Wisconsin cleanup shifts toxic PFAS burden to Alabama Black Belt

“I don’t think it’s fair for you to take your waste and ship it to an almost all-Black county,” Dorothy Oliver says about Wisconsin sending PFAS-containing firefighting foam to Chemical Waste Management’s hazardous waste landfill in Sumter County, Ala. Oliver is shown on July 25, 2023, in the convenience store she runs out of a mobile home in Panola, about 12 miles north of the landfill. Neighbors frequently seek Oliver’s help when trees fall or roads need fixing. (Joe Songer for AL.com)
Joe Songer/Joe Songer

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Bennet Goldstein reports on water and agriculture as Wisconsin Watch’s Report for America representative on the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk — a collaborative reporting network across the Basin. Before this, Goldstein was on the breaking news team at the Omaha World-Herald in Nebraska. He has spent most of his career at daily papers in Iowa, including the Dubuque Telegraph Herald. Goldstein’s work has garnered awards, including the Associated Press Media Editors award for an explanatory feature about a police shooting in rural Wisconsin, and an Iowa Newspaper Association award for a series that detailed the impacts of the loss of social safety net programs on Dubuque’s Marshallese community. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.