Bob Seay

Center for Cultural Preservation

 

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00:00:00 - Bob Seay introduces himself and shares a little of his background

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Partial Transcript: My name is Bob Seay, I live in Newport Tennessee. I am one of the co-founders of the Dead Pigeon River Council which was formed midnight December 31, 1986.
I am from here. And at the time that the Dead Pigeon River Council was formed I was the executive director of the Newport-Cocke County Chamber of Commerce.

00:00:30 - Bob talks about his family's history in Cocke County.

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Partial Transcript: Um, back, actually on my dad’s side, back to 1908. (Unintelligible interjection from interviewer)
They actually moved here from Haywood County in 1908, the year that the mill was built. And on my mom’s side, been here 5 generations.

00:01:00 - Bob describes what it was like growing up before 1908.

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Partial Transcript: The people here really, the mountain folks, had a wonderful way of life here; they had intergenerational exchange with the Cherokee and the river was plentiful with what is called a white sucker fish that would spawn in the spring and they would run up into the mountain branches from the river to spawn and they would actually net them and catch them and even after the mill opened and the pollution started, for up to 10 years that was still happening until the fish became extinct and what they would do they would spawn and go up in the branches and they would catch them and the mountain people would put them in what was then a spring box because they didn’t have refrigeration, there was no electricity¬ and they would leave them 2 to 4 weeks in the spring box and get the stench and the smell out of the fish taste but little did they know that it was full of dioxin and they were eating contaminated fish.

00:02:46 - Bob talks about the role the Pigeon river played in the lives of the people before Champion Paper opened.

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Partial Transcript: Yes, it certainly did. It was kind of the life’s blood of the mountain people; they really used it as a valuable resource for protein.
Actually was central to people’s lives in that not only was it a resource that they could actually collect for drinking as a source, and also they used it as a food source for the protein out of the fish. And also used it in some cases to just bucket water up to their gardens so they could actually use it to water their plants for the summer, their corn and so on.

00:03:40 - Bob descibes how everything changed after Champion came on line.

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Partial Transcript: The river in 1908 actually became very, very polluted and people were not able to use the river as a resource. It was brackish, malodorous and also obviously was not drinkable. And so they had to go to other sources like mountain branches to get their water. And then they were still using the fish, but they would have to take the fish and put them in their spring boxes for about 30 to 60 days so that the stench would leave the fish tissue and then it would be edible.

00:04:30 - Bob talks about the reaction of the people to the smell of the fish.

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Partial Transcript: Well, the majority of folks in this region were just actually shocked but at that point in time there was actually no traffic really between Cocke County and Haywood County unless you went through the Lamb’s Gulf above Hartford and Grassy Fork in a wagon so there was a period of time the poor people were so shocked they didn’t know what had happened to the river. Some people that lived here had no idea that it was a pulp and paper mill. They just knew it was grossly polluted and it has a stench to it.

00:05:22 - Bob discusses the efforts over the years to fight back.

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Partial Transcript: Lots of folks tried to actually generate resistance in the greater Tennessee Valley all the way down into Knoxville but the efforts were actually futile due to the fact that it was such a sparsely populated region - they couldn’t actually solidify enough support to fight a giant industry that was actually the major source of the pollution because it was such an income source for Western North Carolina.

00:06:04 - Bob describes the paper process and what was causing the pollution.

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Partial Transcript: It’s the bleaching process actually that when they are manufacturing the paper, the pulp, they have to bleach it out in order to have bleached white paper. And at one point in time back in the 50’s and early 60’s Champion Paper Company had its own chlorine plant right there on site. So they were manufacturing chlorine for the bleaching process. And at this point we all know that we do not need bleached white paper, especially bleached white milk and juice board. Every child in America would just as soon have their juice in the morning or their milk out of a brown carton knowing that they were saving the environment. And that’s what we have tried to stress to them at Champion before they sold the employee on Blue Ridge paper but yet you know there’s this thing that everybody in America wants bleached white milk board and that is not the case.

00:07:26 - Bob explains how he became involved and why.

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Partial Transcript: Well I grew up here and you know one of the things that really did interest me is if there was enough resistance statewide and countywide because there was a new permit coming up on the Pigeon River, not only was it going to be a state permit , North Carolina was going to have a permit and my interest was can we do anything to force the state of Tennessee to make that company comply with the Clean Water Act. This was 1986 and the Clean Water Act was passed in the early 70’s and there was absolutely no compliance and my interest was let’s get some things together and see what we can do to look at the legislation and kind of force the governor and the politicians both in Carolina and in Tennessee to adhere to the law.

00:08:23 - Bob talks about how he proceeded to get the Clean Water Act enforced.

