It is rare that we are able to report that a local political body spoke with one voice to take responsible action. Fortunately, there appears to have been one such event during the city council meeting held on October 25, 2022.

As a last-minute item added to the city attorney’s agenda (item number 11), the Columbus City Council opposed giving the Continental Carbon Company more time to comply with a court order to stop polluting the city with its toxic cancer-causing soot. The council’s vote was unanimous.

The Continental Carbon Company, located at 1500 State Docks Road in Phenix City, Alabama, has been raining a known carcinogen called carbon black particulate soot onto Columbus & Phenix City neighborhoods for over twenty years.

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The council’s vote to adopt the resolution is in direct opposition to its counterparts across the river. Officials in Phenix City, Alabama recently spoke in favor of providing the company with more time to comply — despite the cancer-causing pollution emitted by the plant that continues to poison local residents on a daily basis.

The two interstate sister-cities are now diametrically opposed on the issue. While Phenix City officials wish for the plant to remain operational in favor of profits, Columbus officials now appear to be taking a more humanitarian approach to help protect residents from further harm.

In 2007, the company was ordered by a federal court to pay $19.5 million in damages as a result of their harmful emissions. The company then signed an agreement with the EPA in 2015, promising to comply with federal regulations within five years and stop its toxic pollution of local neighborhoods. 

In spite of the agreement, the company later claimed that the factory improvements required to comply with federal regulations were too expensive for it to install within the timeline. The company’s timeline was then extended to 2022. 

As of the date of this article’s publication, the company still has not complied. Toxic emissions continue to rain down onto residential Columbus neighborhoods. Children and their families have no choice but to breathe the cancer-causing particulate soot that covers their homes, cars, and properties each and every day.

As a result, the chemical plant is currently scheduled to close by December of 2022 for failing to comply with the Clean Air Act.

The Columbus City Council has now made it clear that the city will not stand for that deadline being extended any further. The move may serve to finally bring closure and relief to thousands of Columbus residents after more than twenty years of continuous exposure to the company’s toxic emissions.

We at the Muckraker — on behalf of many of our readers — would like to thank the Columbus City Council for taking a stand against the continued poisoning of its residents.

Nevertheless, the Muckraker will continue to monitor and report on the council's subsequent actions regarding the matter. We wonder why the council took so long to speak up in the first place.

You can watch the council’s brief yet unanimous vote on the resolution, which begins at the 3:00:10-mark in the video below:

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Residents can voice their opinions on the matter surrounding the Continental Carbon Company by contacting their city council members in both Columbus, Ga. and Phenix City, Ala.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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© 2022 Muscogee Muckraker. All rights reserved.

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