History

Andrew Hurley

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard:

Postindustrial Transitions on the Urban Periphery

Abstract The dismantling of America’s manufacturing economy in

the 1970s and 1980s left hundreds of beleaguered commu- nities struggling to reclaim something viable from the detri- tus of an industrial age. Across the nation’s Rust Belt, sharp workforce reductions and plant closings eroded the finan- cial resources of local governments and families alike. Deindustrialization also saddled afflicted localities with the physical remains of industrial production: hulking factory carcasses, decaying rail spurs, and toxic waste dumps. Finding some constructive use for these brownfield sites emerged as one of the most pressing revitalization chal- lenges of the 1990s. Postindustrial recovery proved particu- larly daunting for former manufacturing enclaves located on the metropolitan fringe—places like Camden, New Jersey; East St. Louis, Illinois; and Richmond, California. These locales had grown dependent on manufacturing for their sustenance and were among the most devastated by

VC The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

Andrew Hurley, “From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard: Postindustrial Transitions on the Urban Periphery,” Environmental History 21 (2016): 3–29

doi: 10.1093/envhis/emv112 Advance Access Publication Date: 10 August 2015

the withdrawal of corporate investment. Their spatial placement within host metropolises, however, endowed them with opportunities for economic redevelopment that more remote centers of industry lacked. This article explores one common but understudied redevelopment response: integration into regional networks of waste handling and disposal. In the final decades of the twentieth century, manufacturing suburbs adapted and expanded a robust in- frastructure for moving and transforming materials to ac- commodate burgeoning volumes of postconsumer garbage and scrap.

INTRODUCTION Fierce garbage wars erupted across the United States in the final de- cades of the twentieth century. In hundreds of cities and towns, citi- zens squared off against politicians and corporations over the siting of landfills, incinerators, recycling centers, and refuse transfer sta- tions. Confrontations grew particularly charged in the scorched ter- rain just beyond the borders of central cities where the nation’s garbage crisis collided with the trauma of deindustrialization. Reeling from steep job losses and plant closings, inner-tier suburban factory districts groped impatiently for fresh sources of investment. At the same time, the concentration of garbage-related facilities amid rising levels of poverty and racial confinement fueled resolute popular resis- tance in the form of an environmental justice movement. As a conse- quence of these pitched battles and a multitude of less visible political negotiations and property transactions, ailing manufactur- ing districts played a decisive role in the crystallization of far-flung re- gional garbage circulation systems that ultimately sustained the nation’s extravagant material consumption habits.

The following survey of selected manufacturing enclaves on the pe- riphery of Providence, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco reveals that as the resource flows that once sus- tained these places were disrupted and reconfigured, centers of indus- trial production were reconstituted as critical nodes in metropolitan, regional, and international waste-handling networks.1 From the 1960s through the early twenty-first century, the privatization and consolidation of refuse disposal activities facilitated the confluence of industrial, commercial, and domestic waste flows in specialized junk- yard districts. Paradoxically, the concentration of these facilities in inner-tier metropolitan zones was due to both the disappearance and the persistence of manufacturing activity. On the one hand, factory closings opened space for alternative types of heavy, dirty activity.

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On the other hand, surviving manufacturers nourished a market for recoverable household trash. Moreover, they generated their own vo- luminous quantities of sludge, ash, and liquid residues requiring dis- posal alongside household rubbish. Citizen activism and local politics shaped the topology of evolving garbage networks by deter- mining which types of facilities were acceptable in what sort of pla- ces. Indeed, suburban localities retained an uneasy and conflicted relationship with metropolitan waste management regimes across dramatic economic fluctuations, demographic transitions, and attitu- dinal shifts. Between 1960 and 2015, however, population shifts and the withdrawal of manufacturing investment altered the political pri- orities of deindustrialized communities in ways that favored the in- terests of garbage entrepreneurs. Confronted with the material legacies of industrial place making, local and regional stakeholders reached an uneasy accommodation in the creation of specialized waste-based economies.

My goal in writing this article is to advance us toward an environ- mental history of deindustrialization. The past twenty years have wit- nessed a prodigious outpouring of narrowly focused social science research correlating environmental hazards with various socioeco- nomic indicators.2 A parallel line of inquiry has traced the roots of en- vironmental justice activism to communities much like those explored in this study.3 I do not re-plow this ground. Rather, I direct attention to the economic and political calculations that guided a wide spectrum of actors—local officials, regional planners, entrepre- neurs, and activists—as they grappled with the nation’s garbage crisis in metropolitan settings that were shedding manufacturing capacity while remaining loci of material consumption. This analytic ap- proach promises to embed processes of environmental change more concretely within broad structural changes in the US political econ- omy. For environmental historians, it builds on a long-standing fasci- nation with the subject of waste disposal and carries the urban metabolism narrative into the twenty-first century.4 Perhaps more ambitiously, it adopts a more ecologically minded approach to the study of garbage by showing how redirected flows of waste material redefined relationships between different parts of the metropolis.

PREDICAMENTS OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION Suburban districts that had grown dependent on industrial produc- tion struggled to reinvent themselves when confronted with the full dimensions of manufacturing flight and job losses in the 1970s and 1980s. Historians have noted that in older parts of the country, dein- dustrialization in the form of automation and capital flight began as early as the 1950s.5 At the same time, generous federal housing

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 5

subsidies and high wages for privileged workers prompted an outflow of middle-class residential wealth that, while often associated with big cities, was just as devastating to their outlying manufacturing sat- ellites. In heavily industrialized sections of the Northeast and Midwest, the population of many working-class communities shrank noticeably in the 1960s. In places like Camden, New Jersey; East St. Louis, Illinois; and Gary, Indiana; numerical decline left remaining populations with higher concentrations of poorer African American households. Elsewhere, comparable racial transitions resulted from the arrival of immigrants from undeveloped parts of the world.6 The economic downturn of the following decade starkly exposed the ef- fects of these twin processes—deindustrialization and white middle- class flight. Across the nation’s Rust Belt, poverty rates rose and sharp reductions in tax revenue frustrated local initiatives to address crime, poor educational attainment, and infrastructural maintenance.7 In the West Coast metropolises of Los Angeles and San Francisco, dein- dustrialization occurred slightly later, caused less disruption, but nonetheless left affected suburban enclaves with diminished resources.8

A central dilemma facing all of these communities involved the dis- position of a physical environment that had been both deliberately and inadvertently created to accommodate the needs of manufac- turers. Its central features were large factory complexes, rudimentary housing, transportation infrastructures designed for freight move- ment, and hazardous waste residue in the form of slag heaps, contam- inated soils, and polluted riverbeds. Because these physical settings had served industrial concerns so well in the past, it was tempting to pin revitalization hopes on a reinvigorated production sector. Even as manufacturing activity yielded diminishing social benefits, belea- guered suburbs continued to court new industry with tax incentives and infrastructural enticements.9 There was an obvious logic to this redevelopment strategy because it capitalized on existing assets, and to the extent that it anticipated the reutilization of older manufactur- ing plants, it required minimal intervention in the built environment.

