Friends of Perdido Bay

10738 Lillian Highway

Pensacola, FL 32506

850-453-5488

Tidings The Newsletter of the Friends of Perdido Bay

What the media doesn't tell you

For years, it has seemed to us that the media directs public sediment and interest, while the "real" news is quietly going on behind the scenes. This is true of many of the environmental stories that have appeared in the Pensacola News Journal. The public is reading about storm water run off, while the Florida DEP is quietly trying to pass a law which will exempt many of the degraded bodies of water from being listed as impaired or degraded by the EPA. (See TMDL rule). Similarly, the big discussion about air pollution in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties being so bad that stringent measures will have to be in acted has centered on the contribution of Gulf Power. Well what about the other two big polluters of the air, Solutia and International Paper? Their rather large contribution has been ignored. Maybe the lengthy meetings and court battles are just not interesting enough for media to report. Yet, it is in those long meetings and endless court battles that policies evolve which effect the way we live. The is one of the missions of our news letter - to report on some of those endless legal battles, or to reinterpret some of the news articles. It helps you stay more informed.

One of the pieces of information which we tried to bring out at the recent Administrative Hearing on the transfer of Champion's permit to International Oaoer