Residents began mobilizing for P&G to clean up the pollution in the 1980s, which caused community division as many supported the company because it provided relatively well-paid jobs in such a poor, rural county. The mill had become a source of hope for those who wanted to keep youths from leaving town to search for better work elsewhere. However, attitudes began shifting as people became increasingly aware of the consequences of the pollution over 50 years of slow violence [4]. One of the organizations aiming to convince P&G to clean up the pollution in the Fenholloway was Help Our Polluted Environment (HOPE). The group was led by Joy Towles Cummings. The group was controversial, though, many of its members became involved after seeing how the pollution affected fish and public health. One of its most vocal members, Linda Rowland, explained that she herself had spent 15 years working at Buckeye dumping chemicals in the mill’s landfill [1]. 

She and her cousin Stephanie McGuire, Cummings, and other HOPE members began receiving anonymous death threats over the phone and being stalked since May 1991, when they had been working on litigation to sue P&G [3, 4]. The calls increased in frequency to four or five times per day. Violence escalated when Cummings’ 23-year-old son was killed in a mysterious car accident, after which she began receiving calls threatening her with more “accidents.”  As the calls continued, their harassers also began cutting their boats loose, poisoning livestock, and performing other acts of intimidation [5]. Smear campaigns against all members of HOPE and the organization itself also labeled them as terrorists in a pseudo-environmental cult [8].

On April 7, 1992, McGuire was beaten and stabbed by three men in retaliation for her leadership in the lawsuit against P&G [4]. At approximately 6pm, she had been alone at her family-owned fish camp when a man pulled up in a boat and told her that he had just killed one of the neighbor’s cows. McGuire then turned to run to her house, but two other men blocked her, knocked her to the ground, smashed a rock onto her head, slashed her face with a razor, burned her breats with cigarettes, poured water from the Fenholloway into her wounds, then beat and stabbed her to “teach you all a lesson for causing us to lose our jobs” and that other HOPE members “could be attacked and that they should stop speaking out against Procter & Gamble” [1]. Two of the men, who were masked, also sexually assaulted her.  The third man did not wear a mask because he intended to kill her and be “the last face [she] sees” [2]. McGuire narrowly survived when her dog came and bit the unmasked third man on the face, giving her the opportunity to fight back, leading the men to escape in their boat [2]. Neighbors took her to the hospital where she recovered, however, she became pregnant because of the sexual assault [1, 2]. 

The police investigation was inconclusive with police claiming there were no suspects and little evidence. Regardless of continuing threats and lack of cooperation from authorities, Cummings and the rest of HOPE were even more determined to put a stop to their advocacy [1]. For their safety, McGuire and Rowland moved away to a secret ranch and changed phones, however, their locations ended up being leaked to the local newspaper, who published their address, their phones were tapped by the sheriff, and a private investigator filmed them. Shortly afterward, the stalking restarted, and McGuire’s dog was killed from eating food poisoned with antifreeze thrown over the fence. McGuire also later saw the unmasked man at a store, but he escaped as police did nothing to help her. Moreover, the sheriff’s department even sought criminal perjury charges against her and made the affidavit public, which was unusual because there had been no arrest. The department then began a smear campaign claiming that she lied about the attack and her resulting pregnancy, because if she were to look bad or go to jail, P&G would seem innocent [2]. 

Gloria Horning wrote a doctoral thesis (2005) framing the struggle in terms of the environmental justice movement, with emphasis on issues of  information and communication  [9] .                    

Shortly after the scandals, however, P&G announced plans to sell its paper and pulp mills [1]. In 1993, the plant was sold to a private firm before again being sold to Georgia-Pacific in 2013, which renamed Buckeye to the Foley Cellulose Mill [5]. Under its new ownership, there have also been new plans to invest over $50 million into river cleanup and restoration efforts as well as $20 million for expanding pipelines transporting effluent further upstream where the river empties into the Gulf [6]. This is because they could not meet water quality standards with current levels of pollution, and hoped to spread it out across a larger body of water [4].  Environmentalists argue that this pipeline plan will worsen the pollution, creating a “black solid blob” in the Gulf [5]. Moreover, despite claims that toxicity levels have increased by more than half since the 1980s, environmentalists counter that this is only because the company has switched to smaller combinations of chemicals that do not have to be listed in their inventory or impact assessments. However, many of the mostly conservative politicians and decision-makers in the county continue to see environmental regulations as hampering business [7]. Over 200 residents are still working to sue P&G/Georgia-Pacific as well as hold rallies at their offices locally and worldwide [8].Environmental groups also have offered an alternative solution to the pipeline plan: switching to oxygen instead of bleach to whiten their wood pulp, drastically lowering pollutant levels [4].