With plenty of excess capacity in the physical inventory of homes and buildings, struggling suburbs also looked beyond the shrinking manufacturing sector for fresh investment streams. Eager to tap into the dynamism of the burgeoning service and information economy, planners, development consultants, and politicians endorsed elabo- rate schemes to convert abandoned industrial properties into luxury condominiums, big-box retail centers, faux Main Street shopping pla- zas, high-tech business parks, and heritage corridors. Plans to convert factory buildings into middle-class apartment complexes were espe- cially popular along the Atlantic seaboard where densely packed multistoried brick structures were better suited to loft-style

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apartments than were late twentieth-century manufacturing opera- tions reliant on horizontal assembly-line technologies. Municipalities with underutilized port facilities invariably drafted blueprints for rec- reational marinas and waterfront arcades.10

What became increasingly evident, however, was that the legacy of past waste disposal practices often undermined the advantages of in- tact facilities, regardless of the orientation of redevelopment strate- gies. Industrial production sites were also disposal sites, where for much of the twentieth century, manufacturers had discarded unwanted by-products in nearby pits, marshes, and lagoons. In 1980 Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act to facilitate the remediation of con- taminated properties abandoned by their owners. In addition to cre- ating a superfund to clean the nation’s most toxic sites, the law empowered the US Environmental Protection Agency to recoup cleanup costs from a wide range of parties connected to polluted properties. Predictably, many of the sites that fell under the purview of this law were located in manufacturing suburbs. Although the 1980 legislation facilitated the remediation of over eight hundred polluted properties nationwide, it had a chilling effect on redevelop- ment because potential investors feared the assignment of liability for environmental hazards awaiting discovery.11 In the most distressed communities, languishing factories magnified perceptions of blight and repelled capital from adjacent neighborhoods.12

To mitigate this unintended deterrent, state and local governments experimented with a variety of brownfields incentive programs in the 1990s. Tax abatements, flexible remediation standards, and liability exemptions promised to reduce the risk and cost associated with the purchase and reutilization of idle manufacturing plants. Developers took the bait. A 2010 survey of ninety-nine cities, which included sev- eral distressed industrial suburbs, indicated that nearly all had achieved some success in rehabilitating brownfield properties as a re- sult of policy initiatives. Respondents cited four tools—government grants to investigate the severity of contamination, public remedia- tion funds, private capital, and liability protection for innocent parties—as especially helpful in restoring derelict properties to the tax rolls and creating jobs.13

Brownfields redevelopment hardly yielded a comprehensive solu- tion, especially in locations most ravaged by deindustrialization. In relation to the magnitude of job losses, budget deficits, and building vacancies, the harvest from Brownfield initiatives was quite modest. Consider the case of Camden, which moved aggressively in the early 1990s to facilitate private acquisition and remediation of its five hun- dred abandoned factory sites, covering more than 25 percent of its to- tal land area. As of 2010, a staggering 485 remained fallow.14

Camden’s experience validated a powerful assertion in the emerging

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 7

academic literature: government incentives made little difference in areas that suffered from crumbling infrastructure, a poorly educated labor force, and a discouraging real estate environment. Disappointingly, the few successful cases failed to trigger ancillary spillover effects, leaving scattered islands of vitality stranded in a vast ocean of decay.15

Moreover, places like Camden paid a price for reaching into the brownfields toolkit. Tax concessions on behalf of investors denied lo- cal governments badly needed revenue. And when regulatory author- ities relaxed cleanup standards to entice capital, land uses that involved heavy human activity—schools, day care centers, athletic fields, housing—were removed from the negotiating table. In these situations, reclaimed properties were generally given over to trucking terminals, industrial parks, and warehouse facilities. For communities eager to reinvent themselves, then, brownfields projects were a double-edged sword.16

SPINNING GARBAGE INTO GOLD If the physical remains of industrial production foreclosed certain re- development paths, they also opened opportunities for at least one lucrative activity that flourished in the postindustrial economy, the handling of regional waste matter. Flows of metropolitan waste were drastically reconfigured in the era of industrial decline as a result of broad changes in American society, corporate innovations, and per- sistent metropolitan sprawl. Around 1970, heightened environmen- tal sensibilities, a new federal regulatory regime, and consumer abundance triggered a garbage crisis. Mounting levels of household and commercial trash filled existing landfills to capacity while strict federal laws and citizen opposition raised barriers to the opening of new facilities. As waste disposal became more complicated, it also be- came more profitable. Specialized firms responded to the rising costs and mounting risks by courting customers no longer prepared to dump their own wastes and by consolidating collection and disposal operations. The wave of privatization sweeping American govern- ment in the 1980s furthered the reach of proprietary waste haulers as they took over services previously performed by municipalities. Finally, public policies designed to encourage resource recovery pro- vided an impetus to the privatization of the waste trade.17 Built on the foundations of an existing infrastructure that involved not only the disposal of wastes by private firms but the processing and resale of salvageable materials, a vastly expanded network of discarded mate- rials fell under the orbit of a sophisticated and highly capitalized waste industry. By century’s end, much of the nation’s garbage sifted through the machinery of four giant corporations that came to

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dominate this sector by cobbling together geographically fragmented operations with deep roots in their respective localities.18

Suburban manufacturing zones played a decisive role in the crystal- lization of metropolitan garbage networks beginning in the 1960s when small-time entrepreneurs and local policymakers identified pla- ces like south Chicago’s Calumet Region as the solution to an im- pending emergency. Regional planners in northeastern Illinois sounded the alarm in 1963. A report published that year observed that the atomized system of refuse disposal, whereby each municipal- ity took care of its own trash, was crumbling under the weight of in- sufficiently sized dump sites, rapid population growth, and mushrooming quantities of consumer waste. The City of Chicago ex- emplified the problem; it had become a net exporter of garbage, much of which flowed across its southern border where it merged with suburban waste streams in privately owned landfills.19 Here, a motley assortment of scrap haulers, real estate brokers, and alleged mobsters prepared to reap enormous profits by filling large holes in the ground with trash collected from a wide orbit of municipalities and businesses.

Several aspects of the Calumet Region’s industrial heritage made it enticing to aspiring garbage moguls. Cook County, which encom- passed the City of Chicago and its surrounding settlements, restricted landfills to properties that were zoned for manufacturing. Because the Calumet Region had originally been developed as Chicago’s principal factory district, it had plenty of industrially zoned land. Moreover, much of this land was underutilized. Particularly appealing to gar- bage entrepreneurs were excavated pits abandoned by a once-thriving clay-mining and brick-making industry. These ready-made topo- graphic depressions, along with an abundance of barren wetlands, promised quick, easy money for dumpers who maximized earnings through low-area, high-volume operations.20

Persistent industrial production was just as important to the calcu- lations of dump owners as the availability of abandoned properties. Disposal firms were not terribly picky about the materials they ac- cepted; the faster they filled their cavities, the quicker they accrued profits. Thus the presence of active steel mills, metal fabricators, food-processing plants, and chemical factories offered additional business opportunities. One operator estimated that for every ton of household garbage produced in the Calumet district, there were an- other two tons of industrial wastes requiring disposal.21 Combining the yard trimmings, food scraps, plastic packages, and tin cans left on the curb by domestic households with the oil sludge, fly ash, herbi- cide residues, and spent solvents discarded by manufacturers resulted in massive landfills that achieved highly profitable economies of scale. High-volume operations also depended on the efficiency of lo- cal transportation networks and, with the completion of an interstate

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 9

highway system with arterial spokes and circumferential belts inter- secting on Chicago’s periphery, the formerly insulated manufactur- ing communities of the Calumet enjoyed fluid access to an expansive pasture of garbage-producing industries and households.22

