“Laid to Waste is a compelling environmental history of groundwater contamination and the communities who fought it. Drawing on rich archives and participants’ voices, Brinda Sarathy not only explores how regulatory systems can institutionalize neglect but also illuminates the women whose persistence reshaped environmental policy and expanded our understanding of environmental justice.”—Nancy Langston, author of
Reindeer: A Tale of Nature and Survival in a Changing North “This is the only book-length study of one of the most significant and largely forgotten environmental justice struggles in the United States. Sarathy brings the story of the Stringfellow Acid Pits to life with captivating prose and compelling evidence. Laid to Waste is a landmark achievement.”—David Naguib Pellow, author of What is Critical Environmental Justice?
“Laid to Waste highlights both the contradictions of an environmental regulatory system built in the service of industrial profit and the local communities that sought to remake that system. Sarathy offers a critical reckoning with forever contamination and normalized toxicity. Essential reading for the current moment.”—Shannon Cram, author of Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility
“In this compelling account of the struggles surrounding the Stringfellow Acid Pits, California’s first designated Superfund site, Sarathy expertly captures the bureaucratic hurdles and regional pressures that frontline communities in the Inland Empire faced when they sought to clean up contamination. A significant contribution to the empirical research on the contradictions and promises of environmental justice movement activism.”—Bhavna Shamasunder, Mellichamp Chair in Racially Just, Resilient and Sustainable City Futures, University of California, Santa Barbara
