An intrepid group of Bronx public high school students teamed up with a teaching artist to find out how New York City decides where to put the burdensome, smelly, and dangerous facilities that make the city run—but nobody wants in their backyards.
Turns out, there are some guidelines called Fair Share that were made a couple of decades ago to try to spread the burden of noxious facilities more evenly throughout the city. How does it work? Are communities taking on their fair share? How else could the city promote fairness?
To get the scoop on Fair Share, the crew hit the streets and interviewed sanitation workers, environmental justice advocates, an anti-waste facility neighborhood group, policymakers, policy-shakers, and Fritz Schwarz, the father of the 1989 Fair Share legislation. The crew collected their knowledge nuggets into a book that is helping community groups and others to find out how Fair Share works now, and how it could work better in the future!