NOTE FROM RSG: The Intercept took a close look at the legacy of environmental racism in Southeast Gainesville, highlighting a school just around the corner from the Florence landfill.
The site of a former dump, now a grass field, behind Joseph Williams Elementary School in Gainesville, Fla., on Dec. 30, 2023.
For Decades, Officials Knew a School Sat on a Former Dump — and Did Little to Clean Up the Toxins
June 4 2024,
The city of Gainesville, Florida, needed to choose a site for a dump. Of all the places it could have chosen during its search in the late 1950s, the local government settled on an unlikely location: the backyard of a school. Joseph Williams Elementary sat on the east side, in the predominantly Black part of town.
Where children played, the ground bubbled. Birds swarmed, feeding on trash. At one point, a pile of 20 dead dogs and cats were dropped in the yard of the elementary school, just 100 feet away from classrooms. This was no ordinary playground.
A horrific stench of dead rats and decomposing garbage was impossible to escape, recalled Wayne Fields, who still lives in his childhood home opposite the site. “The smell was so bad, during school, after school,” said Fields, a 69-year-old businessman. “It was ridiculous.”
Both of Fields’s parents were teachers at the school. “We used to say that when we turn off the light we can all see each other because we are glowing from the chemicals,” he said.
Despite violating multiple health statutes, the local government was unbothered. “This is a necessary evil. I think we’re doing a very fine job,” then-City Manager William Green said in 1963. Besides, he said, the city poured “glorified perfume” on the garbage every so often.
This “necessary evil” has haunted this Florida community for decades. Sixty years later, the site is overgrown grassland, but contamination at the school still poses a large risk to students’ health. In the last few years, community members have called on the Alachua County school district and state agencies to assess the connection between the contaminated land and health issues in the area.
It is often difficult to show a direct link between a contaminant and adverse health impacts, and no such investigation has yet been done at the school. But for years soil and air testing have consistently revealed evidence of substantial environmental toxins on the property. Levels of the carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene peaked in 2020 at a concentration up to 218 times higher than what is considered safe for direct exposure in residential settings. Researchers, meanwhile, have pinpointed East Gainesville as an asthma hot spot.
For decades, a rotating cast of city, county, and state officials have been aware of the contaminants in the school yard … READ MORE
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The Intercept mailed the flyer below seeking additional information from residents:
Respect Southeast Gainesville 