Company Town is an environmental documentary film by Natalie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian about alleged pollution by a Georgia-Pacific plant in Crossett, Arkansas, shot from 2011 to 2015.
[2] The documentary alleges that a spate of fatal cancers and other illnesses is due in part to the factory's emissions and improper waste disposal of known carcinogens including formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde, and chloroform.
[4] Baptist pastor David Bouie, 'riverkeeper' Cheryl Slavant, and others organize the Crossett community, many of whom work for the plant, and engage the regional Environmental Protection Agency office with limited results.
The United States Geological Survey maps seem to support this allegation, showing Coffee Creek originating inside the land that Georgia-Pacific would eventually own.
However, a December 2007 Use Attainability Analysis (UAA) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that “aside from the fish and macroinvertebrate communities using Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, other wildlife live in or frequently contact the [Georgia-Pacific] effluent.
Muskrat, beaver, nutria, turtles and ducks are known to use Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, sometimes in very large numbers.” Relevantly, “the waters of Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake have the potential to support aquatic life indicative of streams in the ecoregion.”[9][10] In response, Georgia-Pacific accused the EPA of "acting without its knowledge and demanding the opportunity to redo the study using a contractor of its choosing," causing the UAA to be discarded.
"[2] The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film paints the EPA as "incapable of stopping flagrant polluters even when a community and journalists did its investigations," and "will add to the case files of industry-vs.-America crime-fighting".