"The County Should Look at Solid Waste as a Resource": Charting Southern California's Trade in Trash

• In Event: Wastescapes: Managing Excess in the Twentieth-Century United States

Abstract

This paper explores political effort(s) to build a massive regional landfill outside of Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s. Regional imbalances in the supply/demand for dump space during the era of the garbage crisis coupled with new technologies that could transport trash across vast distances transformed household trash into a commodity during the late twentieth century. Economically depressed regions on LA's periphery began to compete with large waste industry corporations for trash contracts—as a result, some politicians and their constituents even attempted to bring more garbage within their political jurisdictions. This growing market for household garbage undercut environmental concerns and helped determine where trash would flow within the urban landscape.

Author

• James Bradley, The University of Chicago