Teenage Wasteland (2025) Movie Script

[static crackles]
[woman 1] Walk faster, people.
[man 1] You want to be in?
Go, all of you. Come on.
-[girl 1] Can Spice come?
-[man 1] Sure. Go ahead.
-Spice.
-[boy] Spicy!
-[girl 2] Hi.
-[children laugh]
-[woman 1] The more the merrier.
-[man 1] It's Wizard of Oz time.
-[children and adults speak indistinctly]
-[man 2] Okay!
[man 3 coughs]
[man 2 whistles] You guys ready?
-[child] Yeah!
-Come on!
[man 3] Here they come.
[man 1] Let him go.
[horse whinnies]
-Oh, okay.
-[girl] He's wagging.
-[woman 2] Aaron.
-[man 1] Aaron, back up a bit.
Okay.
[children laugh]
[child 1] Come on.
[child 2] I'll get it.
[man 1] That's good.
Aaron, go in and get it.
Get down in there and get that boat.
[child laughs] Look at him.
[intriguing music plays]
[Aaron] Ugh. What if there was
toxic waste in here?
[man] Don't even joke.
[child 3] He'd die. [chuckles]
[intriguing music intensifies]
[children play in distance]
[door creaks open]
[man] Somebody has to keep track
of where everything is buried.
It's not just poison in the earth,
it's poison of the spirit as well.
-[button clicks]
-[VCR whirs]
[boy on video] On three?
[boy inhales sharply]
One of the reasons
the Wallkill River is a sewer
is because of the Orange County Landfill,
situated on the riverbank.
Shit!
-[girl] Oops.
-Shit!
[man] To me, it's more than just
a record of environmental crime.
All the work that we were doing
on the documentaries back then,
it's this archetype of young people
rising up to the challenge,
investigating what the problems
are in their world
and doing something about it.
[girl] Good evening,
and welcome to MHS TV
from Middletown High School.
My name is Yvonne Kolinski,
and tonight we have
a visual history of Middletown,
a science experiment,
and some other surprises.
["Seether" by Veruca Salt plays]
[director] Have you ever heard
of Middletown, New York?
Um, maybe.
I never heard of it,
probably because I work too much.
[both] Never heard of it.
No, I'm sorry.
-[both laugh]
-They don't know where it is.
Okay, so not everyone
has heard of Middletown, New York.
I don't get it.
Everybody up there
has heard of New York City.
Straight up the river, 60 miles.
Come on, I'll show you.
keep her on a short leash
I try
One hour and 30 minutes. Not bad.
I try to ram her into the ground, yeah
Can't fight the seether
Can't fight the seether
Can't fight the seether, I can't
[man 1] We moved to Middletown
when I was three.
It was blue-collar.
You know, every house looked
exactly the same.
We were living in New York City,
and there was a story
that my brother got,
like, jacked at the park
for his Big Wheel or his bicycle,
and my parents decided
we're going to move to the suburbs.
[people cheer and applaud]
[man 2] Back then, Middletown
was primarily known for dairy farming.
It was a bucolic setting, I guess.
There was a canopy
over most of the streets in town,
so you'd always feel like you were
driving through tunnels of trees.
[Rachel] We had our fair share
of sketchy spots, like anywhere else.
An episode of Cops
was shot at the Orange Plaza Mall.
I think it was, like, the first time
we saw Middletown on TV.
till I'm foaming at the mouth
Can't find the seether
[man 3] You know, growing up there,
it doesn't feel overly special.
You guys going on a beer run?
[man 3] You were always going
somewhere else.
Going to the city or going
to the Jersey Shore, going to Long Island.
And everybody was always
trying to get out.
Yeah
[school bell rings]
[students chatter indistinctly]
Hi, my name is Fred Isseks,
and I teach AV Graphics Communications.
It's a long name for a course
that involves electronic media.
We hope you, uh, are intrigued
with the idea of taking this course,
and that we see you in September.
[serene music plays]
[Jeff] You knew about Fred
before you met Fred.
Like, when you get the schedules,
they're like,
"You got Fred, you're so lucky."
People used to call him
Hippie Fred or Crazy Fred.
His hair, like, always got
a little long on top.
[David] I do remember
very early on Fred just saying, like,
"Yeah, one summer
I lived in the Grand Canyon."
Other teachers sometimes would
kind of subtly denigrate him a little bit
or suggest, you know, we're doing
serious stuff over in this classroom,
but that guy does
that other stuff over there.
Famous dead person to bring back,
it'd have to be Karl Marx.
He could come back, and he could
check out all the predictions he made
about late 20th century capitalism,
if they've come true or not.
[David] He'd mention a philosopher,
or he'd mention Noam Chomsky,
or he'd mention Ralph Nader.
And I thought, "Wow, this guy's smart."
[Fred] I went to law school
for about two months.
I didn't even make it
to Thanksgiving vacation,
and I realized, "This is not for me."
When I started teaching,
I fell in love with it immediately.
I'm teaching ninth grade English,
Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men,
The Old Man and the Sea.
But after a few years,
it was getting a little old to me,
so I tried doing some extra little things.
I came up with this idea to apply
for a grant for all of $300
and get Instamatic cameras,
and give them to the students
and have them go out
and take pictures in town.
So when the district did get TV cameras,
and when we did start to move into that,
they picked me to do it,
because they said, "He knows how to use
a camera. He does the Instamatic."
[director] Did you know
how to use those cameras?
No.
[hopeful ethereal music plays]
It's a vision of education
in the old model of John Dewey.
You don't learn by sitting
in a classroom and taking notes.
You learn by doing.
You learn by getting involved.
This is the TV studio.
Essentially, we had
a control room in the back,
and then this was our stage area.
We had a round stage
that someone donated to us,
and we had a backdrop
that was kind of flimsy.
We had a couple of different
editing stations set up around the room
where students would edit their footage.
We had a public access station
a mile away from the school,
and we could broadcast anytime we wanted.
So I went from teaching 9th Grade English
into doing an elective for seniors
called Electronic English.
It was regular English,
except, uh, we plugged it in.
Oh, man.
Oh, whoa.
[laughs fondly]
It's amazing.
[Rachel laughs]
Wow.
[chuckles]
It's going back in time.
[director] Do you remember
what attracted you to Electronic English
in the first place?
I was cutting class.
I was in the parking lot.
I was walking to Burger King,
and Fred saw me.
And he said, "Look,
I have this class, Electronic English."
"If you come to class,
I won't call your mom."
And it just seemed fun.
I watched a lot of TV as a kid,
and so I was always enamored by it.
[David] The moment I walked in there,
it was just like this whole portal
to a new world opened.
There'd be kids in the corner
playing Onyx or, uh, Wu-Tang Clan
and making a music video.
But then right next to them
would be some hippie kids.
It was kind of a free-for-all.
[teenagers laugh]
I just told the kids to be creative.
Use your talent.
Use it to make stuff
instead of consuming stuff.
[drum machine plays]
[Mike] It's easy to look back and say,
"Well, you just showed up and hung out
and he handed you a camera."
But that's literally what happened.
[Rachel] He let us shoot
rap videos in the hallway.
-[sighs]
-[Rachel] Karate films.
[teenager] Look at yourself
You're on top of the world
[Rachel] We were always
filming something funny.
Sometimes you walk around
With your nose in the air
Other times you walk around
Like you just don't care
-'Cause you're conceited
-Yo-yo-yo-you're conceited
[sampler continues]
[David] Back then,
a camcorder was still a big deal.
Hi!
This thing that we associated
with Hollywood or something,
so it was very exciting.
Somewhere, there's
a very embarrassing video
of me lip-syncing
to George Michael's "Faith."
If I find that tape,
you will not see it. [laughs]
[drum machine continues playing]
[past director] Cut.
[Jeff] Everybody had gotten their time
to play around with the equipment,
but then Fred gathered everybody and said
that we needed to talk
about an actual assignment.
[Fred] The school district left it
pretty much open to me
how I wanted to structure it.
But it had to be something
having to do with English.
[singing]
I could have taken it
in a different direction.
We could have produced plays.
But for some reason,
that didn't really occur to me.
What kind of resonated with me
was the idea of doing journalism.
[marching band plays]
Let's investigate all kinds of stories.
Let's tell the story of the cheerleaders,
the football team, and the Home Ec class.
[all cheering]
While all that's going on,
I'm gonna turn you on to a story
that I think is pretty incredible,
and you're more than welcome
to jump in on it.
Fred's like, "Yeah,
there's this thing in the landfill."
And we're like, "Yeah, whatever."
We really didn't care.
But he was like, "Stop what you're doing.
All right, check this out."
[gloomy ethereal music plays]
[woman] Last year, I noticed fluid
coming out of the middle of the road.
And one day I got out of my car,
I touched the fluid,
and what I would think
would have been oil on the road
was a total spot of brown water.
And I was told by someone in the village
that it was from the storm sewer.
I could go across the street
and ask my neighbor for a glass of water,
and I could put it up to my--
The minute she turns on the tap,
the whole house stinks.
I mean, it's raunchy smelling.
[Fred] I had an old friend
named Don Tirrell.
He lived out on a farm that he had bought.