All of these logistical assets converged in the decision of five scaven- ger companies to pool their resources in reclaiming 150 acres of swampland adjacent to the Calumet Expressway just across south Chicago’s southern boundary. Calling themselves the Calumet City Industrial Development Company (CID), they promised to “alleviate the refuse problems of 12 suburban communities” in addition to re- lieving the City of Chicago of a portion of its surplus trash. Their land grab came on the heels of at least four nearby real estate acquisitions perpetrated for the purposes of opening garbage dumps. What distin- guished this venture was the scale of operations. Capable of swallow- ing 74,000 cubic yards of solid matter and another 130 million gallons of liquid, the CID landfill dwarfed competing dump sites in the greater Chicago area. With separate compartments for organic household wastes and industrial refuse, it opened in 1969, taking in garbage at a rate that promised to deliver flat land for industrial development to the towns of Calumet City and Burnham within twelve years.23

Such projections played sweet music to the ears to suburban gov- ernments and inclined them to ally with landfill applicants over the objections of wary citizens. In a muted prelude to the fierce garbage wars of subsequent decades, trash entrepreneurs competed with one another and tussled with residents whose middle-class aspirations collided with the proliferation of refuse dumps. Through the 1960s, white working-class families with incomes approaching the metro- politan median continued to reach for the good life in the simple de- tached ranch-style homes that filled residential subdivisions south of Chicago. The prospect of noisy garbage trucks, foul odors, and pesky vermin not only clashed with the quality of life they had come to ex- pect but also threatened to lower property values and thus undermine their most prized financial investment.

The fragmented political landscape of the Calumet district, how- ever, played into the hands of dumpers who understood that mayors and aldermen were less troubled by aggrieved households than by the prospect of losing economic growth opportunities to rival suburbs. Consider the abrupt shift taken by Blue Island officials between 1966 and 1968. In response to citizen objections, Blue Island initially sought a court injunction to prevent a contractor from filling two clay holes that abutted its western border. Two years later, the mayor withdrew the lawsuit after negotiating an agreement with the con- tractor to annex the contested land. Explaining his turnabout, he cited rumors that the nearby town of Alsip had initiated its own an- nexation bid, which would have eventually provided it with 270 acres of level terrain for industrial expansion.24

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Recurring local negotiations of this sort during the 1960s and 1970s had the cumulative effect of concentrating landfills in Cook County’s Calumet Region. Between 1960 and 1978, the suburban governments of Blue Island, Calumet City, Lansing, Dolton, and Chicago Heights authorized new dumps over the objection of citizen groups. Garbage repositories appeared elsewhere in greater Chicago, often in industrially zoned railroad corridors that pierced middle- class subdivisions on the western and northern metropolitan fringes. Yet approximately 50 percent of landfill openings in Cook County occurred within its southern reaches. Another 15 percent lay just across the southern boundary of the City of Chicago around the pe- rimeter of Lake Calumet. In less than two decades, a fairly even distri- bution of municipal trash pits gave way to a skewed waste disposal geography dominated by private landfills in older manufacturing zones. Notably, much of this spatial transformation occurred before the full dimensions of deindustrialization and demographic transi- tion were experienced or anticipated.25

The consolidation and privatization of metropolitan garbage dis- posal during the 1960s and 1970s had similar consequences for indus- trial suburbs in other parts of the country, although locally specific land use constraints and natural topography produced both subtle and substantial deviations from Chicago’s model. St. Louis closely fol- lowed Chicago’s practice of exporting surplus trash to moribund inner-tier industrial suburbs. By 1973 the two largest garbage heaps within its metropolitan orbit were located in the vicinity of East St. Louis, where they performed double duty as recipients of domestic and industrial refuse.26 Inner-tier manufacturing districts surround- ing the East Coast cities of Philadelphia and Providence, however, had been developed at densities too high to support large landfill op- erations. Landfills established in the 1960s and 1970s leapfrogged the oldest mill and factory towns, landing across a mosaic of second-tier industrial zones, exurban subdivisions, and rural environs.27

In Los Angeles, industrial suburbs played a decisive role in the for- mation of metropolitan garbage systems by hosting large transfer sta- tions rather than landfills. Prefiguring the far-flung regional systems that coalesced at century’s end, Los Angeles implemented a two-step procedure for moving domestic garbage during the 1950s and 1960s. First, neighborhood collection vehicles carted household trash from curbside to several dozen privately owned and operated transfer sta- tions that ringed the City of Los Angeles. Larger trucks then hauled compressed bales to remote landfills in sparsely populated exurban territories. Although transfer stations did not store garbage perma- nently, they still generated heated debate in prospective host com- munities. Citizen resistance notwithstanding, the largest transfer stations gravitated to manufacturing zones just beyond the central city edge.28

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 11

CONTRA COSTA GARBAGE WARS, 1984–92 The eruption of costly and protracted garbage wars in California’s Contra Costa County signaled a profound shift in the terms of debate and portended the end of suburban landfilling as a means of sustain- ing the nation’s bulimic relationship to material goods. By the 1980s,

Figure 1. Geographic distribution of landfills in Cook County, Illinois, 1981. By 1981 the geography of solid waste disposal showed a pronounced clustering of large landfills in the Calumet Region on either side of Chicago’s southern border. The site located in the center of Chicago was reserved for the deposition of incinerator fly ash. Credit: Created by author from data published in James Douglas Andrews, Illinois Waste Facilities Inventory (Springfield: State of Illinois Protection Agency, 1981), 67–68.

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deindustrialization had cut deep scars into older factory districts across the country. While not formally part of the nation’s Rust Belt, the strip of factory towns stretching from Richmond to Antioch along the south shore of Suisun Bay and the Carquinez Straits suffered the departure of key industries after 1970. Refuse represented one of this corridor’s few sources of economic stability; in addition to taking in household trash from proliferating suburban subdivisions across parts of four counties, specialized operations in Richmond, Martinez, and Pittsburg took in roughly three-quarters of all hazardous waste gener- ated by industry in the San Francisco Bay Area. While the opening of these facilities between 1941 and 1969 elicited sporadic citizen oppo- sition, the widely publicized Love Canal disaster of 1979 provoked a brand of activism that was more infectious, strident, and visible.29

Subsequent landfill initiatives not only ran up against spirited activ- ists but also faced multiplying administrative hurdles. A high-stakes political and regulatory environment, in turn, prompted small family-run dumping outfits to ally themselves with heavily

Figure 2. Geographic distribution of large landfills and large transfer stations in Los Angeles County, 1975. Source: Harvey T. Brandt, County Engineer, The County Solid Waste Management Plan, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles: Department of County Engineer, 1975).

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 13

capitalized national corporations that had deep enough pockets to counter grassroots obstructionists.

