Southern Pollution Permissiveness: Another Regional Myth?

Scholars of the South have frequently portrayed the region’s residents as guilty of environmental abuse. These accounts rely on the actions of state governments and have largely ignored popular reaction to water pollution. A review of key conflicts over stream pollution across the South reveals variations, but also a decided tendency of Southern sportsmen and recreationalists to object to industrial and urban degradation of their water-ways. State authorities tolerated pollution, but citizen outcries brought federal investigators into the South to protect imperiled waterways.