When Obalaye Macharia was growing up in Cincinnati’s Winton Hills neighborhood in the 1970s, he would go on adventures to the landfill behind his house.
There are two dumps situated side-by-side in the predominantly Black community, next to housing projects and surrounded by factories. They accepted industrial waste, hazardous chemicals and household garbage from the 1950s until the last one closed in the ’90s.
Residents worried for years about the air they were breathing and the high instances of illness they noticed in their neighbors…