Town in southwest Georgia protests
`death of democracy'

BYLINE:  Bill Osinski STAFF WRITER 
DATE: November 6, 1994
PUBLICATION: The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution
EDITION: The Atlanta Journal Constitution
SECTION: STATE NEWS
PAGE: G/8

Butler - This city has found one way to cut down on the din of political campaigns: Stop having elections.   It's been about nine years since the last local election in Butler, a situation caused by an unresolved federal lawsuit aimed at promoting representation by blacks in city government.

  And some blacks believe the political stalemate is directly related to an environmental controversy over a City Hall plan to spray contaminated wastewater on land near predominantly black neighborhoods.

  The mayor of this Taylor County seat, population about 8,000 and located about 40 miles east of Columbus, would like to step down and do some more fishing. The case has dragged on so long it has been passed on to a second generation of city attorneys.

  Monday night, as campaigns are ending elsewhere around Georgia and the rest of the nation, there will be a candlelight vigil in Butler to protest the " Death of Democracy ."

  For Rev. Clarence Lawson, head of the Taylor County chapter of the NAACP and a leader of the planned protest , the nine years without elections has amounted to disenfranchisement of Butler's blacks, who make up about half the population. The mayor and four City Council members are all white. "How can you have any trust in your government, when you don't have any voice in it?" he said.

  Carol Williams, executive director of the Atlanta-based Eco-Action, said the situation in Butler compares unfavorably with some of the world's worst political trouble spots. "South Africa, Haiti, everybody has elections but little old Butler, Georgia ," said Williams, whose agency has advised the Butler-area protesters.

  Butler Mayor James Spillers said there is no racial motive to the city's side of the dispute. "We don't think of things that way," he said.

  Spillers said he's tired of the drawn-out battle over his $35-per-month job, and "it's time to let someone else have it."

  City Attorney Edward Davis, whose father, Alex Davis, represented the city in the case until his death last year, said the remaining issue in dispute is whether the mayoral election should be decided by a plurality vote or a majority vote - the latter making a runoff more likely.

  Lawson, however, said city officials are continuing to fight the suit, because, "They just don't want a black man to be mayor."

  The case will be argued before a federal appellate court in January.

  Opposing the wastewater plan

  The environmental dispute involves the city's plan to pipe contaminated, blue-gray waters from a holding pond at the city's sewage treatment plant and spray it on land near a predominantly black neighborhood outside the city.

  A citizen's task force formed to oppose the plan has obtained state inspection records showing that heavy metals including mercury, cadmium, chromium and zinc were detected at the sewage treatment plant as far back as 1990. Also, 1994 state inspections showed that the treatment plant had fecal coliform bacteria levels more than 10 times above the legal limit.

  "I believe that if we had a mayor elected by the people, he might be more concerned about those people," said Patricia Williams, a Taylor County resident and member of the task force.

  The pollution problem is related to waste received by the city system from a dye plant operated near Butler by MF & H Textiles Inc. The firm supplies about half the wastewater treated by the city.

  Rex Fleming, vice president of MF & H, said the contamination levels do not present a health hazard. "We're not talking about human health; we're talking about aquatic life," he said. The current contamination levels might cause "birth defects in water fleas six generations from now," he said.

  Jeff Larson, municipal permit program manager for the Georgia Environmental Protection Department, said there is insufficient data to determine the potential health threat from the contamination of the Butler sewage system. However, he added, "We have levels we are definitely concerned with."

  While the state has approved the proposal to use the land-spray method, he said, it has also ordered both the city and the textile company to reduce the levels of heavy-metal contamination entering the system.