Robin Amer of USA Today’s investigative podcast The City shares the story behind a massive illegal dump that appeared in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood in the ’90s. Local kids remember playing on the 21-acre, six-story mountain of debris, and adults recall the seemingly endless stream of dump trucks that rumbled down the street to the formerly vacant lot at all hours of the day and night. Wind blowing over the dump covered the neighborhood in thick dust, affecting the health of nearby residents. When community leaders confronted the man responsible for the dump, they found he was just one part of a larger operation. 

The FBI was using the North Lawndale dump and the man who created it as part of an investigation into political corruption called Operation Silver Shovel. The operation would bring down politicians and city officials who accepted bribes for allowing things like the illegal dump to happen in their districts. But after the indictments and the operation’s end, no one wanted to take responsibility for cleaning up the dump – not the FBI, not the City of Chicago and not the man who created it. The debris sat for years, leaving North Lawndale residents feeling angry and used. The civic neglect and institutional racism that allowed the dump to happen in the first place has continued, long after the last truck of debris was carted away.