The Contra Costa County Board of Commissioners knew it had a problem on its hands in 1984 when the 572-acre Acme Fill in Martinez announced its impending closure due to capacity exhaus- tion. The board had no trouble finding businesses willing to inherit Acme’s lucrative trade in trash. Within a year, three private devel- opers raced forward to promote virgin sites in Antioch and Pittsburg.30 Where the board anticipated and encountered resistance was in finding communities willing to host extensive dumping opera- tions. Contra Costa law mandated that new dumps secure the ap- proval of county voters, and in each proposed location, residents mobilized in opposition, implicitly raising the specter of Love Canal with warnings of cancer-causing toxic waste infiltration into their soil and drinking water. All agreed that the county needed another dump, but no community wanted a health hazard sited in their back- yard.31 The playing field grew more lavish after a fourth contender entered the fray. In 1987 the national conglomerate Waste Management promised to break the impasse with a massive operation in Marsh Canyon, a pocket of wilderness in the county’s isolated cen- tral recesses. As a countermeasure, the proponent of a Pittsburg prop- erty negotiated a partnership with Waste Management’s rival, Browning-Ferris Industries, thereby pitting two garbage industry gi- ants against each other and a host of hastily formed but determined citizen groups. While a third operator remained in the running by brokering his own deal with Waste Management, the 300-acre Marsh Canyon site and Browning-Ferris’s 375-acre Keller Canyon site in Pittsburg emerged as frontrunners.32

A succession of hearings, elections, appealed rulings, and lawsuits dragged the battle into the 1990s when charges of “toxic racism” gave the debate a new twist and threatened further delays. The rise of a national environmental justice movement equipped opponents of the Keller Canyon landfill with another cudgel to wield against county officials. Between 1980 and 1990, Pittsburg had transitioned from a predominantly white city to one where a mix of Latinos, African Americans, and Asians constituted a majority. Its elected offi- cials joined a coalition of civil rights groups in averring that the shift of momentum toward the Pittsburg option conformed to a larger pat- tern whereby racial minorities and the poor suffered disproportion- ately from the siting of hazardous and undesirable facilities. The issue of racial justice also opened fissures within the environmental move- ment by positioning Pittsburg’s activists against the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. Both of these established organizations endorsed the Keller Canyon project to save oak trees and indigenous wildlife endangered by the Marsh Canyon option. Leading a demonstration of eco-warriors at Sierra Club headquarters, the Reverend Curtis A.

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Timmons lashed out at preservationists for placing “wild animals and untouched land” above the welfare of Pittsburg’s minority residents.33

The long and costly road to the Keller Canyon Landfill’s opening in June 1992 exposed metropolitan super dumps as unsatisfactory long- term solutions to the garbage crisis. Exorbitant sums, in excess of $7 million, had been spent by big corporations, local business, and ordi- nary citizens to influence voters, woo politicians, and pay attorneys. Property owners throughout the county watched sanitation fees soar due to the necessity of diverting garbage to adjacent counties for bur- ial.34 Even after trucks commenced daily pilgrimages to Keller Canyon, public expenses mounted. In 1997 the threat of lawsuits from nearby residents compelled county officials to distribute nearly half a million dollars of mitigation funds as compensation for depre- ciated property values, excessive noise, and dust pollution.35 County officials learned their lesson; Keller Canyon was the last landfill they authorized. Indeed, the timing of its opening in 1992 placed it in the final cohort of municipal waste landfills to make their appearance in the nation’s inner-tier suburbs, leaving those responsible for metro- politan refuse disposal groping for viable alternatives.

INCINERATOR INTERREGNUM, 1985–94 For a brief period, from about 1985 to 1994, it appeared that salvation would come through incineration. Many cities had burned their rub- bish in bulky furnaces earlier in the century, but the high cost of com- pliance with environmental regulations led local governments to decommission scores of these smelly, sooty contraptions during the 1960s and 1970s. Renewed appeal in the 1980s coincided with the shortage of landfill space and technological advancements facilitat- ing the conversion of heat into steam and electricity, thereby restor- ing profitability to the method. Many state governments further sweetened the bait with a variety of financial incentives including tax credits, subsidies, and income guarantees. A handful of national com- panies with the know-how to build cutting-edge waste-to-energy plants prepared to reap a harvest of opportunity.36

The modest spatial requirements of garbage incineration opened the geographic field of possibilities to dense but decaying industrial districts that had been bypassed by the consolidated landfill move- ment. Unlike land depositories, resource recovery furnaces could con- sume over 500 tons of garbage per day almost indefinitely on only a few acres of land. Thus, in addition to scouting locations in Chicago’s south suburbs and Contra Costa County, field representatives from big energy companies descended on the dilapidated row house pre- cincts of eastern Camden County in New Jersey, the mill towns of

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 15

Rhode Island’s Lower Blackstone Valley, and the crowded low-slung subdivisions hugging the Los Angeles River as it flowed to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In these distressed manufacturing corri- dors, prospective incinerator operators found excellent transporta- tion connections, working infrastructure, potential customers for residual steam, and underutilized slivers of land for construction. Just as important, dire economic circumstances inclined political leaders toward the quick fiscal fixes that energy firms promised by way of supplementary tax revenue, rental payments, and tipping fee rebates. Indeed, it was not unusual for local politicians intent on improving municipal finances, strengthening patronage networks, and proving their mettle as problem solvers to actively solicit the business of pow- erhouse energy firms.

Despite the initial burst of enthusiasm among corporate capitalists and governing authorities, mass-burn furnaces provoked confronta- tions just as bitter and divisive as those triggered by landfills. The en- ticements beckoning from deindustrialized suburbs steered incinerator initiatives into the headwinds of a potent environmental justice movement. Just as Love Canal had animated grassroots oppo- sition to super-sized garbage dumps beginning in 1979, the Times Beach fiasco of 1983 awakened eco-activists to the dangers of dioxin, a chemical by-product of mechanized trash burning. For the poor people of color who increasingly inhabited inner-tier manufacturing zones, relentless entreaties from waste firms fed conspiracy theories of deliberate targeting due to demographic characteristics. Feelings of persecution combined with concerns about air pollution to mobilize scores if not hundreds of citizens at agency hearings and city council meetings.37 Perceiving themselves as resource conservation cham- pions, corporate managers and their political collaborators were taken aback by the virulence of grassroots resistance. Yet where they saw a reasonable chance of victory, energy companies stayed the course.

Foster Wheeler understood the risks as well as any firm in the busi- ness, and in the summer of 1990, Central Falls, Rhode Island, looked like a pretty safe bet. The town was on the brink of insolvency. Its once thriving textile economy had collapsed, and an influx of impov- erished immigrants from Latin America strained city coffers. The square-mile pocket of suburban decay just north of Providence ur- gently needed cash to keep its schools open and maintain basic ser- vices. High-density development precluded a cost-effective landfill operation, so local authorities grabbed at the chance to host a waste- to-energy plant that promised an additional $1 million in revenue. Although some citizens worried about dirty air, economic consider- ations motivated a greater number to pass a ballot measure in favor of an incinerator that no other community in the state wanted.38 Foster Wheeler was familiar with this scenario. It had recently accepted

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invitations to build and operate mass-burn plants in the struggling suburbs of Robbins, Illinois, and Camden, New Jersey, after similar proposals were rejected by neighboring municipalities. Despite some bumps in the road, both of those projects were moving forward, largely due to the dogged support of mayors determined to dig their cities out of deep financial holes. After numerous delays, the Robbins and Camden plants opened for business, exemplifying a pattern whereby resource recovery incinerators sprouted in the nation’s most economically depleted metropolitan pockets.39 Foster Wheeler had reason to expect a similar outcome in Rhode Island’s poorest town. Goaded by $111 million in guaranteed profits and assured of consid- erable local support, the New Jersey–based energy company entered into contract negotiations with the State of Rhode Island to build a regional waste-to-energy incinerator on an underutilized plot of in- dustrial land on the western edge of Central Falls.40

