America’s waste winds up in poorest countries

On December 22nd, 2008, a Tennessee Valley coal-fired power plant ruptured, sending nearly one billion gallons of coal ash into a nearby river, where it turned to sludge. That hazardous sludge was shipped to a landfill site outside Uniontown, Alabama ? an area whose demographic is too poor for the kind of political clout that would block the move. The question is: do communities like Uniontown ever really get a say in where hazardous waste goes?

Our guest, Robert Bullard, says no. He’s the director of the Environmental Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. Bullard believes that America’s waste follows a troubling path of least resistance to the doorsteps of our country’s poor.