, Koch Industries-owned Buckeye Technologies, Inc., which operates a plant in Perry, FL that produces cellulose products used in baby wipes and tires, released 264,460 pounds of pollution into the Econfina-Steinhatchee River. And they spent $13,800,000 on lobbying and $7,703,185 on campaign contributions last year. “The result of Koch's influence is dead zones, dead rivers, enormous loss of resources in the Gulf of Mexico," said Linda Young, director of the Florida Clean Water Network. "This is known as privatizing profits and socializing pollution, an art that has been mastered by the Koch brothers.”

A number of years ago in 1997, the previous owner of the pulp plant, Buckeye Cellulose, flouted a plan that supposedly would clean up both the Fenholloway River and the dead zone area where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. But that has not happened.

Linda Young, who was quoted above and is the director of the Florida Clean Water Network, posted the following on the organization's website in August 2015.

A 10-square mile dead zone already exists at the mouth of the river caused by 65 years of this pollution being dumped 26 miles upstream. The potential damage when it is moved to open waters could be catastrophic for the nearby important fisheries, some of the richest nursery areas in the NE Gulf today.

This is what our lack of government oversight is doing to us environmentally, not just in Florida, but everywhere. The Fenholloway River pollution is simply an example of how we have allowed corporations to denigrate our environment in the name of "jobs" and "economic development."

As I left Perry and headed on the desolate 46 mile drive toward Cross City, I first crossed the Fenholloway River. It was then that I heard this song. It is one of my all time favorite songs and it is so appropriate to this diary.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahb7kQoLTTA]

The song, I Can See Clearly Now was written and originally recorded by Johnny Nash. It hit number one on of Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1972. It was later covered in 1993 by Jimmy Cliff.