But Foster Wheeler miscalculated, not so much because it misread local opinion, but because it failed to anticipate the persistence of a highly networked anti-incineration movement operating outside Central Falls. As part of a multistate “War on Waste” campaign, a coa- lition of environmental organizations bumped the issue into the arena of state politics, where it pressed for a comprehensive ban on waste-to-energy facilities. They were joined by environmental justice activists within Central Falls who had previously found themselves on the losing side of the battle. The strategic maneuver proved suc- cessful. In 1992 Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to ban incineration. The Central Falls furnace was never built.41

As it turned out, Central Falls dodged a bullet. The terms by which governments and energy firms negotiated contractual agreements be- came untenable when the US Supreme Court delivered its ruling the case of C&A Carbone v. Town of Clarkstown. In this landmark decision of 1994, the high court forbade municipalities from forcing all waste haulers within their jurisdiction to deliver their product to designated facilities. This tactic was commonly employed to ensure the financial viability of incineration operations. Unable to enforce such provi- sions, cities scrambled to find alternative sources of revenue to meet their contractual obligations to energy companies. Without the assur- ance of a steady supply of combustibles, waste-to-energy generation became too risky for private capital. Thus in the wake of the Carbone ruling, the already faltering incinerator boom fizzled.42

METROPOLITAN JUNKYARD ZONES The consolidation of trash collection and disposal in the hands of a few giant corporations, Supreme Court rulings favoring unrestrained commerce across jurisdictional boundaries, and grassroots opposition

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 17

to landfills and incinerators ultimately produced regional waste han- dling systems that relied on deindustrialized suburbs for transship- ment and specialized disposal functions. An important dynamic shaping the contours of regional garbage networks was selective grassroots opposition to garbage facilities. Some practices received more scrutiny than others because of their visibility or perceived health risks. Waste processing activities that were only mildly offen- sive or exempt from governmental oversight continued to accumu- late in deindustrialized terrain, even as mega-landfills and flagrant menaces to human health were shunted to remote rural areas.43

Transfer stations fell into the category of mildly offensive activities. The difficulty of situating landfills within urbanized settings con- vinced planning agencies and waste management firms to follow the model adopted by Los Angeles in the 1960s: moving municipal solid waste through a constellation of storage yards for compression and reshipment to gargantuan repositories in sparsely populated hinter- lands. Metropolitan transfer stations were not universally welcomed by host communities, but they were received with grudging accep- tance in many deindustrializing suburbs because they constituted one of the few viable uses for decommissioned landfills. Like aban- doned factories, exhausted landfills constrained local redevelopment options. Contrary to the assurances of garbage entrepreneurs, steep slopes and ground subsidence made many such sites unsuitable for new construction. Furthermore, residual contamination precluded intensive human activity. But they served the purposes of trash haul- ers in need of interim storage. In many cases, these properties were al- ready under the ownership of the big garbage agglomerates that moved the nation’s trash. No new zoning permits were required, and haulers could avail themselves of the transportation infrastructure constructed during earlier disposal operations. Because many of the largest transfer stations were located in the vicinity of former dumps, they perpetuated earlier geographies of garbage and reinscribed waste into the landscapes of manufacturing suburbs.44

So did the proliferation of recycling and specialty disposal facilities that carried the integrated solid waste disposal systems of the new millennium to completion. The expense of long-distance trash trans- port stimulated what many environmentalists had urged all along, systematic recycling programs. City, county, and state initiatives to either mandate or encourage the reuse of discarded materials also re- quired dedicated facilities to perform the necessary sorting and pro- cessing. As David Pellow noted in his study of garbage politics in Chicago, many recycling businesses were quite dirty and dangerous. Yet their so-called green credentials immunized them against harsh environmentalist condemnation.45 Among material salvage opera- tions, compost heaps elicited the most criticism. Like transfer sta- tions, these depots for the collection and redistribution of yard

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)18

clippings, food scraps, and wood ash often occupied the premises of retired suburban landfills, much to the dismay of neighbors who complained of foul odors and noisy trucks. Typically, however, com- post operators managed to stay in business by improving mainte- nance procedures. A similar dynamic governed the conversion of closed landfills to specialty disposal facilities for medical waste or construction debris. Evidence from some parts of the country sug- gests that such operations were less controversial in areas afflicted by rapid demographic shifts. The influx of Latino immigrants and inner- city African Americans into south Cook County suburbs in the 1990s coincided with a marked diminution of environmental activism by the early twenty-first century and a profusion of dedicated recycling and disposal operations. In the more stable population centers of Richmond, California, and southeast Los Angeles County, environ- mental justice activism raised more substantial roadblocks, and yet similar waste disposal geographies persisted.46

SPECIAL ROLE OF THE AUTOMOBILE Not all the trash discarded by ordinary households passed through municipal garbage systems. Even as a throwaway mentality came to govern consumer behavior, a portion of the domestic waste stream flowed through junk peddlers to manufacturers. The junk trade

Figure 3. Geographic distribution of closed landfills, active transfer stations, and host municipalities, Contra Costa County, 2015. Transfer stations, several of which were located on former landfills, reinscribed waste onto the industrial corridor running along the county’s coastline. Only the Brentwood transfer station lay outside this industrial zone. Credit: Created by author based on data gathered from a detailed facility search on CalRecycle website, accessed April 1, 2015, www.calrecycle.ca.gov/.

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 19

declined after World War II due to the low cost of raw materials and consumer prosperity. Reclassified as resource recovery in the 1970s, consumer recycling revived in concert with environmentalism, rising fuel prices, and commodity shortages. Manufacturing suburbs were well positioned to host new businesses that arose to process and

Figure 4. Geographic distribution of active waste facilities, Los Angeles County, 2011. Circles indicate the location and capacity of solid waste transfer stations, recycling depots, and resource recovery centers. Note the heavy arc of activity in the industrial suburbs to the east and south of downtown Los Angeles. The large facilities in the eastern part of the county were situated in and around the aptly named City of Industry. Credit: Adapted by author from County of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works, Los Angeles County, Countywide Integrated Waste Management Plan, Annual Report 2011 (Alhambra: County of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works, 2012), Appendix E-5.

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)20

prepare household trash for industrial use. In their favor, these dis- tricts already contained businesses that converted factory by-products from one firm into raw ingredients for other firms. They also pos- sessed underutilized transportation infrastructures linking various plants by rail and road. Thus previous networks for channeling mate- rials from one factory to another were augmented and reshaped to accommodate inflows of discarded yet valuable consumer commodities.

