MIDDLESBORO, Ky. — On the surface, a cascading creek that makes its way through the mountains of southeastern Kentucky looks like the picture of ecological health.

        Beavers have returned to swim to and fro, their submerged bodies as visible beneath the clear water as their heads splitting the current above. Wild mallards with their colorful plumage are back, too, as are an abundance of bluegill and bass.

        Buried beneath the surface of Yellow Creek, though, lie decades of accumulated arsenic, cyanide, lead, mercury and other pollutants from an upstream factory where cow hides were made into leather.

        The pollutants had been blamed for depleting wildlife along the creek, leaving fish with wart-like growths. People living along the stream blamed the polluted water each time a neighbor died of cancer.

        Now, in what could be construed as a contradictory stand, residents are outraged that the Kentucky Division of Waste Management is considering dredging the stream to remove the contaminants.

        Larry Wilson, who headed a citizens group in a two-decade battle to stop the pollution, said the contaminants are safely locked beneath a layer of sediment where they can't harm residents. Dredging, he said, would simply mix the contaminants back into the water.

        “You get in there disturbing it, and people are going to be in trouble from here to the Mississippi River,” he said. “If they get in there dredging, they'll be killing people and destroying one of the most alive streams in the state. Everybody here is ready to start World War III if they try to do that.”

        Worries that additional pollutants may have leaked into the stream over the past two years sparked the proposal to dredge, said Matt Hackathorn, spokesman for the Division of Waste Management.

        Mr. Hackathorn said the division has applied for special funding to begin taking samples of sediment in the bottom of the creek, which is popular among children as a place to wade and swim.

        The Yellow Creek pollution controversy raged through the 1980s, but had subsided when Middlesboro Tanning Co. shut down in 1999 under the weight of lawsuits and regulatory pressure.

        Concerns were heightened again in January when inspectors went to the defunct tannery and found more than 800 containers of unknown chemicals, some of them leaking, in and around the run-down buildings.

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