This is an opinion column.

James Franklin tells me to be careful before I turn the curve on Erwin Dairy Road.

"This is where I had my head-on collision," he said. "People don't realize you can't drive this road more than 30 miles an hour."

I look down at my speedometer and drop a little speed when, just as he warned, a truck comes around the bend and nearly takes off my side view mirror.

The road bisects what used to be Franklin's grandfather's dairy farm, but today that land is nothing but trees. For about a half mile, you could mistake it for rural Alabama country.

But then you see the smokestacks at ABC Coke, and after another turn under a railroad bridge, the road lets out into Tarrant.

A retired police officer and Jefferson County constable, Franklin grew up in East Lake, but he moved to Tarrant not quite 20 years ago. His family has had ties to this north Birmingham suburb since before he was born, he said.

"If there's an Erwin here, I'm related to them," he said.

Today Franklin lives in a house his grandfather owned in downtown Tarrant, next door to the library, and he laments what's become of the city. He points to boarded-up storefronts, telling me what each of them used to be and when they closed, and he wonders out loud what can be done to bring the small city back.

The housing stock is still good, he says, but many of those houses are now rentals.

"A lot of people come, they live here for a year or two, and then they're gone," he said. "It has affected the schools."

There's less of a sense of community, he says. And, Franklin believes, that has made the city collectively less concerned with what's in the soil.

Just about everywhere we go, it seems, you only have to peek through the trees at Tarrant's tallest structure -- those smoke stacks at ABC Coke. A subsidiary of the Drummond Co., ABC Coke sits on one side of the Pinson Valley Parkway. On the other side of the road, east of the plant, is the Tarrant downtown, most of the city's residential areas and two of the city's three schools.

When the Environmental Protection Agency came to Tarrant almost three years ago, the government agency asked permission to test the soil here for toxins. Many residents declined.

As did Tarrant City Schools.

I ask Franklin why he thinks that was.

"I think they're afraid," he says.

And Tarrant

The scandal has had many names, none of which have captured its scope. At first, it was the "Oliver Robinson Scandal," after the Alabama state representative who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, but that didn't focus on the bribers -- Balch & Bingham lawyer Joel Gilbert and Drummond vice president David Roberson.

"North Birmingham Pollution Scandal" wasn't a big enough net, either. While Drummond and Balch fought the EPA's efforts to fast-track cleanup in the north Birmingham neighborhoods, that wasn't the only place of concern. The EPA showed interest in the adjacent suburb, too.

So somewhere in the boilerplate of every column and news story about this scandal have been the words "and Tarrant."

Like an afterthought.

But in late 2015, Tarrant was anything but an afterthought. When the EPA began the preliminary work there -- the sorts of testing it does before naming a new Superfund site -- Drummond, Balch and Robinson -- went to work to stop them.

Robinson and his daughter Amanda led a quasi-grassroots organization called "Get Smart Tarrant," which warned residents there not to let the EPA test their soil for toxins. If they did, their homes would be labeled a toxic waste dump, they said.

Get Smart didn't tell those residents that the campaign was paid for by Drummond and a consortium of other companies potentially liable for the pollution.

And, at the same time, another campaign was underway. At every level of government, the Balch & Bingham lawyer Gilbert solicited help to push back against environmental regulators. He wrote letters to the EPA for officials to put on stationery as their own work product. This astroturfing effort included U.S. Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, the Jefferson County Commission ...

And Tarrant.

Tarrant Mayor Loxcil Tuck signed her name to one of those letters written by Gilbert.

But court documents and public records also show Gilbert didn't stop there.

In 2015, Tarrant City Schools gave the EPA permission to test soil at Tarrant Elementary School. Two months later, the school system rescinded that permission.

In between, court documents and public records show, was a flurry of emails and conversations between Gilbert and Tarrant's city attorney, Hand Arendall lawyer Ben Goldman.

And another letter ghost-written by Gilbert -- this one for Tarrant City Schools.

Yes. Wait. No!

The timeline is straightforward.

On Nov. 30, 2015, Tarrant City Schools Superintendent Shelly Mize signed a form granting EPA permission to test soil at Tarrant Elementary School. The school was one of 28 sites in Tarrant the EPA wanted to test for toxins.

Balch and Bingham billing records show what happened next. In the corruption trial, those records served as a timeline and the lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Martin, called them the defendants' confession.

Those records show that Tarrant's city attorney, Goldman, was in constant contact with Gilbert, acting as a go-between for the city and it school system. For more than two years, they shared information about the EPA's activities there and strategized about how to deal with the federal regulators.

On Dec. 9, 2015, Goldman appears to have told Gilbert that Tarrant City Schools had given EPA permission to test its soil.

Over the following three weeks, Gilbert drafted letters for the mayor of Tarrant and the Tarrant school board to send to the EPA, and he then exchanged more emails with Goldman regarding the draft letters.

On Dec. 30, 2015, Gilbert's billings records said, "Finish of draft Tarrant School Board letter to EPA; emails to Mr. Ben Goldman (Tarrant attorney) and Drummond regarding draft letter."

A week later, Goldman emailed a draft letter for the Tarrant superintendent, Mize, to send to the EPA, records obtained through the state's open records law show.