He said, "We've got a mess
in our backyards
that we didn't know about."
[Jeff] He thought
he was getting this bucolic life,
and then he ended up living
so close to a toxic landfill.
-Is this on right now?
-[past Fred] Yup.
We were interviewing Don's neighbors.
I worked the camera,
and Don asked the questions.
Right now, I am at breaking point.
I really cannot take it much longer.
Wonderful shot. Did you get that?
Could you do that again?
[woman] And look at this. This--
This has got to be a health hazard also.
This is draining right into my yard.
Right now, if I cut my grass,
I've got to go this way.
So eventually, what's going to be here?
-All this running out.
-And where does it go?
-[woman] How's Jane doing? Okay?
-[Don] Yeah, good.
[woman] I did enjoy that thing
at your house Sunday.
-It was very nice.
-[Don] Thank you.
Unbelievable.
[woman] Isn't it?
See? It's like an orange.
-[Fred] Come in on it.
-[woman] What is that thing?
[Don] What do you think, Fred?
Think she's got a problem?
[past Fred] I wouldn't want to build
a family room down here.
[woman] Every morning
before leaving for work,
I start with this one,
go down to sump pump.
Drain out.
[woman continues splashing water on TV]
[past Fred] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
Folks, if you can
[students chatter]
If you guys can hold off for just another
Excuse me.
If you guys can hold off
for just another three minutes,
we'll be done.
[Fred] I said, you know, "This is
a story we can look into further."
Well, there's a type of student that
[mimics whooshing] they woke right up.
[Rachel] Once Fred started
explaining the story
in the way, like,
rebellious teenagers could understand,
then that, to me, was really exciting.
[gentle music plays]
[man] And who do we find here?
Zoom in.
Oh, there's your heartthrob, Corey Haim.
You're recording, you stupid shit.
[Rachel] I wasn't into politics.
I wasn't an environmentalist.
That was the opposite of my vibe.
Press the button.
[man] Who's that?
[past Rachel] David Lynch. He is cool.
Didn't you see Wild at Heart?
[Rachel] Because I was Puerto Rican,
I was, like, good
with all the Puerto Rican kids.
I also had a bunch of goth friends.
We would hop on the train
to go into the city to go to nightclubs.
I loved any kind of, like, punk rock,
in-your-face music.
Anything that was
sort of against the system.
But deep down, I was cripplingly shy.
-[student] What do we have here?
-I'm yours!
[teenagers chatter]
[students exclaim]
[Rachel] Here we go.
Get in the car. [laughs]
[Jeff] I think I was always
a-- a bit of a chameleon.
I could kind of hang out with the jocks,
uh, because I played football.
I could hang out with the stoners
because I also smoked pot.
["Jump Around" by House of Pain
plays on car stereo]
Pack it up, pack it in
Let me begin
But I-- Probably back in the '90s,
they would have called me a poseur.
I don't know.
I could have been an asshole. [laughs]
[cadets shout in unison]
[Mike] My core group was the ROTC kids.
We march around with rifles,
we're spinning and flipping them.
My father left
when I was about 4 years old,
and my stepfather's a Marine,
he was tough.
So I was left on my own,
like a typical latchkey kid,
to figure things out.
I mean, technically,
I wasn't even in Fred's class.
He just let me hang around and participate
because he took a shine to me.
[David] I think
I was maybe an outsider.
I had a lot of friends,
but I never felt
like I was in a clique per se.
I had always been involved in some, like,
youth and government political things.
But the truth is I wanted to, like,
blow up every corporate headquarters.
I do believe it's a health hazard.
My one daughter, my older one,
had suffered a lot with strep throats.
[David] So when I saw
this footage, I was hooked.
[woman] And the doctor could never
[David] And I was like, "Oh!"
Like, "Okay." So--
So this is bigger than school was.
I wanted to talk to anybody
that knew anything about this.
How many people are gonna be available
to go to the landfill?
[Jeff] It wasn't presented
as a class requirement to do this.
It was more like a soft pitch.
Brian, Jen, Miguel
It was just like, "Hey, we're going
to the dump. Anybody want to come?"
People would sort of say, like,
you know, scratch their heads, I think,
and go, "You're going to the dump?"
[Rachel] "Mom, can I go?" They're like,
"Are you going with your teacher?"
I'm like, "Yes."
[boisterously] "Sure, you could go."
[mysterious music plays]
[past Mike] I don't know
where we're going. Down some dirt road.
There's, like, garbage everywhere.
It's a dump, yeah.
What do I expect, right?
[Fred] People said,
"Hey, you're being careful, right?"
And I'd say, "Yes, I am."
[director] Did you trespass?
Yes.
[Rachel] It was trespassing.
I was breaking the law.
I climbed over a fence,
and someone handed me a camera.
-[boy] Hey, Rachel.
-What?
[boy] Smile for us.
[teenagers chatter indistinctly]
[past Rachel] Jeff, is it taping
when the arrows are moving
or when it's stuck?
-When the arrows are moving.
-All right.
What are you taping?
[Fred] Where did that come from?
[Jeff] All the holes.
[chuckles]
There was
some pretty good camera work in there.
Maybe some of my finest
early camera work. [laughs]
[Jeff] Someone should lie down in it
and just act dead.
-[Mike] Yeah, you lie in this shit.
-[Jeff laughs]
[grunts]
[Rachel] Jeff, get up here!
[Jeff laughs]
[sarcastically] All right,
honey, I'm coming.
[Fred] Don't go over the edge.
They'll see us.
[Jeff] Get a shot of that.
[Rachel] It's like bubbling and shit.
[teenager] Get a lighter.
Who's got a lighter?
-[Fred] I wouldn't.
-[Jeff laughs]
[bubbling]
-[teenager 1] You hear it?
-[teenager 2] Yeah. I can hear it.
[Fred] Hear what?
-Rach.
-[Rachel] Hmm?
[boy] Hear that. Get over here, get sound.
Where is that coming from?
[Jeff] Right in that mound of dirt.
Get the camera right close.
-[Rachel] Where is it?
-[Fred] Hey, here you go.
-[David] What the hell is that?
-[Fred] Just listen.
[Rachel] Oh, God, it smells like shit!
-[teenagers laugh]
-Damn!
[unsettling ethereal music plays]
We're on the edge
of, uh, some kind of pond or pool.
There's a green tint to it.
[director] How would you
describe the smell?
Oh, dead bodies and decay.
Um, New Jersey.
[past Mike] This is me skipping stones.
[Rachel] We did step carefully,
but it feels like
there was a little stupidity
meets, like, being naive.
As high school students,
we just saw bits and pieces.
I don't think any of us
had any sense of the scale or depth
of the story yet.
[reporter] Shakopee, Minnesota,
outside Minneapolis, 1973.
A spectacular fire burns
4,000 waste drums,
sending noxious clouds of smoke
and some of the barrels into the sky.
Leakage from this dump site
has now poisoned groundwater here
with arsenic and lead.
[Fred] Though there were other stories
that were percolating around then
about landfills and the problems
that they caused,
Love Canal was the granddaddy of them all.
[reporter] Niagara Falls, New York,
August 1978.
Deadly chemicals seeping out
of an abandoned waste dump
called the Love Canal
are blamed for health problems
ranging from nervous disorders
to birth defects.
Five-year-old Mark Dunmire lives
five blocks from the canal.
He was born with a heart murmur,
a urinary tract obstruction,
and a diseased pancreas.
He can't play in his basement anymore.
It's contaminated.
[interviewer] What's in there?
Chemicals.
And what happens with those chemicals?
They get you very sick.
I'm happy to say, however, that based
on what we have seen and evaluated,
there is no evidence of benzene toxicity.
We are coming across some abnormalities.
This is to be expected in any population.
As you know, there are a variety of things
that can cause liver disease
besides toxic chemicals.
[moderator] Yes, ma'am.
[woman] I have
an eight-and-a-half-year-old asthmatic.
I have been told by my doctors
to get her out of this area.
Perhaps under
[Fred] It was a travesty.
[desperately] Would you please tell me,
do I let my 3-year-old stay?
She has a birth defect now.
What are you gonna do for my kids?
What are you gonna do? Nothing!
[man] They gotta go.
It-- The damage is done, man!
The damage is done!
[students chatter indistinctly]
[Fred] I believe that what was happening
near the Wallkill Dump was the same thing.
This is like Love Canal.
This is as bad as Love Canal.
And Don agreed.
[test tone plays]
[Don clears throat]
[studio audience chatters indistinctly]
Good morning, my name is Valerie Basso,
and I'm a student
at Middletown High School,
and I am here interviewing Don.
Thank you for coming, everybody.
Don, how do you feel about this landfill
and everything, about being around it?
Uh, well, it's taken a long time
to even-- to find any feelings
because when I first got involved,
I didn't know what the situation was.
I didn't know how bad the toxic waste was.
Something isn't right.
There's a feeling in the community
of something not right.
[Valerie] Do you think eventually
the water will cause birth defects, or?
-It is already. It has to.
-[audience agrees]
One woman came up in tears.
She had three children who were deaf.
And she swears the water did it.
But all I've ever done
since I ever came here was fight.
