Toxic Legacy: Making a Wasteland
Ford, the feds and the mob: the inside story on a wasteland and efforts to clean it up
A generation ago, the Ford Motor Company churned out 6 million cars and trucks at a sprawling assembly plant in northern New Jersey. Before the plant closed in 1980, it generated an ocean of pollution that was dumped in the nearby forests, contaminating a mountain community and threatening the region’s most important watershed.
A team of reporters from The Record spent months investigating the dumping and failed cleanup efforts and documenting the impact on the Ramapough Indian community living amid the waste.
“Toxic Legacy,” the newspaper’s acclaimed series, attracted national attention and inspired the HBO documentary, “Mann v. Ford.” This book contains the series, which won the first-ever Grantham Prize for exceptional environmental journalism, and follows the story up until today.
A portion of all proceeds is donated to benefit the community affected by the events described in “Toxic Legacy: Making a Wasteland.”