Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

Indy Toxic Heritage: Pollution, Place, and Power

Indianapolis’ toxic heritage includes residue from lead industry, coal ash and heavy metals from power plants, raw sewage in urban waterways, and contaminated ground water from gas stations and dry cleaners, to name just a few of the sources. The burdens of these urban pollutants have disproportionately impacted lower-income areas and communities of color, and they impact health outcomes across the city. Compounded by policies and practices predicated on reproducing social inequalities, such as redlining and zoning, are systematic and structural issues such as the disinvestment of public dollars, lax environmental and industrial regulation, and inconsistent enforcement. These environmental crises, and their intersection with climate change, are significant issues for Indianapolis residents across the city. They must therefore be recognized not simply as neighborhood-specific concerns but as part of a shared citywide heritage that shaped Indianapolis as we know it today and will continue to shape it in the future. Community leaders in neighborhoods such Riverside, Martindale-Brightwood, and Norwood, have been advocating for years for mitigation of past pollution and to end ongoing sources of pollution, but these efforts are often seen as isolated and local problems. Similarly, organizations such as the Hoosier Environmental Council have been working across the city and state on the systemic and structural issues around environmental health, but generally without an historical and public interpretive framework. 

Through a community co-curated traveling exhibit, a series of public conversations, and digital humanities, this project will trace the history of environmental harm in select sites across the city and highlight the structural forces that have created a legacy of contamination and negative health impacts, particularly impacting marginalized communities. The objectives are 1) to situate environmental damage as heritage 2) to demonstrate that this heritage is citywide, and 3) to help a broad public audience understand how this toxic legacy is registered, often in hidden ways, in the landscape. By historicizing the sites and making connections among them, the project will advance a citywide conversation about the enduring racial and structural inequalities underlying what are often understood as distinct episodes or neighborhood problems. In addition to addressing the history of environmental harm, the project will expand our imagined paths forward by highlighting the longstanding work of environmental advocates and promoting action through organizations such as the White River Alliance and Hoosier Environmental Council, as well as campus-based initiatives such as the Anthropocene Household project. This project builds on existing relationships with Indy Parks and Recreation, Kheprw Institute (KI), and independent scholars Kaila Austin and Kay Hawthorne. Professor Kryder-Reid's translation of research into a community-curated public humanities project telling stories of Indianapolis’ history of environmental harm and legacy of community activism is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.