No consumer product played a more prominent role in this fusion of household and industrial material flows than the automobile. As early as the 1920s, automobile graveyards and junkyards had become ubiquitous features of the urban landscape. These unsightly lots, crammed with rusting jalopies and corroding consumer durables, drew the ire of neighbors; with the advent of municipal zoning, cities banished them from desirable residential districts and sometimes be- yond city limits altogether. After World War II, the automobile dis- posal problem reached alarming proportions as car ownership became almost universal among American families and consumer lust for the latest models rolling out of Detroit shortened the life span of older vehicles. By the mid-1960s, an estimated eight million auto- mobile carcasses rusted away along roadsides or in open lots.47 This glut did not result from slack demand; steelmaking furnaces had no difficulty consuming scrap along with virgin ores. Instead, it persisted because there was no economical way to separate out usable metal from superfluous material. The advent of the mechanized auto- shredder in the 1960s broke the bottleneck and promised to release millions of tons of cheap ferrous scrap to steelmakers.48

Pioneering vehicle-grinding businesses set up shop near large steel mills, auto foundries, and West Coast port facilities from where scrap departed for Japan. In these locations, shredders sucked widely dis- persed stocks of junked cars through select metropolitan nodes and prepared compressed bundles of minced metal for delivery to their customers. By 1966 Los Angeles hosted two major shredding opera- tions. One was located in Vernon, near a Bethlehem Steel plant, and the other lay 24 miles south at the Port of Los Angeles. Together they gobbled up stockpiled cars from a several-hundred mile radius at the rate of thirty thousand auto bodies per month.49 With their voracious appetite for automobile hulks, these monster masticators also spit out gobs of residual “fluff” that required disposal in industrial district landfills.50

Lead battery and motor oil recycling reinforced the shifting geogra- phy of the nation’s auto salvage industry. Secondary lead smelters in East Chicago, Granite City, Emeryville, and Vernon fed their furnaces with scrap derived from lead acid storage batteries. Like other sectors of waste industry, secondary lead smelting witnessed consolidation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Their concentration in

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 21

industrial suburbs peaked in the late 1960s. In subsequent decades, they migrated to more sparsely populated rural areas, following the pattern of mega-landfills.51 At this time, however, a national push for resource recovery in the 1970s and an international petroleum crisis opened a new set of opportunities for entrepreneurs who purchased used motor oil from service stations and then sold the recycled or re- processed liquid as fuel for municipal incinerators, power plants, and industrial boilers. Nationwide, about eight hundred independent companies were responsible for collecting waste oil from service sta- tions and manufacturers and then directing their gooey cargo to rec- lamation facilities in industrial districts.52

Tire recycling was among the riskiest auto-related resource recovery operations because it was difficult to remove small bits of metal from the rubber and no device as effective as the auto shredder had come to the rescue. That obstacle did not deter Dan McArdle from reck- lessly chasing the dollar signs that danced in front his eyes into the northern Indiana reaches of the Calumet Region. McArdle was con- vinced that riches could be extracted from the mounds of tires piling up in greater Chicago’s auto salvage yards. The key was finding an in- expensive method of shredding and pulverizing the rubber into a form that other manufacturers could use. In 1988 he thought he had the answer in a $250,000 piece of machinery discovered on a trip to England. Confident of his prospects, he leased building space in an abandoned East Chicago foundry. At 150,000 square feet, the former factory provided enough room for both tire storage and shredding op- erations. In addition, its location within an Enterprise Zone availed McArdle to tax incentive benefits. In August 1988, he opened for busi- ness and prepared to sell rubber crumbs to asphalt manufacturers.

The market for McArdle’s rubber granules never materialized. When asphalt makers refused to buy his product, McArdle pinned his hopes on rubber-derived fuel. This gambit foundered on similarly misguided assumptions about supply and demand. Abandoning his tires-to-energy dreams, the dogged entrepreneur pursued other dubi- ous leads—a farm interested in purchasing cow mattresses made from shredded tires, a company convinced that rubber clocks would be- come the next big thing, and a construction firm in need of light- weight fill material. All the while, McArdle kept accumulating tires. In July 16, 1994, intense heat generated from 70,000 tons of pressure ignited his mass of compressed rubber. The resulting fire raged for three days and smoldered for another month, forcing the evacuation of several dozen residents.53

Residential neighbors reacted to the conflagration with a mix of anger and incredulity: anger due to McArdle’s irresponsibility and incredulity because few people knew of the facility’s existence. Popular ignorance could hardly be ascribed to citizen apathy. Northwest Indiana supported one of the nation’s most active and

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)22

well-connected environmental justice organizations, the Grand Calumet Task Force. In the years leading up to the fire, the task force was absorbed in campaigns to close an East Chicago garbage incinera- tor and prevent a nearby firm in Hammond, Indiana, from burning toxic waste material.54 McArdle’s tire facility, however, flew under its radar. Its location within an Enterprise Zone gave it fast track ap- proval on city permits; indoor tire storage was not subject to state en- vironmental regulations.55 Like other segments of the garbage economy taking shape in places like East Chicago, private recycling operations beyond the pale of municipal solid waste systems prolifer- ated in the absence of scrutiny and citizen awareness.

GARBAGE AND THE NEW AMERICAN GHETTO Thwarted in its bid for a waste-to-energy furnace by a statewide incin- eration ban, Central Falls, Rhode Island, leveraged its locational and infrastructural assets to entice another growth industry that pro- cessed and impounded undesirable organic matter: for-profit prisons. In August 1992, the Central Falls Detention Center Facility Corporation broke ground on the conversion of a vacant factory into a 220-bed correctional institution.56 Private prisons epitomized a so- cial warehousing economy that also channeled society’s unwanted by-products through an underutilized manufacturing infrastruc- ture.57 And prisoners were not the only tainted human commodity from which profits could be extracted. The availability of federal sub- sidies for housing and medical care persuaded local entrepreneurs in Central Falls to convert derelict textile mills and dilapidated three- decker tenements into nursing homes and Section 8 rental units.58

Politicians and civic leaders rarely promoted human storage and recycling as an economic recovery strategy in their public pronounce- ments, just as they refrained from proclaiming salvation through gar- bage. Yet trash-handling businesses, along with correctional facilities, old-age homes, drug clinics, blood banks, and homeless shelters, be- came all too-familiar landscape elements in places that had once powered the nation’s industrial ascendancy. Together, they com- prised the defining features of what photographer Camilo Vergara termed the “New American Ghetto” in his 1995 book of the same name.59 For all the fresh public and private investment they chan- neled to deindustrialized territory, they rarely if ever compensated for the flight of industrial capital and middle-class wealth. Into the twenty-first century, deindustrialized dumping grounds remained poor, polluted, and dilapidated.

As tempting as it may be to classify suburbs like Central Falls, Camden, Gary, East St. Louis, and Compton as marginal, they can also be viewed as central to profound transformations in American

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 23

society at the turn of the millennium. Defining these places by their ruins or by what they have lost obscures the myriad acts of creation and opportunism that rewove them into the metropolitan fabric and carved links to far-flung parts of the world. Even as these suburban districts became peripheral to the designs of manufacturing conglom- erates, they continued to accommodate varied spatial strategies for profit, political gain, and human survival. By modifying and repur- posing the physical environment, a host of actors including devel- opers, policymakers, landlords, and families reconfigured flows of investment, material, and people at geographic scales ranging from the local to the global. As solutions to America’s garbage crisis, dein- dustrialized suburbs permitted the United States to maintain among the highest rates of resource consumption in the world even as they forced the adoption of recycling programs.60 In their broader role as specialized hubs for storing and processing unusable inventory, older manufacturing suburbs reasserted their relevance to the workings of late twentieth-century global capitalism and affluent consumer societies.

Andrew Hurley is professor of history at University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner-Cities (Temple, 2010). His current work explores the link between public history and climate change in US cities.

Notes I would like to thank Bill Eckel, Eric Sandweiss, Steve McShane, Eileen McGurty, and two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in writing this article.

