- [Narrator] Six days a week, thousands of tons of garbage
land in one tiny corner of New Jersey.
This is the Ironbound.
- [Protesters] If we don't get it, shut it down!
- [Narrator] States up and down the east coast
send all kinds of waste here.
There's also a factory that melts down
animal parts from slaughter houses,
a 17 mile stretch of river full of cancer causing chemicals,
pollution from an international airport,
a tangle of truck filled highways,
hundreds of lots where old businesses
left behind toxic chemicals or other potential problems,
and one of the largest sewage plants in the US.
- People say it smells like New Jersey.
It actually smells like the waste of the region, right?
- [Narrator] The Ironbound is also the most
densely populated neighborhood in the state.
- [Protesters] What do we want?
Justice!
When do we want it?
Now!
- [Narrator] Most families here are working class,
and more than half are Black or Latino.
- We're just a dumping ground.
There's so many waste related facilities
in addition to the incinerator.
Because we're not a poor city, we're a stolen from city.
We've been exploited.
People have been stealing
and building their wealth off of our lungs,
off of our backs.
- [Narrator] Nationwide, Black Americans are 75%
more likely than others to live near hazardous waste.
- Enough is enough.
- [Narrator] Children here grow up breathing pollution
linked to cancer and heart attacks.
And they have asthma at a rate more than three times higher
than the rest of the country.
- I have asthma.
My nephew have asthma.
You know, my mom has asthma.
I assume it's 'cause we live in Ironbound, right?
- [Narrator] But it can be very hard to prove
who is responsible for what.
- Really, the kicker is that we can never trace
someone's asthma to a facility or to a truck.
There's so many things in that neighborhood.
- [Narrator] Locals have been fighting
to clean up this neighborhood for more than 50 years.
In 2020, they finally scored a big win.
New Jersey passed a law that could stop major polluters
from piling up in one place.
But is one law enough to protect this community
from hundreds of years of worldwide waste?
- [Protesters] Stop dumping!
On Newark!
Stop dumping!
- [Narrator] Historians think the Ironbound got its name
from the train tracks built around it in the 1800s
when industrialization transformed the whole city of Newark.
- [Commentator] Any Jersey will tell you where this is.
The third busiest corner in the world.
- [Narrator] By the 1960s,
heavy industry dotted the riverfront,
including oil refineries and chemical plants.
In 1969, a group of residents banded together
to lobby for more resources for the neighborhood.
Eventually, they formed a nonprofit
called the Ironbound Community Corporation, or ICC.
Today, environmental justice
is one of the main things they fight for.
Melissa Miles started working for the ICC in 2016
as the environmental justice manager.
She originally moved to the Ironbound
to pursue a different passion of hers,
an Afro Brazilian martial art called capoeira.
- One of the best masters on the east coast
was in the Ironbound.
Then my life changed, you know?
I got married, I had a kid,
and capoeira wasn't as important to me anymore sadly.
- [Narrator] What became very important to her
was that the pollution was taking a toll on her family.
- No one in my family has asthma.
Now to date, both of my sons have had asthma attacks.
It became really real for me.
Like the things that they say happen to children
who live around pollution happen to my children.
- [Narrator] With the ICC, she helped organize truck counts,
measure air quality, and map out local polluters.
- I was actually really seeking, what was my mission?
What was the reason why I was in that neighborhood
that was poisoning my kid?
And so while I'm here, I better stand up in this community
so that, you know, something changes.
- [Narrator] After 4 years advocating for the neighborhood,
she took her fight to the state level and started work
at the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance.
She's learned to keep going even when progress is slow.
- We look for small victories, right?
The ability to talk to one person,
to get out and table and meet young people.
To get your cat off your table.
Noodles, please.
- [Narrator] In 2020, after two decades
living in the Ironbound,
she and her sons moved about 12 miles west
to the suburban town of Summit.
It has better schools and a lot less pollution.
- We do miss Newark.
They go back to Newark every weekend.
Their dad still lives in the same apartment
that they grew up in across the street
from the plastic factory.
- [Narrator] That's the A1 plastics factory,
which makes grocery bags.
Its permit doesn't say how much it pollutes,
and A1 didn't respond to numerous requests
for comment on this story.
- It's the type of facility you would never see
in a place like Princeton or Montclair,
but Newark is zoned for it.
- [Narrator] A lot of the Ironbound is zoned
so that factories and homes can be side by side.
And a stretch of land right next to it
is the only one in Newark approved for heavy industry.
This kind of zoning is why a sewage plant,
three gas fired power plants,
and the state's biggest garbage incinerator
are allowed to be so close together,
and so close to people's homes.
And across the US,
nearly 80% of these types of incinerators
are in low income or mostly minority neighborhoods.
That's because historically,
many local governments zone them that way.
The company that operates this incinerator in the Ironbound
is reckoning with the past.
- We have many waste energy facilities
that are located in historically over burdened communities.
- [Narrator] In fact, every incinerator in New Jersey is.
Still, Covanta supported
the state environmental justice law,
and markets itself as a sustainable company.
- I think people honestly think
that we just have a bunch of 55 gallon drums in here
and we're burning the garbage inside the building.
They don't appreciate the effort
that goes into to doing it correctly.
- [Narrator] That includes trying to minimize
what comes out of the smoke stack.
Inside it, a lime slurry helps control acid gases
like sulfur dioxide.
And activated carbon helps turn mercury
and dioxin gases into solids.
Then at the baghouse,
the gases pass through hose like filters
that catch solid particles.
- That is a baghouse for boiler number one.