And I think that people like yourselves,
I think your generation
are willing to fight.
[boy] But what makes you think
that the politicians and everybody
are gonna be willing to listen?
How do you think we get through?
You get on national television,
on Mike Wallace,
you're gonna make the great changes.
I don't believe that. I know that.
Um, if we wanna find out more about this,
who do we invite in for an interview?
[Don] Everyone.
Everyone has a little piece
of the-- of the story.
That's why film is a wonderful medium.
It is our literature
for the next thousand years.
[suspenseful music plays]
[teenagers chatter indistinctly]
-[boy] The smell is making me sick, Fred.
-[Fred] Yeah?
[boy] Yeah, I don't feel well.
-[Fred] You serious? Me too.
-Yeah!
Give us a line, D.B.
Beyotch.
[laughs] I can't believe
you guys have this tape.
Get your establishing shot, Trey.
[Fred] You know, you want
to expose students to stuff.
Here it is. This is real life.
We weren't doing Romeo and Juliet,
but we were doing Dutch and Willy.
Now, is your last name Meyer?
-Myers. M-Y-E-R-S.
-Myers, Willy.
Bill Myers.
I'm here with Dutch Smith,
former employee of the Wallkill Landfill.
[coughs]
How long did you work at the landfill?
Dutch and Willy were such characters.
I feel like if you went to Central Casting
and asked for a landfill worker,
you'd get Dutch Smith.
He kind of reminded me of Popeye.
[Mike] I mean, Dutch still lived
in a trailer right next to the dump.
[Fred laughs]
You knew they lived there
their whole life.
You knew they knew everybody.
Everybody knew them.
You-- You just knew guys like that
weren't making stuff up.
[Jeff] What have you seen
in your years here?
Everything. If you can name it,
it's in there.
-[Jeff] And how much went in?
-Plenty.
-Every day?
-Every single day of the week.
Some of it was like jelly.
Some of it was in a powder form.
Some of it was in like a-- a cube form.
There's thousands and thousands
of tons of toxic waste in there.
And I know it's in there
because I buried lots of it.
Well, mostly it was me
and, uh, Dutch's father-in-law
running the dump.
And then he got in that problem.
-[Don] What happened to him?
-Well, he--
-Were you there when it happened?
-Yeah, I was there.
He run into the powder chemicals.
And the cab all filled up
and, you know, and, uh
He couldn't breathe very good.
They took him to the hospital.
He was in bad shape before he died.
Couldn't get his breath.
To go from Don and Fred
kind of talking about it,
once you have
these firsthand accounts of it,
it becomes real.
Anybody come in there without a permit,
we used to tell them you couldn't dump.
[Don] Right.
Ten minutes later or a half hour later,
they'd be back.
They had a permit to dump.
There was very few what you could call
local trucks around here.
It-- It was all big companies.
-[Don] From out of the area.
-From out of the area.
Yeah, well, I knowed it was wrong
by putting it in there,
but, you know, hey, the town gave them
the okay and I worked for the town.
What could I say?
Well, I couldn't tell the guy to leave.
-All right, thanks a lot, Dutch.
-Yeah, be good.
[David] I was so excited.
We thought for sure
we had blown this thing open
and we were going to make some headlines.
I told my wife, I said,
"They're all Mafia-owned."
"I'll lay money on it."
[Fred] I felt like, "Wow, what a scoop."
I mean, if the newspaper knew this,
the story was going to get out.
The Times Herald-Record played
a vital role in the community.
If it didn't make it into the Record,
it was almost as if it didn't happen.
For a minute,
I thought you worked for Cable 6,
and I noticed you were shooting VHS.
[teenager] Yeah. Middletown High School.
Yeah, okay. You work with Fred?
We thought our local paper
would be excited and outraged
over the information we brought to light,
but we found out we got
no encouragement from them whatsoever.
[David] So it was like,
okay, new approach.
Let's just invite the paper's editor
to come talk to our journalism class.
I think he thought,
"Yeah, I'm just gonna go talk
to a few kids in a high school."
How bad could that go?
[monitor beeps]
Hi, I'm Trey Long here with Gary Grossman,
the editor-in-chief
of the Times Herald-Record.
Thank you very much
for coming, Mr. Grossman.
Um, one thing that we find ourselves
very concerned with is the environment.
And I know Jeff has some questions for you
concerning the environment
as far as Orange County
and how the Record deals with it.
Um Um
We, uh A lot of students
in the journalism class,
we made a video about solid waste
disposal in Orange County.
And I dropped off the tape
at the, um, Times Herald-Record
Middletown office.
I was wondering if you ever saw that tape.
-No. No.
-You haven't.
Well, let me explain to you
a little about what it was. Um
[sniffs] It was about the-- the problem
we're having in the landfills
and the problem with solid waste disposal.
And one of the major differences
between our tape, the focus point,
was that our tape showed it
as an environmental problem.
Whereas I think that,
from what I've read
in the reporting in The Record,
it sees it more as an economic problem
for the people of Orange County.
What do you think about that?
Well, I think they're probably hard
to, uh, separate, don't you?
-[Jeff] It'd be hard to separate?
-Yeah. I-- I think that, uh
a lot of environmental solutions
have economic costs.
And to some extent, the determination
of the environmental solution
uh, depends on what people
are willing to pay for it.
He looks so mad.
[past Jeff] Well, um, another difference
is that a lot of people
that we've interviewed,
um, blame the problem on corruption.
-What was your question?
-I'm just saying, um
that the people
we've interviewed have said
that there is a problem there
of corruption.
Possibly. Do they have proof?
[Jeff sniffs]
Well, um
We're all entitled to our opinions
about everything.
One of the things
we have to learn as reporters
is that, uh
There's an old saying in our business,
when your mother says she loves you,
check it out.
And that is that, uh,
just about anything you see,
you should be skeptical about.
Gary's mom didn't love him.
But don't you see that as corruption?
Isn't there a cover-up there?
I don't know. I mean, do you?
-Yeah, I see it as corruption.
-I don't know. Okay.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion.
The point I made earlier,
which I don't think you quite get,
is that beliefs are not important.
Verification is important.
Reporting is important.
It's not what you believe,
it's what you can prove.
And I-- I recognize
that you have to somehow start out
with a worldview,
and you have to investigate it.
Your job is to search out the facts
and to be able to prove what you write.
Is it true? Is it verifiable?
Because it can be libel.
-Well--
-You can hurt people.
We've asked the questions
and we've done the research,
and still nobody wants to listen to us.
We dropped the tape off
at the Times Herald-Record.
-And nobody saw it.
-[Gary] Mm-hmm.
We've done the research, but nobody's--
It's tough.
Sometimes people don't read the paper too.
I recognize it. It's tough.
[girl] We have an extra tape
if you'd like to have one now.
I don't really want to see your tape.
If your tape was dropped off at the paper,
I'm sure somebody at the papers
looked at it.
What you've discovered there
may not be news.
It may be something
that everybody's working on.
It may be something that people
are working very hard to solve.
My question to you, I guess, is,
what is it you think you have
that hasn't been reported,
and how do you know it's true?
[tense music plays]
I'm n-nervous for that kid, you know?
I think I started doubting
if any of-- of what I was saying was true.
I'd like to thank Mr. Grossman again
for stopping by,
and thank you all
for participating the way you did.
-[students applaud]
-Thank you.
[school bell rings]
[Fred] Okay. [clears throat]
I'd like to introduce you to
my wife, Denise.
My daughter Sadie,
and our snowman.
And me. I'm
I'm, uh, Daddy.
I think I was generally pretty good
about separating
school time from family time.
But still, there were days
when thinking about our investigation
was pretty consuming.
Come on, let's raise some hell.
Here.
[rattles]
[students chatter indistinctly]
[past Fred] Yeah, so just go
off in that direction, looking serious.
So everybody, quiet on the set.
Here we go.
-[boy 1] Throw a snowball.
-[boy 2] Okay.
My name is Jeff Dutemple,
and I'm a student
in Middletown High School.
[Fred] Okay, wait, stop. We're gonna take
that part out, we decided.
-[Jeff] Okay. Okay.
-Just a little bit louder, but not much.
[Jeff] This old dump is s--
-Is a sym-- Ooh.
-[Fred] Start with "this old dump."
Yeah. This old dump is symbolic
of the general failure
of our government to protect us.
[Fred] Okay, hang on.
That was good, except this thing.
I'm gonna have to go on manual.
[Jeff] During my freshman year
of high school,
my dad got into some criminal issues.
He-- He got busted
for basically stealing from his company.
I don't even know if they do this anymore,
uh, but he served weekends.
He was-- He served weekend jail.
So we would drop him off
at like 5:00 p.m. on Friday
and then pick him up,
uh, 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.
[serene ethereal music plays]
He was an alcoholic.
You know, I think he always felt bad
about how his life turned out.
[Fred] Okay, if I can just get a shot
of you standing here looking serious,
like right there.
Come a little bit closer.
[Jeff] Wait. Get a close-up of me?
[Fred] Try not to laugh.
[Jeff] I 100% think that, um, Fred,
you know, he didn't know it,
and, you know, I probably didn't
recognize it at the time,
but looking back on it,
he was a good role model for me.
