Offsite is a photographic project connecting two cities through the glistening eyes of the particulates they share.
Photographing along the Acushnet River, I quickly learned about the EPA superfund project to clean up the harbor in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Between the 1940s-1970s, electric device manufacturers flushed industrial waste into the river.
To clean the harbor, the soil was dredged up and filtered down into a solid piece of waste referred to as a “filter cake.” I was always curious about the last sentences of the published reports that would say something like: “The ‘filter cake’ was then sent off-site to a disposal facility in Michigan via rail or truck.”
There is only one site in Michigan approved to accept these filter cakes, in a city called Belleville. As I continued to photograph along the Acushnet River, I grew a growing interest for these two cities to properly meet.
New Bedford, Massachusetts and Belleville, Michigan. These photographs follow a path from the Acushnet River, where contaminated material was originally flushed into, to the area surrounding the facility in Belleville where that same material now sits.
Photographing along the Acushnet River, I quickly learned about the EPA superfund project to clean up the harbor in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Between the 1940s-1970s, electric device manufacturers flushed industrial waste into the river.
To clean the harbor, the soil was dredged up and filtered down into a solid piece of waste referred to as a “filter cake.” I was always curious about the last sentences of the published reports that would say something like: “The ‘filter cake’ was then sent off-site to a disposal facility in Michigan via rail or truck.”
There is only one site in Michigan approved to accept these filter cakes, in a city called Belleville. As I continued to photograph along the Acushnet River, I grew a growing interest for these two cities to properly meet.
New Bedford, Massachusetts and Belleville, Michigan. These photographs follow a path from the Acushnet River, where contaminated material was originally flushed into, to the area surrounding the facility in Belleville where that same material now sits.
