Free Republic

excerpt...I remember my first visit to the state, which I grew to love because of its warm, good-hearted people. Incredible folks! It was 1979 and I was there to report on the toxic contamination and a cancer rate that had reached epidemic proportions in the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The most highly toxic compounds known to mankind had been thrown willy-nilly in the bayous and in inadequate land pits or pumped deep beneath the ground when they didn't simply drain into the Mississippi. I stayed with a man named Dave Ewell whose family plantation was in ruins...