[Fred] Okay, now reverse it.
Walk toward us and stop.
[Jeff] And there was no judgment.
He's sneaky. [chuckles]
Like, he never-- He never felt
like a teacher, you know?
And-- And, like, in the best way possible.
Like, he talked to every student
as if they were an equal.
The-- [laughs] Cut!
[student] Jeff, did I say a word?
Did I even make any facial expressions?
[Fred] My lens is getting all wet.
We got it. We're good.
We would work after school,
on weekends, during vacations.
Garbage never sleeps,
so we were [chuckles]
We would work anytime.
[gentle suspenseful music plays]
[Fred reading]
For a lot of families in Middletown,
it's a lot of just stay under the radar.
Right? Like, don't get in trouble.
Don't be too vocal. Don't be too visible.
A lot of people had
a lot of negative things to say about us.
A lot of people judged us,
a lot of people lab-- labeled us
as tree-hugging activists,
misdirected youth.
[Fred] My overall feeling
is that my colleagues
are either jealous, intimidated, or dull.
[Sadie] I got an Oh, yeah. Go fish.
[Jeff] Certainly other educators
would have us believe
that Fred was a crackpot,
and that we were following
someone down a path that
was not reality.
[telephone rings]
[Fred reading]
And, uh, it's-- it's this guy
with a-- a pretty heavy accent.
And he said,
"You're scraping the tip of the iceberg."
"I got the whole story.
I was there. I got it." You know?
"You can call me Mr. B.
I'll be in touch with you again."
"Nice talking to you." And he hangs up.
["Informer" by Snow plays on car radio]
Informer, you no say daddy
Mi Snow me I go blame
I lick he boom-boom down
'Tective man a say, say daddy me Snow
Me stab someone down the lane
they come
And-a they blow down me door
[boy] Oh! We're heading down
the main road of Middletown, New York.
-[boy 2] The diner, that was our hangout.
-[Rachel] Pre-game spot!
[boy] The place to feast
here in Middletown.
with my dibbie-dibbie girl
Police knock my door, lick up my pal
Rough me up and I can't do a thing
Pick up my line when my
-[chatting indistinctly]
-[marching band plays nearby]
[football announcer speaks indistinctly
on speaker]
[mellow music plays]
[students chatter]
[David] We were sort of toiling
in obscurity, it felt like.
I mean, I wasn't totally clear
if we should keep going.
I remember I asked Fred if he thought
we should try a new approach.
He said, "Yeah, I would push harder."
[woman] I have a friend who's a trapper.
He would notice that some of the raccoons
had more toes than they should have had.
I call it the mutants of Bloomingburg.
[man] What is that?
Well, you see, this is the head
of a rabid raccoon.
[Jeff] Fred took us on a field trip
to meet New York's wildlife pathologist.
[past Jeff] And we're going in.
[Jeff] I mean, it's crazy
that the entire state of New York
has one pathologist,
and that he would
just travel around all day, every day,
to-- to try to
you know, save the environment.
[Fred] I think you should get in there.
[Ward speaks indistinctly]
[man] Although it looks pretty crowded,
it's really a pretty good laboratory
for basic pathology.
[Ward] Be careful
not to step on the blood here.
[grunts]
Uh-oh. [chuckles]
[students] Ew!
[students chatter]
Okay, uh Quite a lot of you. Wow.
I watched your, uh
I've watched your tapes.
And I thought you did
a really excellent job.
I also watched the, uh, critique
by the Middletown newspaper editor.
And, uh, I wasn't surprised
by the kinds of things that he said.
There's a valuable lesson in that,
and that is that you can be
absolutely right in what you do,
and it doesn't mean
that it's going to be accepted.
You can run into stiff opposition.
Polluters have
an inordinate amount of influence
on what gets done in government.
I mean, an ordinary person
does not have the influence
that a president of a corporation
like General Motors does,
which makes it difficult
to fight powerful adversaries.
You can only do it
by being very determined.
Any questions?
["I Am A Scientist"
by Guided By Voices plays]
[Jeff] We loved Ward immediately.
He took the element of crackpot
away from Fred and Don.
I am a scientist
I seek to understand me
All of my impurities
And evils yet unknown
[boy] Get a shot of your boots.
I am an incurable
And nothing else behaves like me
[David] I guess if we thought of like Fred
as sort of a father figure to us,
Ward Stone would be
like the crotchety uncle.
I found him incredibly inspiring.
clues for which I search
And choose to abuse
[Wade] See the IV tubes and bags.
IV bags and tubes.
[Rachel] Mmm.
[teenager] Probably twice a head.
[Wade] IV tube.
[Wade] Some medicine vials too.
And I know what's right
But I'm losing sight of the clues
For which I search
And choose to abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah, and just unlock my mind
-[Wade] "February 7th, 1974."
-[Fred] '74.
[Wade] On the medical waste.
Like, I-- It was so out in the open.
Like, we weren't digging.
We were just walking around.
So then it was sort of leading to,
"Well, if this is what's on the surface,
what's underneath?"
So you're gonna be talking to me,
I'm gonna be looking at you or what?
-Um, you can talk to him.
-[Fred] Yeah.
So what's this we're looking at here?
[Wade clears throat] Well, we haven't
got all our data back on it.
This is not the kind of stuff
that you want to move
on down to the stream
and further on down into the wetlands.
[pulsing intriguing music plays]
[Jeff] I think we knew
that toxic waste was illegally dumped.
What we didn't know
was who was allowing it to happen.
Who's allowing this to continue to happen?
Who allowed it to happen for 20 years?
Who ever thought it was a good idea
to put a landfill on an aquifer?
[Fred] Okay, pretend that I'm Mario Cuomo
and you're telling me all about this mess.
The landfill was built
on top of an aquifer,
which is like a moving water source,
which feeds into the local water
and into the Hudson River.
It was the water
which my parents were drinking,
which I was drinking.
I went home and said,
"We need to buy bottled water."
My mother grew up
in the East River housing projects
in East Harlem.
She was like, "Pay for water?
We're not gonna pay for water."
Like, "Water bottles?
What are you talking about?"
We brought in the people
who were the usual suspects.
[host] You were also
town supervisor of Wallkill.
Was there any toxic waste
being brought in there
that, you know, that anybody
Uh, well, at the time
that the landfill was being used,
the regulations were such
that everything that was put there
was allowed to be put there.
Later, the regulations changed,
and they said some things were no longer
allowed to be put into a landfill,
and they have since been taken out.
They have been? So there's, like,
nothing leaking into the stream?
[Heimbach] Well, not to my knowledge.
[Mike] One of the most interesting things
about this entire process
was learning that we could talk to adults
as if we were adults.
You sorta see that in some
of these interviews, them not expecting
kids to be bringing up
such serious allegations from their past.
Um, does anybody else have any questions?
[girl] Um, do you think
that working for a major corporation
after, um, being in government
raises an ethical problem?
[Heimbach] Would you want me
to go on welfare?
Explain to me. I don't understand
your question. That's what I'm saying.
Follow through and explain to me
what you're-- what you're not saying
and what you're thinking.
-I said what I had to say.
-[students laugh]
[Fred] There's two rules that we've got.
You be respectful, courteous,
that sort of thing,
and you also speak the truth.
Don't be respectful to the point
where you're not really meaning it.
Be yourself.
Fred was like,
"Here, interview these people."
And I just loved making,
you know, old white men squirm.
In 1974, during your term
was when they built
the Orange County Landfill.
-Is that correct?
-That's correct.
Um, it was built on an aquifer.
Why-- Why was that?
When we first put
that landfill in, in 1974,
it was considered a model
by the state of New York.
[Rachel] Mm-hmm.
In those days,
no one talked about aquifers.
Well, in 1970,
there was a groundwater study,
and I had just thought
that common sense would say
that you don't put your garbage
in your water.
May have been,
but I don't have recollection of it.
I felt like no one cared what I had to say
in my, you know, 15, 16-year-old body.
But you put a camera in my hands,
and I filmed something
that gets adults upset,
and they respond.
Like, that felt really powerful.
Um, landfill space has become
an issue in the county.
Um, what do you think
about our landfill crisis?
This area is notorious
for having dumped-- things dumped here.
They say, you know, you should never talk
about politics or religion
at dinner, right?
I think garbage is another thing.
Like, who wants to even think about it
for more than a couple seconds?
Um, right off behind me,
over my, uh, right shoulder,
you can see this is all the old landfill.
I didn't think of myself as a journalist.
I would say I thought of myself more of
of a nuisance.
These guys, I don't know
what they're doing.
We're gonna go ask them in a minute.
Hey, excuse me,
do you mind showing us around?
You kind of felt like you were
involved in something special.
It wasn't jock against nerd
against, you know, geek.
It was everybody doing something
or helping somebody out.
In hindsight, yeah, sure, I can say
that was transformative, or-- or whatever.
But at the time, it was a way to escape
and-- and-- and get through high school.
-That's the way it is.
-Here. Inconspicuously.
[chuckles]
-Speak.
-Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah?
Speak, Pahouti, speak.
Jeff, you're taping. The red light's on.
