By Bill Rauch
The sides are choosing their players for the annual Jellyball fight.
A new Jellyball processing group that is reminiscent of the controversial group that briefly harvested, rinsed and transported Cannonball Jellyfish from a St. Helena Island shrimp dock last year is now seeking permits for Beaufort County operations similar to those that were shut down last year, according to South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) spokesman Jim Beasley. The new entity, Nautica & Co. Inc., is currently seeking two National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits from DHEC, Beasley explained, permits to do virtually the same things at the same places as those sought last year by Carolina Jelly Balls, LLC.
The first of the permits currently in review seeks DHEC’s permission for Nautica to offload, rinse and transport Jellyballs at Golden’s Dock on Jenkins Creek near the Corners Community on St. Helena Island that was used by Carolina Jelly Balls last year. The second permit is to process the Jellyballs at the former Lobeco Products plant on John Meeks Way in Lobeco that Carolina Jelly Balls identified and sought to get permitted last year.
Jellyball processing includes rinsing, separating the fish’s umbrella from its core, further rinsing, soaking the umbrellas in an alum and salt solution, and then slicing and drying them for transport. The waters off South Carolina, Georgia and Florida are replete with the gooey little critters that local fishermen say make good Spadefish bait.
But Jellyballs can be a big business too. Thinly sliced and dried, Jellyball umbrellas are delicate and crunchy features of gourmet Chinese, Thai and Japanese salads. Those familiar with the business say there is a virtually unlimited demand for the product in those markets.
Carolina Jelly Balls was closed down last year at Golden’s Dock on Jenkins Creek because DHEC’s analysis of their rinse water discharge determined that discharges would require an NPDES permit for future operations. Jellyball slime is toxic. When threatened, an otherwise defenseless Cannonball Jellyfish excretes a mucus that contains toxic nematocysts as a self-defense measure. The process of their being captured in nets, swept into onboard holding tanks, sitting there for hours, then pumped onto dockside rinsing tables unsurprisingly causes them to activate their toxic self defense mucus mechanisms.
The Golden Dock facility does not have access to BJWSA’s wastewater treatment facilities, and tidal flow there is limited. The new permit application seeks DHEC’s permission for Nautica to discharge 20,000 gallons of seafood wash effluent a day into Jenkins Creek seven days a week from February to June.
“There were a couple of problems at Golden Dock last year,” Dataw POA President John Cashen explained recently. “They didn’t have a permit to wash the mucus off, but they washed it off anyway, and then when the mucus got stuck in the marsh and the tide went out it stunk the whole place up.”
Nautica’s NPDES application, like Carolina Jelly Balls before it, refers to a Jellyball offloading and processing facility in Darien, Georgia. In Darien, the discharge water containing the toxic mucus is channeled into the local wastewater treatment plant, thus avoiding introducing it into Darien’s creeks and rivers and ultimately their headwaters where it can harm delicate ecosystems like the shrimp larva, and the fish, crab and oyster breeding that are uniquely protected there.
With the toxic mucus threat eliminated in Darien, the adverse effect reportedly still present in Darien is the odor that local people say can be smelled strongly several blocks from the plant. Over the recent April 18th weekend, for example, Darien held its annual “Blessing of the Fleet” festival. Because the festival and the processing plant are both in downtown Darien, the festival’s organizers asked the plant’s manager to shut the plant down for “a couple of days to get rid of the smell,” according to a city official familiar with those discussions. They agreed and the move reportedly worked. This year’s Blessing of the Fleet enjoyed among its many blessings, fresh air.
Last year when Carolina Jelly Balls offloaded, rinsed and pre-processed at the Jenkins Creek dock, the Jellyballs were then trucked to a Colleton County farm or to the Darien, Georgia plant for processing. The Lobeco facility, a superfund site that features large holding ponds, has never been used for Jellyball processing although Carolina Jelly Balls began the process of seeking a NPDES permit to use it for that purpose last year. County records indicate Nautica & Co. of San Gabriel, California bought the facility last year for $112,000.
Reached briefly by telephone in his Hacienda Heights, California office, Nautica & Co’s Chief Accounting Officer, Eric Tai, explained that Nautica recently “took over” Carolina Jelly Balls. Tai is the company’s certifying agent on its DHEC applications.
According to the applications, Nautica’s plan calls for the company to discharge up to 3 million gallons of effluent into Jenkins Creek per year, and about 30 times that amount into Campbell Creek in Lobeco. The permit application Nautica submitted for the Lobeco site is a revision of the one previously submitted by Carolina Jelly Balls.
The Lobeco site, located just north of the Whale Branch Bridge, does not have access to BJWSA’s regional wastewater treatment facility, and tidal flow on Campbell Creek is limited as well. Nautica’s Lobeco application seeks DHEC approval for the processors to discharge a quarter of a million gallons per day of processing effluent into Campbell Creek twelve months a year. DHEC will be soliciting public comments and holding a public hearing on the revised Lobeco permit application soon, their spokesman Jim Beasley added.
“A Jellyball processing plant in Lobeco would be a clear and present danger to what we value most in our community, clean water, fresh unsullied air and the value in our homes and property,” Lobeco resident Joe Berger, spokesman for stopthejellyballs.com group, said last week.
To begin operations at either site, Nautica will be required by Beaufort County to get a Special Use Permit from the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals for each facility that is to be used. A Special Use Permit is a requirement for offloading, transporting or processing Jellyballs in Beaufort County, according to Beaufort County Deputy Administrator, Josh Gruber. The public will be permitted an opportunity to comment on the Special Use Permit applications too. No dates have yet been set for those hearings. Both Nautica and the owner of Golden Dock are suing Beaufort County to overturn the Special Use requirement, the Deputy Administrator added.
People familiar with successful Jellyball processing operations say Jellyballs can provide good jobs and be a good neighbor. One example often cited is the Raffield Fisheries’ Plant in Port St. Joe in Gulf County, Florida, a fishing town with a flourishing tourism business. But doing it right requires the right site, innovation and investment. Raffield’s, located on the Gulf County Canal that connects The Gulf of Mexico with the Intracoastal Waterway has “plentiful and constant moving water” into which to discharge its effluent, and it deals with the odor of the plant by using a unique “ozone machine” that Raffield’s invented and patented to filter out the fish smell, according to the plant’s part owner, Eugene Raffield. “We’ve been processing Jellyfish for the Chinese and Japanese markets for 37 years. You’ve got to do it right,” he added, “or the smell and the pollution will cause you too many headaches.”
“Raffield’s doesn’t pollute and you can’t smell the place until you get right up to it,” Kelli Jackson at the Gulf County Florida Tourist Development Office said last week. “We love ‘em here. They’re great.”
That’s there.
This is here. With toxic discharges into both Campbell Creek and Jenkins Creek proposed to stink up and pollute creeks that have inadequate tidal flows, with no provision proposed to protect nearby neighborhoods from the airborne stink at either facility, with sharp-shooting lawyers getting paid to provide air cover for fishy out-of-town profiteers, and with the community loading up in preparation for a counter-attack, this year’s Jellyball fight is shaping up to be a hardball version of last year’s softball opening match.
