"Dumpster Fire"

"Two decades after its scheduled closure, a zombie garbage incinerator divides a working-class town in Massachusetts.

Sitting on a park bench next to the Pines River on a sunny afternoon in Revere, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston, RoseLee Vincent recalls her childhood spent waterskiing on the river.

“This is where poor kids had fun,” the fourth-generation Revere resident remembers.

When she surveys the river today, her gaze often wanders to a garbage incinerator just over Revere’s border, in the neighboring town of Saugus. The facility, run by Wheelabrator Technologies, sits near the confluence of the Pines and the Saugus River. Vincent has spent nearly four years as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives trying to close it."

Greta Jochem reports for Grist January 25, 2018.