Jeff, you're a dick. [chuckles]
Jeff, you're a dick.
Yeah, Jeff, you're a dick.
You're a dick, Jeff.
[laughs] You're a dick, Jeff.
[laughs] You're a dick, Jeff.
Yeah, Jeff, you're a dick. [laughs]
[Fred] "Now the Wallkill River
looks like this."
One, one thousand,
two, one thousand, three.
Then start again?
[Fred] County planner can hear us.
-Okay. Fuck you.
-[students laugh]
[boy] Took you a while to caught on.
[Jeff] I don't know
whether it was the era,
but there was just a lot
of hooking up going on,
which I know means
something different now, but, you know
[Rachel] Oh, my gosh. The control room
I just remember kissing boys in there,
but I'm not going
to talk about that on camera.
-[director] Come on!
-[Rachel] We were high school kids.
You'd always go kiss boys
in the control room.
[Jeff] I remember
so many after-school hours
just in the editing room.
Just like, "What's going
to make this story digestible?"
[man] This used to be full
of little trout, full of crayfish,
and now my water's so polluted
you can't put your foot in it.
We're destroying ourselves.
The Indians said that years ago,
white man shit in his own nest.
[Fred] We realized
that we could make a movie
that would make all of this come to life.
Conservative old-school teachers
thought it was a joke, pretty much.
You know, "How you gonna do this?"
Making a movie is not
like writing a five-page essay.
And, uh, I'm thinking to myself,
"Yeah, it's harder."
[Rachel] "We're making
a documentary film."
I remember using those words
with my parents.
"Documentary" to them
felt like PBS, boring,
so that felt safe.
Right? If I had said, "I'm an activist,
and I'm, like, taking down
corrupt politicians,"
they would have been like, "No."
[past Rachel speaks on video]
And I said,
"Let's show it to the community
and things are going to start to fire up."
[people chatter]
This is Dean Dyche for MHS TV News.
Here we have Angela Townsend, and who--
who has just wrote a poem on toxic waste.
He smiles a happy, tinkling smile
As he paints Mom's fingers red
And if he spills it in the pond
Three minnows may soon be dead
As you can see at this meeting tonight,
we've had a very big turnout.
We have all local politicians
from Bloomingburg.
We have Cable 6, Times Herald-Record.
[opening film music plays]
[Jeff] These photos
of the old town of Wallkill Dump
were taken by an agent
of the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation in 1976,
the year most of my classmates
and I were born.
Our plan was to put together
a video documentary
to inform the public,
to move politicians into action,
and to attract some media attention
to open up the story.
We hoped that the problems
would be taken seriously
and a full investigation
would have been conducted
into what happened here, but it hasn't,
even though we've tried our hardest
to get the tape into the right hands.
[Wade] This is my first time at this site.
Obviously, this is one
huge pyramid of pollution.
And I don't think there is a soul on earth
that could tell you all the toxics
that are in here or their distribution.
[man] Dealing with substances
that cannot be removed.
It might take 50 years of treatment,
pumping and flushing
and recycling of water
before you can clean out
some of these aquifers.
Fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years?
[Jeff] The Orange County Health Department
has never done a survey
to determine the effects
of water pollution on public health.
Does it have to be this way?
Who will speak up for the people?
[audience applauds]
-[woman 1] Is the mayor here tonight?
-[man] He was. I don't know where he is.
[woman 2] This is what I scoop
out from my cellar.
[teenager] Send it to the mayor
for drinking water.
[people laugh]
[man] I'm here tonight
just letting you know that-- that people
are deeply concerned about this
within the government
of the state of New York,
and that, uh, we will launch
an investigation into this situation
and protect the resources,
the, uh-- the water supplies
to all, of course, the residents
of, uh-- of the community.
[audience applauds]
[tense ethereal music plays]
[Fred] It was a huge deal
that Assemblyman Hinchey was there.
We have here in the Hudson River Valley,
one of the most important,
significant, historical,
and environmental resources
that this state possesses.
[Fred] When he was a rookie,
he was sent to Love Canal
to observe and to investigate
and see if the whole story was being told.
He had a name, he had a reputation.
He was a maverick, a crusader.
He was all those things.
So I'm thinking,
"We're gonna get these guys,
we're gonna clean things up."
"We're rolling. We got 'em."
[girl] Good evening,
and welcome to MHS TV.
Tonight, we have more general high school
section nine soccer highlights,
a book week presentation, and more.
[ominous music plays]
-[peppy music plays]
-Nuclear war, there's no reason for
[spacey music plays]
-Hi, I'm Jeff Dutemple.
-And I'm Rachel Raimist.
On Friday, March 20th, 1992,
Maurice Hinchey,
assemblyman from Saugerties
and the head of the task force
on the environment,
held a hearing
regarding the Wallkill Landfill.
Hinchey questioned many witnesses,
including former employees at the site,
local residents,
and Ward Stone, the toxic avenger.
Here are excerpts from the meeting.
[Jeff] Oh, my God,
we filmed so many hearings.
I think if we went to a meeting,
it counted as a grade.
Like the core group who was working on it
at that time, we just liked going.
So the grade didn't matter.
Do you have any way of estimating
the number of paper drums
that may have been deposited there?
I daresay at least a thousand.
No, I looked down, and this bag
was sticking up through the soil.
And there was one word
that I could see, and it was "lead."
It's a product called Lactra-60.
And it's a stabilizer used in plastics.
This kind of powder, could it--
could it do permanent damage?
It could kill you.
[reporter] Some students put together
a video, which I'm sure you're aware of.
And the conclusions
that they draw from this
is that it was a political cover-up here.
Do you think there's validity
to that comment?
I think that there is validity to that.
[man] I understand.
[Hinchey] The town has,
in all probability, participated
at some level in dumping
that occurred at this particular site.
I think that, to some extent,
there has been a cover-up here.
[Jeff] It was a moment
of legitimacy for us.
[Hinchey] Thanks for your help.
-We'll see you.
-Yep.
-Take it easy.
-Bye.
I mean, a lot of these things that were
once dismissed as conspiracies are
There's some basis to all of them.
-[Hinchey] Well
-[man 2] All right.
Hopefully, we'll resolve it.
Hopefully you'll resolve it.
I hope so, yes.
I-- I think we're-- we're on our way
to resolving it.
We will, uh, look forward
to the additional results
of tests that were taken by Mr. Stone.
And I think that they could be
possibly very revealing.
That-- That ends this hearing.
[people applaud]
[easy listening music plays]
[suspenseful music plays]
-[phone rings]
-[Fred] April 7th.
[Fred reading]
He says he went back to the dump
to do more research,
but the town supervisor
had him thrown off the site.
They even confiscated his samples
when he tried to leave.
They've decided to conduct
their own investigation
and Ward's not part of it.
So we decided we'd all go together.
[Rachel] We made a decision
to tip off the local media
that we'd be there.
We followed Ward filming,
and then the news filmed us filming Ward.
There was a bit of spectacle
involved with that.
-What have you got to hide?
-I have nothing to hide, sir.
-Yes, you do.
-There are no-- Mr. Stone.
-The agreement--
-You got something to hide.
The agreement with Assemblyman Hinchey
and your offices--
Not my office.
You can do anything you'd like here, sir,
as long as my engineers are present.
Get 'em. Get 'em, I'm here.
You want to come here and work,
you'll come here and work
when my engineers are here.
I cover the entire state of New York!
I came. I don't work on bankers' hours.
-Were there engineers with you?
-I was here in the time span.
-Sir, were the engineers--
-I was here in the-- Sir!
[Rachel] I always thought
politicians were just humoring us
because it was like cute and, you know,
civic engagement with young people.
But that day with Ward, that wasn't cute.
We were definitely meddling kids
in the middle of things.
And it was-- It felt heated.
The police came.
Do you understand what I'm telling you?
I understand that you have
something to cover up.
You don't want to see data
that is in contrast to you.
-Understand what I'm telling you?
-No.
-You don't understand?
-I understand what you're saying.
I am not accepting it
till I hear something different
from our law enforcement.
We're closed.
You're not taking any samples.
We'll see. We'll see.
Get a court order, and I'll honor it.
I want to look around
if I don't take samples.
No, sir. You're not doing anything.
You're leaving.
You're a problem.
Mr. Stone, this is private property.
-[Ward] Public property.
-No, sir.
You have been advised to leave
the property at this time.
Do you know of any violation of the law?
[cop] Violation of the law is
right now you are trespassing.
You've been asked to leave several times.
You do not leave,
I'm gonna have to arrest you.
[Rachel] Jeff, stop doing that.
[dialogue inaudible]
[telephone rings]
[Fred reading]
[mysterious music plays]
He is an intense man
with plenty of swearing,
and pauses for Jesus to strike him dead
if he is not telling the truth.
He says he worked
with the Orange County Sheriff's Office
since the early '80s,
and was in charge of the landfill
until he was removed
for being overzealous.
Mr. B also claims to have had
toxic samples destroyed
and notes confiscated.
"They're all corrupt," says Mr. B.
I'm starting to wonder
if all of these interesting
novelistic things
are really happening to me.
Or if I am a paranoid conspiracy theorist
who sees plots which aren't really there.
