Summary Of Melissa Checker's Polluted Promise

The industrial revolution changed the way that people lived in their everyday lives. With mass production, thanks to the assembly line, people were able to make and consume products at a much faster rate than ever before in history. However, there was a downside to this shift in living. This downside manifested itself in the form of waste. This waste could come in many shapes, colors, smells, and toxicity, but regardless it soon became a problem that has persisted to this very day. People who are affected by this toxic runoff are often forgotten about, oftentimes only Caucasian people receive notice or help. In Melissa Checker’s book “Polluted Promises”, a case of this environmental racism is dissected for the reader to see how in such a modern …show more content…
Due to its founders being African-American and not very well off the town lacked the basic necessities of running water, plumbing, or gas stoves. This simple life was made harder by the easily flooded swamp lands that the town was built upon, residents often had to canoe out of their houses to work and school. Though it was a hard life nearly all of the residents were employed, in factories or domestically. Hyde Park should’ve been the very essence of a Norman Rockwell painting. The only problem was that it sat in the middle of an industrial complex. Hyde Park was surrounded by, “a junkyard, a railway line, and an industrial ceramics plant on one side, a power plant on the other, a brickyard and a second railway on a third, and a highway on the remaining side,” (Checker, 5). To combat this poisonous environment, as well as seeking basic county services, the residents of Hyde Park started a group called Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee(HAPIC). In the late 60’s they started to fight for their county services and after several years won water, gas, sewer lines, streetlights, paved roads, and flood control ditches. This victory was short lived however, as their situation once again declined. Due to local downsizing many became unemployed and by the 1970’s the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee began to fight against the selling of drugs, …show more content…
The reason behind this strange blight was left unanswered until the 1990’s. In the 1990’s residents of Hyde Park heard of a lawsuit that had been won by the nearby neighborhood of Virginia Subdivisions, which was predominantly white, against Southern Wood Piedmont, a wood preserving factory, and its parent companies, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation(ITT) and ITT Rayonier. The case centered around studies done by the company into the pollution of the land around the factory. The company detected soil and groundwater contamination, including, “dioxins, chlorophenols, and other wood treatment chemicals,” (Checker, 5). The factory closed in 1988 to remediate the problem, but by then the damage was done. The chemicals had spread to the Virginia Subdivision, which sat against the border of the factory, and two years after the factory closed the Virginia Subdivision settled a class action lawsuit. This victory against the factory and its parent companies did not include the residents of Hyde Park, even though studies had shown that the pollution lead directly to the ditches that ran through the town, the same ditches that now have signs up warning children not to go near them. Because the residents of Hyde Park were not included in the law suit against the factory, they received not compensation. Residents attribute this exclusion to