Editorials

The legacy of environmental pollution has not been kind to Anniston or Calhoun County. Don't bother googling either if you're unprepared for page after page of references to an unsightly and unhealthy portion of our past. That reality can't be hidden.

This "toxic town" legacy — an unfair, pejorative title — includes many villains. Court cases have been built, and won, around that premise. But it also includes a few who have spearheaded forward-thinking, productive efforts not only to clean up our land, but to ensure that those who come after us benefit from property that does not pollute.

Count those at Foothills Community Partnership as some who are going above and beyond their stated goals.

Last week, Foothills ann-ounced it will donate $500,000 to the Community Foundation of Calhoun County. Wayne Carmello-Harper, the foundation's president and CEO, didn't underplay the enormity of the half-million dollar donation. Good thing. For a nonprofit charity in this size community, that's a sizeable — and somewhat overwhelming — contribution.

If things go well, Foothills will essentially shutter its operations in Calhoun County this fall. The partnership, a coalition of current and former industrial operations in Anniston, Oxford and Hobson City, was formed to coordinate lead removal from properties polluted during the county's heyday of foundries and smokestacks. Twenty months have passed, nearly 500 properties have been cleaned (more than 4,000 have been tested), and only 20 properties remain needing remediation. The Foothills mission is nearly complete.

That's enough reason to cheer. It's progress. But Foothills officials say the companies they represent had a stated — but non-publicized — day-one goal of doing more for this community than simply removing lead from our soil. The plan was simple: Donate to a local nonprofit that would identify community needs throughout Calhoun County and turn the negative of lead contamination into a positive that could spread across several decades.

The half-million dollars, Foothills officials say, is not leftover cash from a partnership that's about to close; instead, they say it's additional money separate from the partnership's operating budget. We'll take them at their word, and agree that it seems to be a sign of Foothills' commitment to leaving this community better than it was.

There are those in Calhoun County who will always wonder about the motivations of the industries involved in this community's polluted past. Too many lives have been altered, and too much money has been involved, for it to be any other way. For some, the wounds and distrust are too deep.

But a $500,000 gesture that seems well planned is a welcomed component to the county's environmental legacy. It would be unfair to view the Foothills donation in a tainted light.