[students chatter]
-[videotape rewinding]
-Near this?
Nah, keep going.
[Fred] Mr. B wants to meet soon.
[student 1] Handing out fliers,
putting them on cars and things like that.
[student 2 groans]
[student 1] Having a public meeting,
informing people of the county's
Hi, my name is Trey Long
with MH-- MHS TV,
and I'd like to welcome
Mr. Bill Cummings to the set today.
He's gonna answer some questions for us.
Well, this is probably
where I'm gonna get beat up,
so might as well take it head-on.
Uh, Mr. Stone is a wildlife pathologist,
and he's supposedly
one of the best in the country.
Um, I've heard some great things
about Mr. Stone.
However, Mr. Stone has
yet to provide anyone
with his test results.
He's made certain accusations that I would
like to see investigated and handled,
um, but you can't investigate
if you don't have the information
in front of you.
[Trey] Mr. Cummings,
you took his samples--
Let me finish, okay?
I'll finish, and you guys
can attack me, okay?
Because Ward has told-- has told us
that he thinks
you're covering something up
by the way you are so adamant
about not letting him see his samples.
I have to defend the town.
I'm not gonna play pointing fingers.
He's told us that he's never had
a problem with other towns.
[Bill] Listen,
he's probably absolutely right.
As far as not being able
to see the samples,
even though the town engineers
weren't there.
He's absolutely right.
Uh, what I felt was,
this has become
such a critical, sensitive issue
that everybody
is constantly pointing fingers,
and talking about corruption,
talking about this, talking about that,
that we have to work together.
Um, I'm just gonna chan-- get away
from the landfill for a second.
This is a map of the town
of Wallkill and, um, Middletown,
and its plan for development.
And it's color-coded.
Trey did a very nice job here.
Thanks, Jeff.
We've been told, and as we understand,
this-- most of this land that's zoned
for industrial and commercial use
is, um, owned by past politicians
of either the town of Wallkill
or Orange County.
[Bill] Uh, yeah, there's no question
that certain families
have a lot of, um, land interest
within the town of Wallkill, absolutely.
[Jeff] Okay.
[Trey] The reason we're asking
is because we've seen
from a lot of different people
saying that the politicians
have basically bought land,
got involved in politics,
zoned their own land
for limited skyscraper apartments
or commercial districts,
and then planned
to sell it off in the future.
[tense chiming music plays]
[Mike] I think a lot of it came
down to parcels of land
that developers had their eye on.
If news gets out
that some of these properties are tainted,
they become worthless.
[townspeople chatter indistinctly]
When we arrived,
I remember one of the city councilmen
saying to me, "What are you doing here?"
I said, "I'm filming the board meeting."
And he said, "Why?"
Kind of with a sneer.
I said, "I'm here-- We're filming
the meeting like a journalist."
And he said, "You're not a journalist."
First off, for those of you
who are not from the town,
my name is Bill Cummings,
I am the town supervisor.
This public hearing
is on the topic of the landfill,
and the different alternatives
with what we should do with the landfill.
The basic findings
were minor contamination
by various organic chemicals and metals
on the site only.
As a result, there is
no imminent or immediate threat
to human health or the environment.
The landfill is a source
of minor contamination,
but does not pose a long-term
unacceptable risk
to either human health or the environment.
The alternative
that's been selected by the town
and by the state is alternative three.
Construction of a cap
over the entire landfill.
[ominous music plays]
I remember thinking, "Like a pool cover?"
Like, they're just gonna cover it
so we don't look at it?
Sounds like a very dumb idea
because you cover something,
but it's still dripping into the earth.
It-- It felt to me like an insult
on top of an injury.
I understand that water can be
contaminated miles away
and follow a stream under the ground.
So I think that you definitely
should follow through
and make sure
because I have grandchildren,
I work at the school system,
I-- I have many friends in the area, and
it's on your conscience.
Please.
[woman] Did you do any autopsies
on any of the animals?
[councillor] No.
There was no, uh, tissue analysis done
or anything like that.
-I had-- I had a pony who died.
-Mm-hmm.
And we did have an autopsy done on her,
and there was toxic chemicals in her.
-[councillor] Well, I think--
-And she-- We live a quarter mile away.
[man] Does anybody else want to speak?
Just maybe in the back.
I wasn't raised like,
"Your voice is important!"
"We want to hear what you have to say."
It was like, "Be quiet,
do what you're supposed to do." You know?
I had a lot of trouble
with the "be quiet" part.
[people chatter on video]
My name is Rachel Raimist,
and I'm a student
at Middletown High School.
And I just feel that I can
no longer stand in the background
and document this on film.
Because this-- this story is an example
for me and for my generation.
And all I ask
is that you really investigate
the situation to the fullest.
Because it seems to me
that putting a cap on this landfill
is merely just putting a cover on it
and saying, "Okay, we'll just look at it,
and we'll deal with it in 30 years."
Well, I'm gonna have to deal with it.
And your children are gonna
have to deal with it,
and my children
are gonna have to deal with it.
And it's really, really difficult
to come here and listen to you say,
"Okay, we'll just cover this up
and we'll deal with it later
without fully investigating."
Because this is a crime against humanity.
[townspeople applaud]
[applauding on video]
Yeah.
I wasn't wrong.
[mellow music plays]
On TV, Middletown was picture-perfect.
But there's a very high rate of cancer
in that whole surrounding area.
My own parents got sick and got cancer
and passed away almost 30 years ago.
But there was a time when my mom was sick,
her friend was sick,
the other lady down the street was sick.
Like, everyone was, like, waving
on their way to chemo.
It's such a hard thing to pursue,
except anecdotally.
To-- To say, "Look,
here's a road near a dump,
and all these people
who became ill because of it."
But that's not enough to make the case.
It's hard for laypeople to do that.
[past Fred] Okay, tape is rolling,
so any time you're ready.
Okay. Do you want to do a sound check?
[past Fred] All right.
Spread it like this.
[Fred] I mean, Trey Long has cancer now,
and is asking himself
if growing up in Middletown
made him sick.
What-- What can you think about that?
You know, it's terrible and it's happening
to more and more people.
[David] I really don't think
it matters where somebody lives.
Most scientists would tell us
that, uh, the average American consumes
the equivalent of a credit card a month
in microplastics, at this point.
If I shoved a credit card in your mouth,
that would be a crime.
That would literally be a battery.
I would have assaulted and battered you.
Yet, when this is done
on a corporate scale,
everybody just sort of accepts that.
[Fred] A landfill is
where we dump our secrets.
Where we put our misdeeds
and then paper them over,
cover them up.
We weren't going to let that happen.
[news anchor] State plans to cap
a toxic landfill in Orange County
have come under fire.
Those concerned
about the old town of Wallkill dump
say they want some answers
before officials seal the site.
Among those concerned,
a group of high school students.
It's a big environmental issue,
and it's something that
can really affect our lives.
It can kill people. It's a deadly issue.
[reporter] Fred Isseks teaches
at Middletown High School.
He says capping the dump
virtually ignores evidence
his journalism students
captured on videotape
in a class project.
These are kids who, in many instances,
know more about what's going on
in the county than their parents do.
[past Jeff] You've got
to get out there and work for it.
This is what we've been doing. You know,
now we're getting some exposure for it.
[Jeff] It snowballed, right?
Once the Village Voice article came out,
it was significant enough
that I then became,
like, the Toxic Avenger guy.
[psychedelic music plays]
[narrator] Melvin became
the Toxic Avenger,
the first superhero born
out of nuclear waste.
[Fred] Yeah, I-- I never saw the movie,
but more than one news program
used that expression.
[telephone rings]
[Fred reading]
There are ten toxic landfills like this
in Orange County,
all connected to the Mafia.
"All the drinking water
is polluted," says Mr. B.
[continues reading]
[past Fred] He strikes me as a man
who has a real strong sense of justice,
and he's really angry
that this kind of thing
has gone on so long
and nothing's happened.
So he wants to come in.
-[boy] In here?
-In here.
-[girl] With his gun?
-Probably sometime this week.
No, no, we'll make sure
that he leaves his gun outside.
And five, and ready?
-[boy] Three, two
-Do this serious, man. Do this serious.
Welcome to Middletown High School.
Today we're talking with an officer
from Orange County Sheriff's Department
who's gonna tell us a little bit
about the, uh, toxic waste dumping
at the Wallkill dump.
How are you doing?
My name is, uh, Armondo Bilancione,
and I work for the Orange County
Sheriff's Department.
My job, very simply, was to check
for toxic waste violations of the DEC laws
to the Orange County public landfill.
In the course of my duties
at that landfill,
I uncovered everything from toxic waste
to human body parts that local hospitals
dumped in that landfill
and mixed with regular garbage,
which is against the law.
We're talking syringes,
gauze soaked with blood,
organ pieces, and so forth.
I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
[chatting indistinctly]
[Armondo] To this day, toxic waste
is still buried in that landfill.
[gloomy music plays]
[boy 1] Got Chris, Nicky B, Mr. B
-[student] Having fun.
-Big J. Cole representing.
-[Armondo] He found a broken syringe.
-[boy 2] Here, a syringe.
