Selected case study from Why Place and Race Matter

For more than two decades, beginning in 1956, the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside County were used as a dumping ground for about 34 million gallons of toxic waste—enough to fill over 130 Olympic-sized swimming pools and giving the canyon its nickname.

In the fall of 1978, a severe rainstorm flooded the pits; officials feared that the dam would not hold up, allowing the eight million gallons of liquid waste to flow out of the canyon and into the community of Glen Avon. To avoid this disaster, they released one million gallons of toxic water through the flood channel system, but the hazardous brown waste ran through the streets and school playgrounds where children played in the puddles; it also contaminated the local water system.

At least 12 years passed before thousands of resident advocates, who had been organizing tirelessly for over a decade, began to see evidence of their efforts with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Five of the companies that had used the site were ordered to pay more than $34 million in damages, and the largest single civil suit ever over hazardous waste was filed against the state, county, and offending companies.

After purchasing the land with funds collected from the lawsuit donated by the prosecuting attorney, the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ)—a nonprofit organization under the leadership of Executive Director Penny Newman—spent nine years planning and building the Glen Avon Heritage Park. It was an effort to give something beautiful and accessible to the community, which is still trying to escape the stigma of the hazardous flood of 1978, and to restore the value of their neighborhood. The park consists of a family area, a water playground, hiking trails, gardens, basketball courts, and a soccer field. CCAEJ continues to work for revitalization of the business and residential community.

In Beyond Stringfellow: Thirty Years of Raising Hell, Newman wrote, "We've come to understand that the current laws and policies do not serve the interests of the low-income/working class and communities of color where CCAEJ works. In our fight to stop exposures from the Stringfellow site, we found that we needed a whole new system—new institutions—to begin addressing the conditions of our neighborhood."

Why Place and Race Matter >