There's one for each boiler.
- [Narrator] Dave Blackmore says he wants people to visit.
- I think the most important thing would be
for them to come here and see what we do.
- [Narrator] Covanta even offers
public tours on their website.
And company representatives say they try hard
to take feedback from the ICC.
- I'm happy to say we do have a dialogue.
Can it be better? Yes.
- [Narrator] But the plant is still burning
about 3,000 tons of trash almost every day,
and that's exactly what the ICC is trying to stop.
- Our community's been fighting this incinerator
since before the incinerator was built.
I have people they used to come as children
to the march against the incinerator.
Now they bring their kids.
- [Narrator] Maria Lopez-Nunez has been organizing marches
and rallies at the ICC for about eight years.
She also takes people on tours
of pollution sources around the neighborhood,
and Covanta Essex is one of the stops.
- I think it's common sense, right?
Common sense.
Should you burn millions of tons of trash
this close to people?
No.
- [Narrator] But most experts agree,
getting energy from trash is better
than dumping it in a landfill.
The ICC, however, says it's pushing for systemic changes.
That would be much, much better,
but also much harder to pull off.
- I want us to get to the next level,
which is composting, reduction of consumer goods
from the beginning.
As long as we have incinerators,
we don't have to address the real problems
of how to handle our waste.
We can just keep throwing things out.
The garbage trucks takes it,
and for most of us, it disappears.
- [Narrator] The state of New Jersey
allows the incinerator to release
certain amounts of all these pollutants,
plus arsenic, mercury, and others.
- The fact that we are allowing,
we give a permit to pollute, right?
That says it's acceptable.
- [Narrator] Covanta says it actually releases a lot less
than it's allowed to.
- Facilities like this typically are very small percentage
of the local air pollution.
- [Narrator] But that's partially
because there's a lot of pollution to compete with.
Industries around the Ironbound
do billions of dollars in business every year.
But residents say they don't reap any benefits.
♪ You cannot eat money, oh ♪
- [Narrator] Last November, the ICC was fighting
what would be the Ironbound's
fourth natural gas power plant.
- [Protesters] We don't care!
Shut it down!
- [Narrator] They rallied community members
to protest a proposal
by the state run sewage treatment facility.
It says it needs the backup power to stop sewage
from overflowing into the neighborhood during storms.
Activists say they want the plant
to use battery power and renewables
instead of burning natural gas.
- That, plus the garbage incinerator, fat rendering,
plus eight valley sewage facility,
the airports, you know, the ports, the Brownfield,
the Superfund site is like, you know, enough is enough.
- Any additional pollution coming to the Ironbound,
which is already overburdened, it's wrong.
Any amount is wrong.
- [Narrator] Two months after this rally,
Governor Phil Murphy put the project on hold.
But now, despite the controversy, it's moving forward again.
The Sewage Commission says
it's considering other fuel sources, including renewables.
Meanwhile, the ICC is also fighting
to get the sewage plant to cover up
its open air waste treatment tanks.
In an email to Insider,
the sewage plant said that change is not feasible.
Maria says the nonprofit is often scrambling to keep up
since the polluting industries just keep coming.
- It makes our job incredibly hard
because there'll be three or four permits
all at the same time, and all these industries have lawyers,
and they can bank roll their defense of their corporations
while we can't defend our community.
- [Narrator] But a new law could change the way
cities do business.
- We're hoping that this is it.
That S232 is that big policy breakthrough
to finally address the issue.
- [Narrator] S232, which most people
just call the environmental justice law,
passed in 2020 after years of activism.
- Environmental justice is having its moment,
and definitely, this law is a part of that.
- [Narrator] It probably won't go into effect
until the end of 2022.
State regulators spent about two years
making an enforcement plan for the law,
and getting public feedback at hearings like this one.
And residents have a lot on their minds.
- We have one of the most progressive
environmental justice laws in the nation,
and the nation is watching.
Are we gonna make sure that people
can't just pay their thousand dollar an our attorneys
to find the loopholes and continue to poison our children?
- And I wanna remind us that this is where it starts,
not where it ends.
This law is the bare minimum.
- You're gonna see jobs move out of the state
or not come into the state,
and the benefits that these facilities
can bring to communities.
(people booing)
- Time and time again, we've been promised jobs,
but often we get the crappy, unclean jobs.
- We are sick and tired of being sick and tired,
and seeing our family members die.
And we fought for over 12 years to get this EJ
cumulative impacts law passed
because we wanted to see change.
(people applauding)
- [Narrator] Here's how the law is supposed to work.
The state mapped out overburdened communities,
places with a largely low income, minority,
or non-English speaking population.
The new law will require the state to consider
how many polluters are already in these places
before a new one can move in.
- This gives the power
to the Department of Environmental Protection
to be able to look at the context and say,
if you're gonna increase the burden in the neighborhood,
then we're gonna deny this permit.
- [Narrator] It could also mean big changes
for industries that are already in town,
like the incinerator, which might have to burn less trash
or add new filters to get its permits renewed.
Experts say more change is needed
to address entrenched inequality.
- This law is a good first step
on addressing cumulative impacts in New Jersey.
We're gonna have to complement it
with other strategies, and laws, and regulations.
- We see a lot of really slow movement
before we see a victory.
Environmental justice is economic,
it's racial, it's social, it's housing,
it's transportation, it's education, it's health.
It touches all of those areas.
Are we present, yes or no?
So thanks for coming today. You don't know the emotions weighing down on me.
I grew up here in Hyatt Court. Living in the area.
And we're showing the entire community, right? That we have a voice