Trouble in river city: a paper mill on the Pigeon River brought it prosperity. But market forces--and those of nature--now batter Canton.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY - Cover Story

The September sun gives it life, siphoning moisture from the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. The earth's rotation coaxes it into a counterclockwise spiral as it begins its two-week journey to the Gulf of Mexico, where, nudged by the jet stream, it tears northward across the Florida Panhandle into Alabama. By now it has a name--Ivan.

On Wednesday, atop Cold Mountain in southern Haywood County, mist with a tepid, almost tropical feel swirls through gnarled oaks. On radar in Greer, S.C., 50 miles southeast, government meteorologist Wayne Jones watches approaching cloud bands. The heaviest precipitation lies in the right leading quadrant, aimed at the mountain--but first it must clear the Blue Ridge. Jones frets about that. "When all that moisture rises over that escarpment and condenses, it's going to boost the rainfall tremendously."

By Thursday, 12 to 15 inches have soaked the forest floor atop Cold Mountain, still sodden from Frances, a similar storm nine days earlier. More is falling. In the headwaters near the 6,030-foot summit, creeks swell and plunge toward the twin forks of the Pigeon River, which enfold the base of the mountain like a wishbone. Below its collar lies the little town of Canton.

In late afternoon, water surges through the crossroads of Bethel, near where the forks merge. In the driving rain, people whose memories of Frances are less than two weeks old pack and leave. As night falls, the Pigeon pounds a house and the cottage next door, smashing windows, ripping off garage doors. Doris Baxter, 69, lives nearby on higher ground. She decides to wait it out. Her mother, who is in her 90s, is in a nursing home in Canton. It's just across the river.

In town, Tom Wilson races to save customers' clothes from his dry-cleaning shop, two blocks from the rising river. Lights flicker off. Broken lines spew natural gas. Water swirls over the U.S. 19-23 bridge, pouring into City Hall and the 1932 Colonial Theater, newly restored at a cost of $1 million. Police order Wilson, 66, to leave. He glances back. Much of his equipment is new, including a $75,000 dry-cleaning machine, the latest zero-pollution model. Soon, only the roof of his building is above water.

In blackness now, the river smashes through the sprawling Blue Ridge Paper Products Inc. plant in the heart of town, wrecking its waste-treatment plant, which also treats the town's sewage, and wreaking $30 million of damage. Beyond the mill, the Pigeon gouges huge chunks from streets and swallows the tiny mill houses of Fiberville, the village built for workers not long after James Robertson's grand-daddy came to Canton in 1905 to help establish the mill. Water stops rising just below Robertson's doorstep. His is the only house spared from flood damage.

In the predawn, Doris Baxter slides behind the wheel of her old blue Olds-mobile Cierra. Maybe she thinks there's trouble at the nursing home or that her mother needs her. They will find her car next to a tomato field, wedged upside down in a grove of trees 10 feet above the riverbank, with her body inside it.

Friday morning, the muddy water recedes. They say such storms--remnants of Hurricane Frances on the 8th and Hurricane Ivan on the 16th and 17th--come once a century. These two hit Canton within 10 days. Some remember similar storms of the century in August of 1940. They came 17 days apart.

For a century now, they've been intertwined--the town, the mill and the river. The town, which owes its existence to a ford on the river, depends on the mill, which is Haywood County's largest employer. The mill needs the river's water to make paper and wash away its waste. That's as true today as it was when Champion Paper President Peter G. Thomson--they still speak of "Peter G" here as if he were in the next room--began building the mill.

About 1,000 people work there at wages averaging about $45,000 a year, which is nearly twice the county average. But people are beginning to wonder if the mill, with its hydrogen-sulfide fumes, smokestacks and billowing steam, hasn't scared off cleaner, good-paying employers, along with well-heeled retirees and young high-tech entrepreneurs looking to put down roots.

Then there's the river. Soon after the mill began operation in 1908, pollution overwhelmed the Pigeon, turning it brown as shoe polish and lacing it with frothing mounds of toxic foam. Fish died. Older residents tell of...