1 The study sample, designed to capture distinctions of regional character and met- ropolitan size, comprises the following districts: Lower Blackstone Valley, Rhode Island; Eastern Camden County, New Jersey; Calumet Region, Illinois and Indiana; American Bottoms, Illinois; Southeast Los Angeles County, California; and the coastal perimeter of Contra Costa County, California.

2 For an introduction to this literature, see Brett M. Baden, Douglas S. Noonan, and Rama Mohana R. Turaga, “Scales of Justice: Is There a Geographic Bias in Environmental Equity Analysis?” Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 50 (March 2007): 163–85; and William Bowen, “An Analytical Review of Environmental Justice Research: What Do We Really Know?” Environmental Management 29 (January 2002): 3–15. This analysis revises my ear- lier work that also focused more narrowly on the relationship between demo- graphic variables and the geography of industrial pollution. See Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

3 David Naguib Pellow, Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002); Karen Brodkin, Power Politics: Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009); Jim Schwab, Deeper Shades of Green: The Rise of Blue-Collar and Minority Environmentalism in America (New York: Random House, 1994);

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)24

Christopher Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

4 Joel A. Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron: University of Akron Press, 1996); Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment, rev. ed. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).

5 Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of Urban Decline: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

6 Unless otherwise noted, social and demographic data from the 1950–2000 pe- riod derive from the decennial census conducted by the US Census Bureau and published under the general heading, US Census of Population and Housing (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office).

7 Steven High, Industrial Sunrise: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969– 1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).

8 Paul W. Rhode, The Evolution of California Manufacturing (San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2001), 14–15.

9 City of Camden, Department of Development, “Opportunity Camden” [bro- chure], 1987, Camden City-Planning, Opportunity Camden folder, Pamphlet Collection, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, New Jersey (hereafter CCHS); Commerce Planning Commission, Commerce General Plan (Commerce: Commerce Planning Commission, 1987), Section 2.2; South Gate General Plan (South Gate: n.p., 1986), section VII; William Hudnut III, Halfway to Everywhere: A Portrait of America’s First Tier Suburbs (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, 2003), 285–97; Dan Reed, “Richmond Hopes Incentives Will Help Attract New Business,” Contra Costa Times, May 18, 1990, press clipping collection, Contra Costa County Historical Society, Martinez, California (henceforth CCCHS).

10 City of Richmond, Planning Department, Richmond General Plan, Vol. 1: Goals, Policies, Guidelines, Standards, and Implementation Programs (Richmond: City of Richmond, Planning Department, 1994); Wallace Roberts & Todd and S. T. Hudson Engineers, “The Camden Waterfront Master Development Plan,” May1987, Camden City Planning, Camden Waterfront Master Redevelopment Plan folder, Pamphlet Collection, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, New Jersey; Design Workshop, Inc., “Gary Waterfront Development Plan, Gary, Indiana, Concept Master Plan,” draft, March 1997, Northwest Indiana Brownfields Records, Calumet Regional Archives, Gary, Indiana.

11 US Environmental Protection Agency, “Number of National Priorities List (NPL) Site Actions and Milestones by Fiscal Year,” accessed September 5, 2012, http:// www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/query/queryhtm/nplfy.htm.

12 Michael Greenburg, Karen Lowrie, Laura Solitare, and Latoya Duncan, “Brownfields, Toads, and the Struggle for Neighborhood Redevelopment: A Case Study of the State of New Jersey,” Urban Affairs Review 35 (May 2000): 717–33.

13 US Conference of Mayors, Recycling America’s Land: A National Report on Brownfields Redevelopment (1993–2010), Vol. 9 (Washington, DC: US Conference of Mayors, 2010), 18.

14 Ibid., 16. 15 Richard Hula, The Michigan Brownfields Initiative and Private Market

Redevelopment: An Assessment (East Lansing: Michigan State University, Michigan Applied Public Policy Research Institute, 2003); Marie Howland, “Employment Effects of Brownfield Redevelopment: What Do We Know from the Literature?” National Center for Environmental Economics, Working Paper

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 25

Series, Working Paper #07-01, January 2007; Robert A. Jones and William F. Welsh, “Michigan Brownfield Redevelopment Innovation: Two Decades of Success,” Reclaiming Brownfields : A Comparative Analysis of Adaptive Reuse of Contaminated Properties, ed. Richard C. Hula and Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2012), 341–70; Marie Howland, “Private Initiative and Public Responsibility for the Redevelopment of Industrial Brownfields: Three Baltimore Case Studies,” Economic Development Quarterly 17 (November 2003): 367–81; Consulting Service for Preparing Modern Intermodal Freight Infrastructure to Support Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Development, Market Analysis, Final Report (Newark: New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, 2000).

16 Nancy Perkins, “A Tale of Two Brownfield Sites: Making the Best of Times from the Worst of Times in Western Pennsylvania’s Steel Valley,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 34, no. 3 (2007): 503–32; Kirsten Engel, “Brownfields Initiatives and Environmental Justice: Second-Class Cleanups or Market-Based Equity?” Journal of Environmental Resources and Environmental Law 13 (1997–98): 317–37; Marie Howland, “Private Initiative and Public Responsibility for the Redevelopment of Industrial Brownfields: Three Baltimore Case Studies,” Economic Development Quarterly 17 (November 2003), 367–81.

17 Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 176–211; Hans Tammemagi, The Waste Crisis: Landfills, Incinerators, and the Search for a Sustainable Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 28–32, 226–28.

18 Harold Crooks, Dirty Business: The Inside Story of the Garbage Agglomerates (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1983); Pellow, Garbage Wars, 50.

19 Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, Refuse Disposal Needs and Practices in Northeastern Illinois (Chicago: Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, 1963).

20 Robert Lewis, Factory Made: Factory Networks in the Industrial Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Craig E. Colten, “Chicago’s Waste Lands: Refuse Disposal and Urban Growth, 1840–1990,” Journal of Historical Geography 20, no. 2 (1994): 124–42; Gordon E. McCallum, “Refuse Collection and Disposal in Cook County,” The Chicago-Cook County Health Survey, directors K. E. Miller and Robert H. Flinn (New York: Columbia University, 1949), 216– 27.

21 James Merle, “Calumet City Area Bought in Battle Against Refuse,” Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1969, S3.

22 Dennis McClendon, “Expressways,” Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005), accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia. chicagohistory.org/pages/440.html.

23 Merle, S3; Dave Schneidman, “Unwanted But Needed—Toxic Waste Dumps,” Chicago Tribune, August 24, 1981, 3.

24 Gail Stockholm, “Suburb Drops Protest Against Landfill Project,” Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1968, S1; “12,500 Object to Dump Plan in Blue Island,” Chicago Tribune, July 5, 1964, SW7.

25 Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, Refuse Disposal Needs and Practices; Casey Bukro, “Avalanche of Trash: Garbage Dumps Fill Up at ‘Crisis’ Rate,” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1975, N1; Rudolph Unger, “Landfill Brimming, and Time Is Running Out Elsewhere,” Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1981, E1.

26 Sverdrup and Parcel, Interim Recommendations on Solid-Waste Disposal in the Metropolitan St. Louis Area (St. Louis: East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, 1973), 20–48.

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)26

27 Jack Severson, “Saying ‘No’ to Trash from Phila.,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 2, 1981, C1; Michael Greenberg and Justin Hollander, “Neighborhood Stigma Twenty Years Later: Revisiting Superfund Sites in Suburban New Jersey,” Appraisal Journal 74 (Spring 2006): 161–73; Governor’s Environmental Task Force, Solid Waste Management Plan (Providence: Rhode Island Statewide Planning Program, 1973).

