bleaching equipment in order to eliminate dioxin. This investment suc-
ceeded and restored Union-Camp’s reputation as good corporate citizen in
the area. The source of mercury poisoning, however—not only downriver
from the mill but miles north of Franklin—remained a mystery. The fact
that waters remote from any industrial site all over North America suffer
comparable mercury pollution may have inspired the riverkeeper’s theory
that airborne mercury has been accumulating in the Blackwater for many
years, settling into its muddy bottom. In came two large hurricanes
back-to-back—Dennis and Floyd—dumping so much rain that downtown
Franklin was inundated and (here the theory) tons of mercury were flushed
from wetlands, creeks, and the Blackwater’s own bottom into the river’s
current and the food chain. The riverkeeper is not a trained scientist but an
experienced and patient observer of landscape, and his theory seems more
than plausible. Such is the cost, it must be said, of the revolution in south-
ern living introduced by air conditioning.
tFinally, there is the tiny panhandle Florida town of Apalachicola and
its lovely bay—and the bay’s oysters, arguably among the best in the world.
The head of the bay is the mouth of the Apalachicola River, which meanders
(rather like the upper Blackwater in Virginia, but much longer) through
piney woods and great swamps, much of these within the Apalachicola
National Forest. At the Georgia line there is a large impoundment called
Lake Seminole interrupting the Apalachicola’s natural confluence with the
Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. The Chattahoochee is the same so beloved
by the poet Sidney Lanier, who chanted its beauteous source in Appala-
chian Georgia and its magnificent course down through what is now metro-
politan Atlanta to Macon to the Georgia-Alabama border and finally into
Florida. All along its long trip south, the river collects nutrients for deposit
in Apalachicola Bay—once they are released from Lake Seminole, of course.
The bay’s abundant life, most famously its banks of succulent oysters, de-
pends on ever-flowing waters from faraway Appalachia.
Now the bay and its oysters are threatened by Army Corps of Engineers
dredging (to enable slight barge traffic) and with loss of water in the river.
Reduced flow, expected in drought years, has become a constant, owing to
drawdowns by metro Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, and other sprawling sub-
urbanized places, especially greater Atlanta. There, particularly in upscale
suburbs, demand for water has time and again reduced the Chattahoochee
to a proverbial trickle.^36 To be sure, human population has veritably ex-
ploded, and people must drink, bathe, and launder, drought or no. Affluent