[Armondo] That is
a definite medical syringe.
[Rachel] You hold it just like-- Ooh.
In the beginning,
when I was at that landfill,
I was writing tickets
like an everyday affair.
Bam, bam, bam, bam.
Stop, get out of the truck.
Stop, get out of the truck.
And I was writing like a maniac.
I gave my tickets to my superiors
in the sheriff's department.
Tickets I wrote out to people
that were supposed to go to a court of law
never made it to the courthouses.
But at the landfill, we had a book
on the post, which was at post one.
Every ticket we issued,
everything that went down,
I wrote in that book.
Well, I've come to find out
that apparently,
there was a burglary at the landfill.
A burglary at the landfill.
I said, "Oh, my God, toxic waste
is never gonna be safe again."
Well, guess what they stole?
-[students] The book.
-Ha, ha!
They stole the book.
So what are we talking here, in essence?
You're talking, as far as I'm concerned,
and I-- I know I can prove it,
cover-ups from the county,
state, and federal level.
I implore you, I beg you,
I-- Truthfully, when I ask you
as a human being,
write to these people
under the Freedom of Information Act
and find out what they tell you.
[suspenseful music plays]
[Jeff] We knew all about
the Freedom of Information Act.
I mean, we bothered Bill Cummings
for dump records all the time.
It's crazy that that was
a part of our schooling.
[past Fred sniffs] Okay, guys.
We're rolling.
What happened the other day?
Why did you go to Mr. Cummings' office?
All right, we went there
because two weeks--
three weeks ago, actually,
we filled out
Freedom of Information requests
and they're supposed to come in
in ten working days.
And we never got the information,
so we went to see why we didn't get it.
At first, he just wanted
to, uh, get us out of there.
Then, at the end, he was frustrated
with us 'cause we were there so long.
He was like yelling.
He's got a foul mouth, too.
[David] Yeah. He was angry and defensive.
-[Fred] You say he had a foul mouth.
-Yeah.
[Fred] Nobody here minds.
What did he say?
Just, like, we asked him
if we can come in and look at the stuff,
and he said,
"Yeah, you can look at all that shit."
[Fred] You didn't think
he was gonna get violent on you?
He was angry, but--
-We were laughing when he started yelling.
-Not our problem.
[Jeff] We took Mr. B's tip
and submitted a FOIA request
to the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
[past Fred] Uh, she said
there's a box waiting for us.
[woman] A box waiting for you?
What's your name?
[Fred] Isseks from Middletown High School.
We get this box of stuff,
and there's all kinds
of papers in it, and it's there.
-[past Fred] Uh, wow.
-[Rachel] We can close that door?
[Fred] The log books. Holy moly!
These are the log books.
[Rachel] Sheriff's notepad.
-[Fred] This is it.
-[Rachel] This is it! [laughs]
-[Rachel continues on video]
-[Jeff] It was wild.
Real-time evidence of toxic dumping
and proof of the parties
that were responsible for it.
-[boy] Look at all these pictures.
-[Rachel] These are the truck drivers!
[past Fred] Does it say
anything about tickets?
[Jeff] So then we took
all that information
to the district attorney
to see if there were
any charges actually filed.
-[past Rachel] That's what I said.
-[past Fred] Where's the letter "A"?
-[Rachel] Probably in the beginning.
-[past Fred] Okay, I have a feeling.
[Rachel] Not there.
It's not in that one, look in this one.
No, those aren't
[Fred] We suspected that people in power
were all involved in some way
in squashing those tickets
because they never saw the light of day.
[woman] Um, excuse me,
I don't think that you can
Excuse me!
Your tape
I don't know what you've got on it,
but you're going to have to leave it.
-[girl] Why?
-[Rachel] Isn't it public information?
[woman] Yeah, but you can't film it!
[Armondo] At one time,
I had a verbal argument
with a driver of a truck.
I couldn't believe the name of this person
that came out of the truck,
which was, um, very Italian, shall we say.
And, uh, I issued him a ticket.
And when I found
that he didn't have a permit,
I just knew something was wrong here.
I was told by certain drivers
that, uh, I was pissing off the people
that own Round Lake Sanitation.
It was public knowledge
Round Lake Sanitation,
which was the biggest garbage company
in Orange County,
was in fact run by organized crime.
So one day a black,
I think it was a Cadillac
and a Mercedes pull up,
and all these Italian guys,
they smell like garlic and stuff--
And I'm Italian.
They come out,
and, "Who is this guy, Bilancione?"
I said, "Oh, here we go.
It's the Guido Sarduccis," you know?
Bad enough they're in Brooklyn,
now they're up here, you know?
Only kidding.
A couple of them, I believe it was
Mr. Mongelli or his son,
exchanged some words with me,
Very simply, I told him,
"All I'm doing is my job."
"And I will continue to do my job."
[Fred] I didn't know much
about the Mongellis at all.
I remember mentioning it to my mother,
who said, "Oh, I know them."
Uh, "Their children went to school
in my school when I was a principal."
"Very nice people."
"When, uh, they had parents' night,
Mr. Mongelli would come in
and look after his kids."
[ominous music plays]
It seemed like something
out of a bad movie.
[man 1] Garbage is garbage.
[man 2] No, not when you're servicing
Fortune 500 companies like this.
Talking three-quarter,
maybe a billion metric tons
of waste in this country each year.
That's big bucks, Harold.
You have no idea how big.
We're talking about mob-controlled,
Mafia-connected carting companies
and gangsters that were doing the dumping,
and they just happened to be
in our neighborhood.
[dramatic cinematic music plays]
I was told that there's
a $5,000 bounty on my head,
that the first driver
that runs me over gets it.
And I don't mean run me over
to give me a broken toenail, no, no, no.
It was to bury me with the waste,
there's no doubt.
I don't know if Mr. Isseks knows this--
[on PA] Pardon the interruption.
We have one brief announcement.
The wrestling cheerleading practice
for today is cancelled.
There is a home meet tomorrow.
[Fred] Mr. B told us he knew
of another potential whistleblower
from the landfill.
He was willing to let us
interview him in my kitchen,
but he wanted a lawyer present.
Yeah. Is somebody gonna ask questions?
[Fred] Were there occasions when a car
would pull up after the gate was closed?
Oh, yeah. Uh
[Fred] Would you describe
that story please?
Um, my understanding was, uh
it was, uh, Lou Mongelli.
Hold on a minute.
[Armondo] Relax. You are among friends.
[Fred reading]
but for totally different reasons.
Dieter wants his lawyer to see
the script for the documentary
to see if Dieter should back out of it.
Good morning, how are you doing?
Mondo here.
[Fred] Mr. B, on the other hand,
wants to know when "our" documentary
is going to be done.
Everything is "we,"
especially the "we"
in "we are going to be rich after this."
Unbelievable.
[director] Did you ever think
to yourself, "Is this guy credible?"
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
It was easy to dismiss Armondo as,
"Ah, he's just a whacked-out dude
who wants to be tough."
I believe he was also, uh,
an aspiring actor at the time.
[dramatic music plays]
Take a look at this.
Touch it!
Go on, touch it!
[laughs menacingly]
[Mike] I think
we were savvy enough to recognize
Mr. B's limitations in presentation.
[Fred] We needed corroboration.
[past Jeff] In the past year,
we've learned that the Mongellis
has had control of the dumping,
and there are all these toxic waste sites.
Wouldn't a little common sense
tell us that the mob was involved,
and that they needed
the cooperation of the town
and legislatures? "Legislators."
Who's going to start our cars for us?
[laughs]
Let-- Let me just say
that we've had a lot of things
go on in Orange County, in many landfills.
A man was killed at the Tuxedo dump
because he had information
that other people did not want out,
and he got buried in another dump
over in the town of Montgomery.
-Hi.
-Hi.
Thank you for coming here.
We appreciate this very much.
We know you'll help us out a lot.
Do you feel that the past boards
have made money off of this,
off of this dumping?
In my investigations,
I've, uh, uncovered a number of instances
where members of town boards
received bribes
from, uh, carters who were working
for organized crime
or who were controlled by organized crime.
[sparse intriguing music plays]
Um, I took, uh, the materials that we had,
and we did extensive investigations,
as you know.
Here is a copy of our report entitled,
"Organized Crime's Involvement
in the Waste Hauling Industry,"
uh, which documents
and names specific people
who were involved
in these-- in these very serious crimes.
[Fred] Up until that point,
the Mongellis were an abstraction
to me, pretty much.
But it was Hinchey's report
that kind of colored it in,
what was going on.
It's a family tree of organized crime
in the carting industry.
My eyes kind of went
to the companies and individuals
that I had heard of.
And I realized that we were
just kind of scraping
a little corner of the entire story.
[Hinchey] Thousands and thousands
of tons of materials
were dumped throughout the Hudson Valley
under the direction
of organized crime figures.
And, in fact,
you can find these sites, um,
generally within a 200-mile radius
of New York City.
So in addition to upstate New York,
you could also find them in parts
of New England, and in Pennsylvania,
and in New Jersey,
and elsewhere in the immediate region.
It was compelling because,
wow, that's the kind of thing
that happens in movies and in books.