28 Harvey T. Brandt, County Engineer, The County Solid Waste Management Plan, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles: Department of County Engineer, 1975); Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 266–67; “County Seeks Trash Transfer Site in Carson,” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1969, CS1.

29 California Refuse Removal Council, Solid Waste Management and the Bay Area Future (San Francisco: Easley and Brassy, 1972), 14–16, 44–49.

30 Daniel Borenstein, “East County’s Prospective Dump Sites Doubled,” Contra Costa Times, October 9, 1985, 1E.

31 Elliot Diringer, “Water vs. Garbage in Contra Costa,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 1986, 2; Citizens, Businesses, and Garbage Companies Against Dumps in Residential Neighborhoods, “Vote No on Measure C,” 1990, Garbage Voter Pamphlets folder, CCCHS.

32 Denis Cuff, “Developers Dig in for Trash Wars,” Contra Costa Times, December 31, 1989; Denis Cuff, “$1.77 Million Spent on Four Losing Garbage Measures,” Contra Costa Times, February, 1, 1989, press clipping collection, CCCHS.

33 John King, “Dump Dispute: Blacks Allege ‘Toxic Racism,’” Contra Costa Times, April 28, 1992, press clipping collection, CCCHS.

34 Dean Congbally, “Contra Costa’s Costly Garbage War,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 30, 1990, 1.

35 Ariel Ambruster and Sam Richards, “Group Sues over Keller Canyon Dump,” Contra Costa Times, July 13, 1997, CCCHS.

36 Al Wyss, “Waste-to-Energy Industry Sees Strong Growth After Slow Start,” Journal of Commerce, May 2, 1989; 9B; Mark Sendzik and Wim Wiewel, Solid Waste Incineration in the Chicago Metropolitan Area: The Battle over the Illinois Retail Rate Law, Great Cities Institute Working Paper (Chicago: College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996).

37 Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994).

38 Suzanne Espinosa, “Can Incinerator Save the City?” Providence Journal, July 2, 1989, 15A; Doug Allan, “Incinerator Foes Condemn Proposal at Rally,” Providence Journal, January 23, 1989, C3.

39 Pellow, Garbage Wars, 89–99; Howard Gillette Jr., Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 95–119.

40 Suzanne Espinosa, “Profit Called Too High for Central Falls Incinerator,” Providence Journal-Bulletin, April 29, 1991, A1.

41 “Municipal Waste Incineration Banned in Rhode Island,” Waste Not 98 (1992), accessed September 27, 2012, http://www.americanhealthstudies.org/wastenot/ wn198.htm.

42 Eric S. Peterson and David N. Abramowitz, “Municipal Solid Waste Flow Control in the Post-Carbone World,” Fordham Law Review 22, no. 2 (1966): 361–416.

43 Vivian Thomson, Garbage in, Garbage Out: Solving the Problems with Long-Distance Trash Transport (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009).

44 “Neighbors, Gun Club Spar Over Dump Site,” West County Times (Contra Costa County), September 24, 1987, 3A; Sam Richards, “Big Bucks Get Tossed into

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 27

Pittsburg Fight Over Trash Station,” Contra Costa Times, October 30, 1993, 4A; Simar Khanna, “New West County Transfer Station Plans Are Debated,” West County Times (Contra Costa), June 10, 1990, A1; Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Ninth Annual Landfill Capacity Report (1995), accessed September 15, 2012, http://www.epa.state.il.us/land/landfill-capacity/1995/; Delta Institute, Cook County Solid Waste Management Plan 2011 Update, accessed September 15, 2012.

45 Pellow, Garbage Wars, 101–30. 46 Gayle Vassar Martinez, “Trial Composting Plant Proposed,” West County Times,

October 31, 1991, 4A. On the weakness of environmental activism in Camden, see Kevin Riordan, “Activists Say Lack of Numbers Diluted Their Effectiveness,” Camden Courier Post, September 21, 1992, 4A.

47 Carl A. Zimring, Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 107, 124–25; “Landfill Excavators Become Large Scale Composters,” BioCycle 38 (January 1997): 26.

48 Carl A. Zimring, “The Complex Environmental Legacy of the Auto Shredder,” Technology and Culture 52 (July 2011): 523–47.

49 Bob Thomas, “Scrap Industry Relegating Old Methods to the Junk Heap,” Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1966, M1.

50 Zimring, “The Complex Environmental Legacy,” 523–47. 51 William Eckel, “The Secondary Lead Smelting Industry” (PhD diss., George

Mason University, 2001). 52 US House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Energy, Environment, and

Safety Issues Affecting Small Businesses, Committee on Small Business, Used and Recycled Oil: Pending EPA Rulemaking: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Energy, Environment, and Safety Issues Affecting Small Businesses, Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, Second Session, Washington, DC, May 19, 1986 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1986); Vaughn S. Kimball, Waste Oil Recovery and Disposal (Park Ridge: Noyes Data Corporation, 1975).

53 Kym Liebler and Mark Skertic, “Risky Business; Turning Refuse into Cash: Idea Up in Smoke,” Northwest Indiana Times, August 7, 1994, accessed August 29, 2014, nwitimes.com; “Fire Roars into 3rd Day in E. Chicago,” Chicago Sun- Times, July 19, 1994, 4; Neil Steinberg, “After 11 Days, East Chicago Tire of Fire,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 27, 1994, 5.

54 Geri Wendorf and Brian Stage, “To Be Continued . . . Opposition to Rhone- Poulenc,” Grand Cal Currents, Winter 1992, 6, box 1, folder 34, Grand Calumet Task Force Records, Calumet Regional Archives, Gary, Indiana (hereafter GCTF); Lin Kaatz Chary, “Northwest Indiana Celebrates Environmental Victory as East Chicago Incinerator Closes Dec. 31, 1993,” Grand Cal Currents, Spring 1994, 1, box 2, folder 1, GCTF.

55 Michael Gonzalez, “Tire Fire Has Left Its Mark on Neighborhood,” Post-Tribune (Indiana), September 3, 1996, B1; “Indiana Firm Gets OK to Recycle Tires into Fuel,” Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1989, A4; Liebler and Skertic, “Risky Business.”

56 Donald Wyatt, “Thanks to Central Falls, Rhode Island Hosts a New Federal Prison,” Providence Journal-Bulletin (October 19, 1993), A13.

57 Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo, Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2002),190–238.

58 Janet Mancini Billson, ed., Central Falls, Rhode Island: In the Wake of the Mills (Providence: Rhode Island College, 1983), 58–60; Lynn Arditi, “Nursing Homes Face Growing Financial Crisis,” Providence Journal-Bulletin, April 15, 2001, 1A.

59 Camilo José Vergara, The New American Ghetto (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995).

Environmental History 21 (January 2016)28

60 “Recycling Around the World,” BBC News, June 25, 2005, accessed February 26, 2015, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4620041.stm; National Geographic, Greendex, accessed February 26, 2015, http://environment.nationalgeographic. com/environment/greendex/; US Environmental Protection Agency, “Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2012,” accessed February 26, 2015, http://www.epa. gov/solidwaste/nonhaz/municipal/msw99.htm.

From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard 29

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