The Campo Indian Landfill War: The Search for Gold in California’s Garbage

In The Campo Indian Landfill War, Dan McGovern explores the timely and controversial topic of "environmental justice" through the story of an Indian tribe's struggle to develop its isolated and impoverished reservation by building a commercial garbage facility to serve the cities of Southern California.

The environmental justice movement was born out of the conviction that the waste industry has targeted minority communities for facilities it can no longer locate in the backyards of those with greater access to political power. The Campo case is thus an anomaly: the tribe was unified in supporting the landfill, while the tribe's mostly white neighbors opposed the project out of concern that it could contaminate the aquifer that is the sole source of drinking water for the surrounding 400 square miles.

 Dan McGovern, former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the region that includes California, makes this an engaging story by focusing on the two individuals who personify the conflict-the Campo Indian who formed his tribe's environmental protection agency to regulate the proposed landfill, and the area resident who organized the grassroots opposition to putting the landfill, almost literally, in her backyard.