—black, white, and brown—are working class or poor; Millennium is well
connected with city government, and government responds to its burgeon-
ing affluent constituencies south of St. Johns River.^34
Then, too, there is the yet-unmeasurable but frightening cost of power-
ing the region’s electrical grid. Coal has been absurdly cheap for years, and
most southerners’ homes, offices, and shops buzz and whirr with electricity
from coal-fired plants. The air above Jacksonville is hazy most days, not
from the foul effusions of Millennium, but from auto and truck exhausts
and great smoky plumes from giant electrical power plants. Jacksonville is
hardly unusual. The residue of burning so much coal has been falling for
years, accumulating on land and water. Then in and , reports on
soil and especially water studies from around the nation began to appear.
Rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds contained so much mercury that many
should be closed to fishing, or at very least, heavy consumers of fish should
have their blood tested, and all who eat fish should severely restrict their
intakes.
One of the most severe reports concerned the sleepy Blackwater River
in rural southeastern Virginia. The Blackwater is broad and cola-colored
where it joins the Nottoway to form the Chowan at the North Carolina state
line. Upriver, by Franklin, Virginia—where there looms a large saw-, pulp,
and paper mill, the only industrial plant along the river’s entire length—
the Blackwater is substantial although not so broad; a few miles north, at
Zuni, it barely deserves a bridge for U.S. Route . From there the river
meanders northwestward through swamps, pine flatwoods, and pine plan-
tations toward its murky origins in Prince George County. In , state
officials’ testing of Blackwater fish tissue yielded methyl mercury readings
of nearly zero. In and , however, Virginia’s environmental quality
testers were shocked to find dangerously high mercury contamination in
Blackwater fishes, especially largemouth bass and red-ear sunfish, which
are local anglers’ favorites. In response, the Blackwater’s paid riverkeeper
posted signs all along its course, warning anglers and consumers to limit
themselves to a maximum of two eight-ounce meals of such fish per month.
Mercury at high levels is a dangerous neurotoxin—that is, a poison affect-
ing the brain and central nervous system. Pregnant women will pass the
toxin to fetuses, which may suffer irreparable mental retardation, lack of
coordination, inability to speak, blindness, and seizures.^35
During the s there had been a dioxin scare and fish warning at
Franklin and downriver. The source was the Union-Camp mill (now Inter-
national Paper), which spent more than million installing new paper-