Subject: PrimeTime Live to air story on Champion Paper Co./Pigeon River pollution controversy

From: [email-masked] (Wendy Morris)
Date: 30 Aug 1995 17:57:25 GMT

8/30/95:

There will be a story airing on PrimeTime Live (ABC) on Wednesday, August
30, that will focus on the controversy surrounding the pollution of the
Pigeon River, which flows from North Carolina into Tennessee. The
pollution is produced by Champion International Paper Company's Canton,
North Carolina, plant. 

The University of Tennessee Press has just published a new book in its
environmentally focused Outdoor Tennessee series entitled "Troubled Waters:
Champion International and the Pigeon River Controversy" by Richard A.
Bartlett. This book is the first to chronicle the history of this
controversy and the struggles that residents living along the Pigeon River
have had to face in order to fight for its cleanup.

For more information, please see the University of Tennessee Press home
page, located at http://www.lib.utk.edu:70/1/UTKgophers/UT-PRESS (the
information should be complete by next week). If you would like more
information immediately, contact Wendy Morris at the following address:

   The University of Tennessee Press
   293 Communications Bldg.
   Knoxville, TN  37996-0325
   (615) 974-3321
   (615) 974-3724 (fax)
   [email-masked] (e-mail)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Publication Date: September 1995

NEW BOOK ILLUMINATES THE CONTROVERSY OVER  
THE PIGEON RIVER AND THE COMPANY THAT POLLUTED IT
   
"I went to see that river two-and-a-half months ago, and it was black as
tar,...and yet we're told it's OK. Who says? Champion? The EPA? I
don't need a scientist to tell me a black river doesn't make common
sense."
aPark Overall, actor and environmental activist,as quoted in the Knoxville
News-Sentinel, January 6, 1995
    
   Would you allow your child to swim in a foamy, foul-smelling river
possibly tainted with toxic chemicals? Would you fish from such a stream
or navigate its waters in a canoe? These are the questions that the people
who live near the Pigeon River want Champion International to ask itself.
For over eight decades the residents along this Appalachian river, which
flows from North Carolina into Tennessee, have had to deal with the
environmental problems caused by Champion's giant pulp and paper mill at
Canton, North Carolina.
   To shed light on this ongoing controversy, the University of Tennessee
Press has published Troubled Waters: Champion International and the Pigeon
River Controversy by Richard A. Bartlettathe newest addition to its
environmentally focused Outdoor Tennessee series. This book traces efforts
of Tennesseans and environmentalists to force the cleanup of the Pigeon
River and concentrates on the years since 1985, when two organizationsathe
Dead Pigeon River Council and the Pigeon River Action Groupamounted a
sustained drive to restore the river to its naturally beautiful state.
   Bartlett begins the story with a history of the region and of the
arrival of the pulp mills in the early part of this century. Even in 1908,
when Champion's pulp and paper mill first became operational, there was
controversy between the landowners along the Pigeon River and the business
and economic interests in these areas. Bartlett writes, "Environmentalism
as such was not yet known, but the landowners knew of the stench and the
dirtying of streams that mills produced, and so the story goes, they
wanted none of it."
   In the chapters that follow, Bartlett examines how the pollution became
an issue of concern and how, in later decades, the people of this area
began to lobby the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state
legislators to upgrade air- and water-pollution standards. One of the most
influential of this new wave of protestors was Charles Dickens Mullinix,
who would not accept the plodding, bureaucratic pace of the EPA and thus
created the Pigeon River Action Group, an organization that he hoped would
force Champion to launch a massive cleanup of its Canton plant.
   With pressure from continuing litigation brought about by individuals
and by such groups as the Dead Pigeon River Council, Champion began a
multimillion-dollar upgrading campaign in 1985. The Pigeon River is
somewhat cleaner, yet, in the end, there is little evidence that Champion
carried out its modernization for anything but economic reasons.   
   Bartlett treats the positions of Champion's defenders with respect, but
he faces the reality of the pollution unflinchingly and is devoted to
relating the complete, complex story of the fight to force the river's
cleanup. In the words of series editor Jim Casada, "The author focuses our
attention on the dilemma of the Pigeon River in gripping fashion. The
chronicle is one that goes to the heart of what can happen when people
allow shortsighted avarice to outweigh soul-sustaining devotion to
protection and preservation of the natural world. No one who cherishes the
purity of the earth we call home should ignore this work and its implicit
message. It reminds us, in quiet but penetrating fashion, that the time
for a season of environmental reason is at hand."
   Richard A. Bartlett is professor of history, emeritus, at Florida State
University. He is the author or editor of several books, including The New
Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776#1890, Rolling
Rivers: An Encyclopedia of America's Rivers, Yellowstone: A Wilderness
Besieged, and Great Surveys of the American West.
   This book is available in cloth for $35.00 and in paper for $17.95. 
Orders should be placed with our distributor: The University of Tennessee
Press, Chicago Distribution Center, 11030 S.Langley, Chicago, IL  60628,
1-800-621-2736.