Toxic Burn: The Grassroots Struggle against the WTI Incinerator

Environmental History, Jan 2009 by Stradling, David

Toxic Burn: The Grassroots Struggle against the WTI Incinerator. By Thomas Shevory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. x 280 pp. Appendix, notes, and index. Paper $19.95.

In 1993 the Waste Technologies Incorporated hazardous waste incinerator began operations on a patch of land along the Ohio River in East Liverpool, Ohio's troubled East End neighborhood. The incinerator brought some jobs, but not enough to replace the thousands that had been lost over the previous decades as the pottery industry disappeared. Just as the incinerator's arrival didn't end East Liverpool's decades-long economic deterioration, the opening of the incinerator didn't end what had already been fourteen years of opposition. However, smoke from the stack did signal a real defeat for environmental activists, including those in Greenpeace and Save Our County, which had long engaged in the anti-toxics campaign, publicizing the dangers of chemical spills, accidental explosions, and the cumulative effects of hazardous emissions, especially on children attending a nearby school.

Thomas Shevory, a political scientist, uses the story of the WTI incinerator to explore theories of power. Most important is the resurgent power elite theory articulated by C. Wright Mills, which Shevory has modified and updated by adding Michel Foucault's emphasis on the dispersed and hidden nature of power in modern society. Taking these theories together, then, Shevory describes power as held disproportionately in an interconnected economic and political elite but operating often in hidden and poorly understood ways. And so, at the heart of Shevory's Toxic Burn are shifting and mysterious corporate entities, hidden political agendas, and personal connections between politicians and economic players that apparently made the incinerator's construction and operation inevitable, despite local opposition. Shevory uses the analogy of film noir to describe the tale: all is shady and poorly understood.

This may be a more apt analogy than Shevory wanted to suggest, because the book does too little to explain what is at stake in East Liverpool and how events unfolded-too much does remain hidden. There is an interesting story here, but unfortunately Shevory doesn't narrate it thoroughly. Important details appear clumsily, and central environmental activists are not fully introduced, nor their actions well explained. Unfortunately, the book contains neither maps nor images, both of which would have helped describe the threats posed by the incinerator and the actions taken by Greenpeace and others.

Not surprisingly, Shevory didn't have access to corporate records. His understanding of the company's positions comes from official documents related to the permitting process and court cases. Shevory also took a tour of the facility, which he narrates nicely, and talked with several employees. (He was favorably impressed by the technology and the professionalism of the workers.) But most of his local evidence came through activists Terri Swearingen and Alonzo Spencer. Ironically, then, Shevory's perspective and evidence suggest this story might better support Robert Dahl's pluralist theory, described briefly in the introduction. Together with hundreds of other activists, Swearingen, who became internationally recognized for her work, had real power in this story, the continued emissions notwithstanding.

Despite some significant limitations, Toxic Burn does contain a useful case study of environmental justice activism and the sometimes insurmountable power against which it pushes.

David Stradling is associate professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (Washington, 2007).