Of time and the river.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: North Carolina waste treatment plants and river ecology - Editorial

In their eyes, God gave them this place as theirs to work, and the river and streams, like the fields and forest, they used hard. In the middle of the 18th century, they came: the Germans of the Reformed and Lutheran sects along Alamance and Stinking Quarter creeks to the west, the English Quakers on Cane Creek to the south and, to the east where the meadows ran down to the Haw, the ScotsIrish Presbyterians.

Here, on muddy red-clay banks, were born the first businesses: taverns, where the weary could slake their thirst, and mills, where the industrious would grind their corn and wheat. Commerce arrived long before Gov. Tryon's troops camped along the stream that, in 1771, would give its name to the battle they fought and, 78 years later in honor of those they defeated, to the county that straddles the river into which it flows.

Here, too, within earshot of where militia and Regulators traded volleys, Edwin M. Holt built his first cotton mill 154 years ago. Soon the name Alamance Plaids was known nationwide, just as the name Alamance County would one day be known worldwide for the industry he spawned here. Others followed Holt's lead. At the turn of the century, 29 of the state's 177 cotton mills were here. As late as 1928, 30 mills, dams and mill sites still lined the waterways.

The river and its tributaries, like the Lord, both gave and took away. From ear to chin, the Haw slashes across the face of Alamance, fed along its length by creeks and branches, wrinkles to the river's scar. For the most part, the water is swift and shallow, slithering around hillsides, bellying down to the bedrock. Tamed, it turned wheels and turbines, transforming the energy of nature into the might of man. Even when it no longer provided their power, the river continued to take their wastes.

In this way, too, it was used hard. It was ill-used. Though the river never died, its vitality waned, poisoned by more pollution than its strong brown body could abide. Often the Haw stank like an open sewer, and when the big mills flushed their dye houses, the river ran pink or blue or so pitch-black it stained the rocks downstream. It was that way when I was growing up. The first time I saw the ocean, I figured the froth on top of waves was the tide, a word I recognized as what my mother used to wash clothes. Confused though I was, of this I was certain: The sea suds couldn't begin to compare with what you'd find floating on the river back home.

"You could cross the Haw...