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Partial Transcript: Well I was actually contacted by Gaye Webb once, at the Chamber, that I announced were going to form a committee and there was a little celebration on the river midnight, December 31, 1986. And dubbed it “The bell tolls for Champion”. And there was quite an interest from Mr. Webb and a lot of his neighbors because they had lived on the river their entire lives and Gaye got on the phone - and we had over 100 people down there on the bridge in downtown Newport and as it happened at midnight the river was totally covered with foam and smelled; it was so malodorous, that it smelled just like rotten eggs - there were people that actually couldn’t stay for the whole celebration. Some of the ladies actually got sick- but that was the catalyst that actually started the movement with this county and East Tennessee to really try to force Champion to do the right, responsible thing and engineer the plant for cleaner water.

00:09:50 - Bob describes the Midnight Celebration and declaring the river dead.

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Partial Transcript: Well we actually met and had a minister say a nice little blessing of the river and rang our bells at midnight and we were sending a message to Champion - It’s time for you to stop your pollution so we can have our river. So we don’t have to smell this in Tennessee.
Yes, we called it The Dead Pigeon River Council; that is when The Dead Pigeon River Council was formed that same night. And of course we came up with the logo of an upside down dead pigeon up on the beautiful Appalachian Mountains and even though the pigeon at this time was extinct, the river had actually made it extinct in this region as well as other mammals especially the American Eagle, the American Bald Eagle because once they were eating the fish out of the Dead Pigeon - they would - their eggs were so soft and pliable they would sit on them and break them so they couldn’t hatch any more baby eagles.

00:11:23 - Bob discusses the goal/mission of Dead Pigeon River Council.

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Partial Transcript: Our mission and goal in this area was to encourage the plant basically to adhere to the 1972 Clean Water Act, clean the river, make it swimmable and fishable and, of course in Tennessee we wanted it drinkable because this is a resource that runs right – it’s the life’s blood of this county, it runs through the heart of the county and we can’t use it as a resource.
We have to go some 5 miles over a ridge and over a mountain to get our water out of the French Broad to use as a county wide source. So not only did we want it to be swimmable and fishable, we wanted it to be drinkable.

00:12:17 - Bob talks about some of the activities that they ran to attain their goal.

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Partial Transcript: Well we started a publicity campaign, and we had some billboards on the interstate and that created some awareness on a national level. Luckily, we had Michael Isikoff came down for an interview and pictures for a US News and World Report and then we had CBS Evening News. Mr. Mullinex was interviewed on - by WLOS and ABC for ABC Morning News. So, yeah, we started our own little mountain campaign and we were all encouraged that we had some national publicity and they were coming to make pictures and talk to the mountain folks about a clean river. It was exciting.

00:13:21 - Bob shares some of the successes and challenges he faced.

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Partial Transcript: Well, our major successes were we actually could get our Tennessee government involved. There were some pitfalls because you know they felt like that if they did what they really need to do that the plant would close because that was Champion International’s main focus was to threaten the employees over there and threaten Haywood County and Western North Carolina with the closure of the mill so they would solidify the support in North Carolina – and, of course at the time, they had Senator Jesse Helms which is a major, major, major proponent for keeping the mill open and running the pollution wide open. And we had Senator Jim Sasser here that was a real ally and at the time we thought that Senator Gore was going to be an ally but then he was running for president; it didn’t take long for him to go to Western North Carolina and be entertained by Champion after he left Asheville after his news conference and he was taken up to Lake Logan which was their private corporate playground - that - above the mill where it had the beautiful pristine water and a big lake.
And then shortly thereafter he was obviously assured and then – Senator Gore - now this was the first time he ran for president - carried the state of North Carolina on the Super Tuesday because they were able to help him do that.

00:15:12 - Bob talks some of the progress in forcing Champion Paper to at least begin to clean up its act.

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Partial Transcript: Well the one thing that Champion does at this point is their own testing. And of course, they don’t really test the water below the mill. They used all the river mileage from the mill down one quarter mile into Tennessee for testing and it actually goes through Walter’s Lake which is a major settling pond. So the government is still not making them comply with the Clean Water Act. They’re complying downstream some 20 miles downstream, in another state, one quarter mile down into Tennessee - after one generator is open from the dam, after the confluence of the old river bed, where there’s river bed tributaries and Big Creek coming out of the Great Smoky Mountain’s National Park; that’s why the river most of the time is pristine because if they ‘re generating with all 4 generators, it would not look like this today. It would be foamy and still not meet the color standard at the state line that is the color standard set by Tennessee.

00:16:38 - Bob describes the fight about the color standard, the fact that it has changed and there are some sucesses.

