PALATKA, FL. January 30, 2003 -- A national group has honored Georgia-Pacific for its water conservation efforts.

Georgia-Pacific won the National Groundwater Association Outstanding Ground Water Protection Award in recognition of its Wellfield Management Plan.

"We want to drive our water use down, to conserve water for the state," Ted Kennedy, vice president for GP's Palatka operations, said Wednesday. "Our interests are to stay here for a long time. We want to get out of the groundwater business."

GP operates its paper and tissue mill on about 5,000 acres in Palatka, has cut its groundwater use by 50 percent, company officials said.

Two big reasons GP cut its water use was that it built a reverse osmosis plant and a bleach plant, both of which reduce groundwater use, company officials said.

The company also will build a 90-million gallon rainwater basin, Kennedy said.

Malissa Dillon, a spokeswoman for the St. Johns River Water Management District, said GP is conserving water by relying less on groundwater and more on surface water and reusable water. Todd Eller, a supervising regulatory hydrologist with the water management district, who is working with GP on the conservation efforts, said the company used to use a lot of groundwater, and they've come up with a plan to cut that use.

From 1996 to 2000, the company used almost 18 million gallons of groundwater a day, Eller said. Then GP officials devised a plan to reduce groundwater use through a wellfield management plan.

"They turn on and off specific wells," Eller said. "That in turn uses more surface water and less ground water."

What it boils down to is GP now uses less total water, he said.

The company eventually wants to reduce its water consumption in Palatka from 17.8 million to 1.5 million gallons a day by 2007, Eller said.
Toward that end, they're building a reservoir in which they plan to store excess rain when it's available and then use that water instead of using groundwater.

GP has completed several water conservation projects during the period of September 2000 to the present that resulted in mill water use savings of about 4.9 milion gallons per day. Groundwater use has decreased from 17.8 million gallons a day in September 2000 to an average 8.8 million gallons a day now.

GP officials attribute the reduction to the implementation of the well field management plan and mill water conservation initiatives.