In 1953, the Swiss chemical company Ciba came to Toms River, N.J. By all accounts, the community was delighted to have it. The chemical plant for manufacturing textile dye brought jobs and tax revenue to the small town on the Jersey shore. The company invested in the town's hospital and donated land for a golf course.
The arrangement was good for Ciba, too. Its manufacturing process created far more wastewater than it did actual dye, and it needed somewhere to dump the water. It went into sandy holding ponds and into the Toms River, for which the town was named. Other chemical plants up the road were doing the same with their waste, dumping it rather than paying to ship it away.
Then, nearly two decades after Ciba first came to town, a cancer epidemic was identified in the community. Dan Fagin, who chronicled the community's fight for answers in his new book Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, talks to Don Gonyea, host of weekends on All Things Considered, about the origins of dumping in Toms River and its legacy today.