The Environmental Protection Agency issued an order last month for a metal processing facility in Southeast Atlanta to stop work until the company has a plan for dealing with its hazardous waste.
Located near the airport, TAV Holdings has operated since 2015, shredding automobile parts and other items to recycle different types of metal.
Recent findings by the EPA and researchers have confirmed the fears of neighbors in the area. Preliminary testing shows that runoff from the plant has caused elevated levels of lead in nearby soil and waterways.
Thomas Wheatley with Axios Atlanta, which recently published an investigative report on the pollution, joined “Morning Edition” to talk about what he found.
“It’s what many would call an environmental justice case,” says Wheatley, “In the sense that it has all these demographic indicators — large number of people living on low incomes, large number of people of color — who are oftentimes having to deal with the burdens of industrial sites like this.”
