EDITORIAL: A Return To Health: Western N.C.’s Pigeon River is Again Running Clean

By The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Jan. 16–For those who wonder whether environmental cleanup programs are worth the effort, here’s more encouraging evidence: The Pigeon River in Western North Carolina has been cleaned up to the point that state health officials say it’s now safe to eat the fish caught in it.

That’s a remarkable turnaround from its sad condition two decades ago, when the Pigeon River ran dark as strong tea and health warnings were posted about eating fish caught there.

The river was polluted by dioxins from the old Champion International paper plant. Since 1908 the plant had dumped effluents in the river about 30 miles above the Tennessee-North Carolina border. By the late 1980s, folks who lived along the river or fished its waters were complaining regularly about the condition of the water and the harm to aquatic life.

Champion International began in the 1990s to clean up the water and to reduce the dioxins it put in the river. Champion later sold the plant to Blue Ridge Paper Co., an employee- and investor-owned enterprise, reports The Asheville Citizen-Times. Blue Ridge Paper has spent $22 million on cleanup efforts since 2002, the newspaper said.

The cleanup effort worked. Samples taken in 2005 and 2006 showed that dioxin levels were below the limits set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the newspaper reported. State officials say that’s a reduction of up to 99 percent.

This is good news, and not just for the environment and its inhabitants. It’s also proof that badly polluted resources can be cleaned up with sufficient effort. “It is a good example of an industry addressing a potential public health problem by changing its processes,” state Health Director Leah Devlin told the Citizen-Times.

North Carolina has 17 major river basins and many more sub-basins, and it’s the 10th largest state in population and growing larger. The pressure on our waterways from growth as well as industrial operations is significant. The costly but successful cleanup of the Pigeon River helps make the case for preserving good water quality where it exists — and for cleaning up waters that don’t measure up to the condition of the Pigeon.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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