Event

Targeting Reform: CERCLA, Industri-Plex, and Pollution Remediation in the United States

The Industri-Plex Superfund Site in Woburn, Massachusetts, now the site of a Target Superstore, has been hailed as a success story. Woburn played a pivotal role in creating, shaping, and reforming Superfund, formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Despite contention over Superfund, defenders of the program looked to Industri-Plex as a model for how Superfund can work in remediating a contaminated landscape for productive reuse. By focusing on Industri-Plex to understand this legislative history, the paper reveals the limits and failures in fully addressing toxic contamination across the United States.

The Environmental History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Please note, this is an online event hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information.

Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.

Register to attend online