"Please see attached for the proposed letter to the EPA that we discussed," Goldman wrote Mize in the email. "Thanks so much for your consideration."

Goldman was not the school system's lawyer, nor was the school's then-lawyer, Sid Trant, copied on that email exchange.

"Ben, the letter is great!" Mize replied. "Thank you so much for your help!"

On Jan. 7, Mize signed her name to the letter and sent it to the EPA. That letter rescinded the permission Mize gave the EPA to test the soil at Tarrant Elementary School.

Later emails, produced by Tarrant City Schools, show a mix of confusion and frustration as the EPA and an environmental watchdog group, GASP, continued to seek information from the school system through early 2016.

"When I initially read (years ago) and then yesterday reread the reports, I'm not seeing anything that sends up red flags," Mize wrote Goldman and Trant. "What am I missing that we think is causing them to 'hone in'?"

That email shows Mize reviewed the school system's environmental testing in March -- two months after she rescinded permission for the EPA to test the soil again.

Trant replied to Mize's email, saying EPA and GASP were looking for something to prove there was a problem with the soil there. Goldman concurred.

"This also drives home why EPA so very badly wants to retest there -- to try to upturn their prior finding of no contamination," Goldman wrote.

After a member of the community asked questions about the school system's reversal with the EPA, Mize told staff at the school not to respond, emails show, and she asked Trant to help her draft a letter to parents assuring them the school system has been "proactive in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our children."

Mixed messages

Mize declined a request for an interview but did answer questions from AL.com by email. In that reply, she said that the school property had already been tested by independent contractors, the EPA and the Jefferson County Health Department. She said no one from Balch or Drummond had pressured her to rescind permission for the EPA to test the soil.

"Between the time Tarrant Schools initially gave permission to test and January 7, 2016, it became apparent to me for the first time that this matter was a bitter, hostile, polarizing issue within the Tarrant community," Mize wrote. "Prior to January 7, 2016, when I sent my letter to EPA, I discussed doing so with my Board members. Neither I nor our Board believed the Tarrant School System should be brought into this fight that extended beyond our schools, which we knew to be safe."

Mize also said she felt the soil at the school was safe enough to have let her daughter play there when she attended school in Tarrant.

"She played on the playground, played in the dirt, grew vegetables in the community garden and ate the vegetables they grew," Mize wrote. "I have ALWAYS cared about the health and safety of ALL our students and certainly did during this EPA matter."

Mize also said the school system was not influenced by a later project, in which Drummond Co. helped pay for a new playground at Tarrant Intermediate School.

Goldman declined to answer questions about these matters. Under the Alabama Open Records Act, AL.com has requested all those communications between Tarrant, Goldman and Gilbert. The city has yet to produce them.

Fending for themselves

At the heart of the Tarrant matter is what every child on that elementary school playground already knows: When you most suspect there's a monster hiding under your bed is when you're least eager to look.

"They're afraid that, if they find something, they'll have to do something about it," Franklin said before I dropped him off back at his home.

"They" could mean a lot of people.

Drummond Co. was clearly concerned. The parent company of ABC Coke, Drummond paid more than a million dollars a year in legal fees to fight the EPA in north Birmingham and Tarrant.

You don't pay money like that to win if there isn't a much bigger cost if you lose. Drummond CEO Mike Tracy testified at trial that, if ABC Coke were forced to pay for cleanup costs in polluted neighborhoods, it could bankrupt the company.

The Tarrant school system was afraid, too.

In her lengthy responses to my written questions, Mize never directly answered the most important one: Why not take every precaution to protect children?

This is a state, after all, that has authorized guns in schools to defend them against school shooters. What does it matter if the EPA tests the soil again if it keeps children safe?

But measures like those, especially in Alabama, are unfunded mandates, and the state made clear in 2016 that, if the EPA moved forward with cleanup efforts in these communities, it wouldn't help pay for them.

That would leave it to a small school system in a city struggling for resources to dig up and replace its schoolyards.

And Tarrant.

Not just City Hall, but its people, too.

When Robinson's phony grassroots group, Get Smart Tarrant, warned the people here about letting the EPA test their soil, they might have inadvertently been telling them some truth, if not the truth. If the EPA tests your soil and finds toxins, your home could be labeled a toxic waste dump and there's no guarantee the government will help you clean it up, they warned.

The EPA stopped well short of designating Tarrant a Superfund site, and even where it has intervened -- in those north Birmingham neighborhoods -- the federal agency has chipped away at the pollution one lawn at a time. Collegeville and the other north Birmingham neighborhoods never made it to the EPA's National Priorities List.

Perhaps it's easier to live with the possibility of poison and move to a cleaner place when the opportunity arises, leaving this town behind to someone less familiar with what might be beneath it, assuring themselves that it's better not to look one more time.

Maybe it's easier to sleep when you don't know.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

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Tarrant Superintendent Shelly Mize emails by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Mize Letter responding to questions by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Mize Exhibit 1 - Soil Testing Results by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Mize Exhibit 2 Sid Trant Emails With EPA by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Mize Exhibit 3 - Air Quality Reports by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Balch Billing Docs w: Summaries 1 Copy by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd

Balch Billing Docs w: Summaries 2 Copy by Kyle Whitmire on Scribd