did Champion Internationals dioxin pollution create a Widowsville in North Carolina?
Champion International Corp., a Canton, NC-based pulp and paper mill, has been blamed for the number of cancer and birth defects cases of people living along the Pigeon River. It dumps toxic substances, including the highly dangerous dioxin, into the river. Even as a five-year-old in 1947, Mary Woody knew there was something wrong with the Pigeon River, which flowed behind her great-grandfather’s home in Hartford, Tennessee. “It had foot-high white foam floating along the top, was brown in color and smelled like rotten eggs,” Woody says. “But now it’s not the smell that bothers us; it’s the dioxin.” The source of the pollution on the Pigeon River is a pulp and paper mill about 40 miles upstream in Canton, North Carolina, owned by Champion International…
