Troubled Waters: Champion International and the Pigeon River

Abstract

Review: Troubled Waters: Champion International and the Pigeon River By Richard Bartlett Reviewed by B. Kenton Temple University of Tennessee Bartlett, Richard A. Troubled Waters: Champion International and the Pigeon River Controversy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. 348p. US $35.00 ISBN: 0-87049-887-8. The water of the Pigeon River that flows into Cocke County in East Tennessee from Haywood County, North Carolina, at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, is dark brown and speckled with foam. It is not a typical clear and sparkly mountain stream. Its waters are undrinkable, its fish inedible and it is of limited use as a tourist attraction. On the other hand, much of the odor has been reduced, it is not as black or as foamy as it had been and it is used for some whitewater paddling. But the story chronicled in Richard A. Bartlett's book Troubled Waters: Champion International and the Pigeon River Controversy is not yet over. Dick Bartlett is a retired history professor with several books concerning rivers and the American wilderness to his credit. He has the noteworthy ability to present a controversial story with a maximum of well- researched details and human interest and a minimum of evil villains, and a lack of empty emotional rhetoric. He clearly and convincingly builds a case for continued reduction of the pollution in this small river while holding the interest of readers who feel that support for economic issues and improvements in the natural environment are not mutually exclusive. His book is not painful reading for those who care deeply about threats to the spaces and waters that nurture their spirits. The story of Champion International Corporation, a billion dollar pulp mill located at Canton, North Carolina, the citizens of Cocke County, a rural area in northeast Tennessee, and the Pigeon River, a small stream that runs past both, began when an Ohio paper manufacturer built a mill at that site in 1908. When the mill went online the fresh, clear, clean water that flowed into the mill flowed out as a warm, foamy, colored, stinking mess (p. 41). But the mill also provided a living for the citizens of the community in which it was located and through the years has paid a