In print | Published October 2, 2008

Along the riverbank in a once-industrial area of Chester is a barren three-acre lot called Wade Dump, also referred to as the Chester brownlands. Thirty years ago, the lot was a cesspool of toxic wastes — including carcinogens such as arsenic, benzene and chromium — that accumulated over years of illegal dumping. Now, plans to build a stadium on the site are nearly underway.

Although the lot has been cleaned, activists are questioning how clean the lot is. In response, Swarthmore’s Environmental Justice group, working with the DelCo Alliance of Delaware County, plans to make a documentary about the dump and the disenfranchisement of Chester residents.
Majandra Rodriguez ’12 and transfer student Jenny Akchin ’09 are heading up plans to make the documentary.

“Ideally, the video will be a combination of history and contemporary issues related to the brownlands. We want to increase awareness within the community about what exactly took place at the brownlands and why — but we also want to connect it to the contemporary political situation in Chester, and specifically the plans to erect a stadium on the brownlands site,” Akchin said in an e-mail.

Another issue that they plan for the video to address is whether or not the area is clean enough for the stadium. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, three million gallons of toxic waste were dumped at the Chester Brownlands.

At least twenty chemicals were found there. Although the area was cleaned, the Philadelphia Inquirer describes the cleaning as, “crews demolished seven buildings and four storage tanks, filled in a deep pit, and carted away 11 mountains of debris. They scraped away as much as five feet of topsoil, spread fresh dirt, planted grass, and walked away.”

“People will go to the stadium often,” Rodriguez says. “Families will go watch games and children will play there.” In light of this, she notes, the cleanliness of the site is vital. According to Rodriguez, the documentary will have a humanitarian focus and will be “people-oriented.” She notes that in the past, the residents of the area were low-income and “didn’t have information or power to protest” about the dump.

Now, Rodriguez says that one of the main goals of the video is to “keep companies accountable” by continuing to spread awareness of what happened before. Rodriguez and Akchin plan to interview the Chester residents and companies in order to illuminate the past.

Some of the planned interviewees for the documentary include firefighters that answered a call for an explosion at the site in 1978. Approximately a fifth of them have been diagnosed with a variety of afflictions caused by exposure to chemicals at the warehouse, such as “cancer, vascular and neuromuscular disorders, kidney failure” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Twenty-eight of the firefighters have died.

Rodriguez hopes that the documentary, which should be released in early December, will help the future of Chester by “preventing the past from repeating itself.”

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