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Partial Transcript: Well its - the color standard is actually - the fight is still going on. Our thing is it should not be tested in Tennessee. It should be tested ¼ mile below the plant in North Carolina but there is so much effluent being discharged from that pulp and paper mill they can’t test it there and comply. This day and age that mill would have never been put on that small a stream.
It is too large and that’s the problem; there is not enough water and there is not enough effluent for mixing for it to comply with the Clean Water Act Standard.
Well, of course they, we forced them at this point to change their whole entire process. They went to oxygen delignification; because once we raised the question in Tennessee about the pulp and effluent discharge, that it contained dioxin, we were actually told by EPA “oh no, no, no, no”. And of course, we cited the “no margin of safety” from the Great Lakes testing so they did start testing some fish and they found out that there was a trout out of Walter’s Lake that had the highest contamination of dioxin of anywhere in the United States so we were able to prove our point that, yes, it is polluted and it is dangerous with dioxin; so thank goodness that EPA finally did realize and start looking to force them to make the change for oxygen delignification or the mill would still be running wide open. That’s our major accomplishment.

00:18:39 - Bob talks about the bleaching process and changes.

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Partial Transcript: Yes, it is oxygen delignification process - using oxygen to do most of the cleanup but it does have some particles of chlorine in it itself but nothing like where they had a chlorine manufacturing plant on site.
They are still bleaching but they are using a bleaching process that is actually less toxic than the prior process that they were using before with just pure chlorine to bleach.

00:19:17 - Bob discusses the fact that part of their efforts have lead to several lawsuits and class action suits,

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Partial Transcript: The Dead Pigeon River Council was really not a party to some of those landowner lawsuits; those were negligent suits that were actually brought on by a team of lawyers, Gordon Ball and some other folks out of Alabama and they actually got settlements for each landowner that was adjacent to the river. They used a negligence clause to actually get those folks some monetary rewards for the years of contamination of their property.

00:20:06 - Bob describes how the work of the Dead Pigeon River Council being carried on today.

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Partial Transcript: Well, our original members we’ve actually lost, just, there’s only like 3 of us or 4 of us left. Our president Jerry Wild is deceased, our treasurer Cindy Runyon is deceased, her father Jim Runyon is deceased; and you know we’ve actually lost many, many members along the river. At one point for the Tennessee hearing we actually unveiled the - what is called the Dead Pigeon River Council wall and we had like almost 200 names on it of all the folks that had lived along the river and adjacent to the river that have died with cancer. So there is a firm belief of a lot of the folks that live here that the river has been so contaminated through the years that it has permeated the aquifers and even when EPA tested wells in Hartford, Tennessee , they did find tannins and lignins in the well water and every janitor that was at that old Hartford school through the years, every male, died with cancer. And 4 of the 5 teachers have died with cancer that actually drank that water out of that school well. And as I said it did have tannins and lignins in it and my thing was it probably wouldn’t have been as contaminated for the aquifer but when they built interstate 40 they did a lot of earth moving and they did a lot of dynamiting and in my estimation it probably cracked and there’s fissures in the bedrock at the foot of the river and some of that seepage has gone and the tannins and lignins have gone down into the aquifer.
We now have some younger folks; we have an intergenerational effort with some of the Dead Pigeon River Council elders and some of the young folks and some of the raft guides up at Hartford to actually re-energize and go for the next permit , tighten it up , make it even firmer and we’d like to actually engage some of our river friends of the state of North Carolina to actually start putting pressure on the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Agency over there to tighten up the permit in NC and actually make Blue Ridge Paper comply with the Clean Water Act at the mill.

00:23:01 - Bob talks about what he would do if he had a magic wand to wave over the future of the Pigeon river.

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Partial Transcript: We’ve come a long way and I am proud they are using oxygen delignification at the mill. But I would really like to see them to go to nonbleached paper, go with brown paper, brown milk board, juice board and turn it into a gigantic plant that is not a polluter. You know we all live downstream. And even the folks that live in Clyde and in Canton itself, they deserve to be able to use the water. They can’t use the water either, you know not only - they could become a major environmental champion of the whole pulp and papermill industry if they would convert and do what is best for the environment rather than trying to make the almighty dollar. Greed is what’s causing the pollution, pure greed.

00:24:26 - Bob explains why it is important to remember the people who stood up for the river.

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Partial Transcript: We all need to stand up for the environment. I think it’s just wonderful that we have some of the young folks that are wanting to pick up the baton and kind of march forward and look at some of the things we’ve done and carry that baton and kind of, actually, look up to some of the elders who have gone on, and do some of the same things that the elders have advocated and bring it on for future generations. Let’s bring it back and let the Pigeon live; the Pigeon has a right to live again.