It doesn't happen in your backyard.
So when we started using the "M" word,
"Mafia," it became the hook.
Stick around. When we return,
teenagers take on a real-life project
exposing corruption and the mob.
Growing up as a kid, I just felt
like, you know, government would--
you know, was there to help us.
Then when I started
getting involved with this,
I realized that, you know, government
was just a lot of dealmaking
and stuff going on behind closed doors.
Didn't that frighten you guys, knowing
that there was a mob connection here?
Well, when it became clear
that the mob was involved,
it just sort of made us say,
"Well, that explains a lot."
[news anchor] Maurice Hinchey was offered
a quarter of a million dollars
as a bribe to end the investigation
into the dirty dumping.
But instead of accepting the bribe,
Hinchey would turn evidence
that would help put
the Mongelli brothers behind bars.
[Fred] He was wired.
He got that on tape.
And it became part of the story.
Are you left with a sense
that you affected real change
and the situation
has been brought to a close?
Well, we still have the sense
that we've got more work to do.
[man] Today, you're experiencing
what we experienced back then.
The wise guys are still running it.
They're still putting
anything imaginable in it.
They couldn't care less.
Garbage isn't just
what your mother tells you to take out.
It's a big, big business.
Our saying when we were working,
is "garbage is gold."
And it is. Garbage is gold.
Do we have anything to fear
with what we're doing?
Do you think that anyone
would come after us?
Don't be foolish.
Don't wander around by yourselves
in landfills or anything like that.
[telephone rings]
[Fred] 1:00 a.m., an anonymous phone call.
[Fred reading]
You've had your 15 minutes of fame.
Now let it go.
[ominous music plays]
Weird things would start happening.
You'd pick up the telephone,
and this is the era of, like,
the house phone with the long cord,
and you'd hear a clicking,
like a weird [mimics clicking]
Then, I'm like,
"I think our phones are tapped."
Like, "I think they're fucking with us."
Maurice?
My ma says
you're gonna get bumped off, man.
[students chuckle]
-By your mom?
-[students chuckle]
[students chatter excitedly]
[boy] Yeah! Bonfire!
[cheering]
[Jeff] There was a guy at a party,
and he was only
a couple years older than me,
but he did threaten me,
uh, and told me
to stay away from the landfill.
Exposing them to all of that,
it was at times a conflict for me,
and I think it was even more of a conflict
with my own daughter,
in that she was younger
than my students at the time,
and I was bringing
some of this stuff home,
and I was talking candidly
with Denise about it,
and Sadie would listen.
And I'm thinking, "Wow, I'm really gonna
turn her off to the whole world
by-- by exposing her
to all of this stuff."
[director] Do you remember
any student saying to you,
"Mmm, Mr. Isseks, ah,
it's just getting too weird, too freaky"?
No. No.
It's like pretty colors.
[students chatter and laugh]
[Fred] Electronic English was an elective.
If this kind of thing
really turns you off,
take modern literature, take Shakespeare,
take creative writing.
Don't take Electronic English,
'cause you know
this is gonna be part of it.
[gentle classical piano music plays]
[past Fred] Hi, this is Fred Isseks
for School Radio here on 1340 Wall,
sitting with a number
of Middletown High School seniors
right on the verge of graduating
in just a few months.
Are you looking forward
to graduating from high school?
[boy] I think it would be nice
to finally go out on my own, and
and I know I could live well,
independently as an adult.
And I wanna prove that to myself
as well as my parents.
[past Fred] How about somebody else?
Rachel, I believe you're a senior,
is that correct?
[Rachel] Yes, I'm a senior.
[Fred] Looking forward to getting out?
[Rachel] Yeah, I can't wait to graduate.
I can't wait for the future.
I'm planning to move out to Los Angeles
and, uh, go to film school at USC.
[Fred] Jeff, what about you?
Any plans for when you get out of school?
[Jeff] Well, um, I haven't really
thought much about it.
I still have a few years to go
until I get out of here.
[Fred] Does the thought
of leaving high school inspire you
or does it fill you with fear?
[Jeff] It doesn't inspire me,
but it doesn't fill me with fear either.
Um, I just want to get out.
[serene ethereal music plays]
[David] By the time I was a senior,
I ended up taking Fred's classes,
I believe, five times,
because I would just naturally
always wanna spend more time in the studio
or be around more.
People are starting
to talk about this issue.
They're starting to ask
good questions about the cap,
and who's putting it in,
and how much control the state has on it.
[David] I hate to say it,
but I know there was a perception
that Fred was sort of leading us
into danger,
and that this had turned
into this quixotic quest.
[Sadie] Let's say hi to Daddy.
See how he's doing.
Daddy, get off the phone now!
[blows raspberry]
-Oh, Jesus.
-[Sadie laughs]
[Rachel] You know, it's hard to say
with clarity what Fred even hoped
the endgame would be.
I personally hoped
people would see what we did
and care and stop.
Like, do clean that landfill out,
not just put a cap on it.
But, you know, then I grew up
and I went to college and I left,
and the story continued after me.
["Dirty Water" by Throwing Muses plays]
[past Fred] I'm thinking
we hire a plane for the day.
If we get lots of toxic waste on camera,
then that makes liars out of all of them.
Okay. You got a list of questions
that you wanted to ask me? Very good.
[girl] We're here in reference
to the illegal dumping that was going on.
Okay, let me stop you right here.
I let you come in here
to talk to me about Earth Day.
I don't have the time to get into this.
Look at the dirty water
Look at him
It seems to be
that you're more of a crusader
rather than a journalist,
and I wanted to know
how you would react to that.
That's a tough one.
When we started, it was pure journalism,
trying to-- to get at the truth.
And then as we worked on it,
it became clear that there was
a horrible thing going on here.
So in the sense
that I want to see a correction,
I would like to see the water
protected better than it is,
I guess in that way,
I am a crusader of sorts.
Sit at your hole
He's got a lot of hubbub.
[Fred] We've gotta get--
You gotta talk to him.
-[boy] All right.
-[Fred] Tell him what we're doing.
[boy] All right.
Sir?
Sir?
The county executives
can tell you all about it,
what we've done at the high school
as far as the tape.
Good for you!
[past Fred] Go ahead, Santos.
I got you covered.
There's a place supposedly
where the fence is low enough to jump.
What's this letter?
Ah!
[Fred reads]
"You deliberately led
your students to trespass
in a restricted maintenance area
on county property."
"More troublesome, however,
is how facile you are
in your deceit of innocence
in happening upon this site."
"This is a terrible attribute
to be teaching your students."
"Rest assured that future trespasses
will be dealt with appropriately."
I remember I was in the media center
kind of hanging out,
and Fred came over.
And I said, "Hey, how's it going?"
And he said, "Uh, not so great."
The district had contacted him
and said the school had had enough.
"We're gonna draw a line in the sand.
You're gonna stop doing this,
especially with the students,
especially with school equipment."
"And if for any reason
you do not abide by this,
you-- you will ultimately
not work here anymore."
And I-I-I'll never forget it.
And Fred said, "Yeah."
"So I was, you know,
on, like, my third Heineken last night
and I was thinking about this."
"I realized I don't need
this job that bad."
And I was like, "Fuck, yeah!"
-[man] Excuse me. You need help, guys?
-[Fred] We're from Middletown High School.
-How's it going?
-[Fred] Good.
We wanted to videotape
how the cap is going.
Is it okay if we just
sort of cruise around here?
Actually, no.
Unfortunately, you guys aren't
really dressed to go through the landfill.
And, uh, you're not
You're gonna stop doing that, right?
-[Mike] Huh?
-You're gonna stop videotaping me?
-I appreciate that.
-[Fred] I'm sorry.
[Mike] These are the, uh
the liners, I think.
Ah, shit. Truck's coming at us.
[laughs]
[Mike] Can you get that right there?
Now I'm using my house key
and I'm cutting
right through the actual liner.
This is the actual lining.
I'm actually using my house key to cut it.
You'll see that in a second, okay?
[chuckles]
It's just my house key.
And I'm cutting a piece right off of here.
[laughs]
-And it's cutting
-Who's that kid, man?
Not too easily, but it's cutting.
[Mike] It felt good to graduate
and leave this behind.
Because it took growth to move on
and leave it to the next generation
of kids who were gonna work on it.
The company that the town and the state
decided to hire to cap the landfill
has a bad record.
New York City refused to hire
the Tully Corporation
because of allegations
that they were linked to organized crime.
Did you know that, uh, Tully was connected
to organized crime in New York City?
I'm not saying they're not linked
to organized crime.
I'm not saying they are.
I'm saying it didn't matter to us,
frankly, okay?
Our legal obligation,
and I think our moral obligation
to do what's right
by our taxpayers and our residents,
was to award
to the lowest qualified bidder.
And that's the end of the story.
[David] 60 Minutes came to town,
the New York Times, ABC World News.
And it absolutely felt like, finally,
now we've finally gone up the ladder,
and now we'll see, um, some action.
Well, in other news tonight,
Wallkill officials will have
some special guests
at their town board meeting
coming up tonight.
Tonight, Fred Isseks' class will attend
a town board meeting in Wallkill,
as they have many times
in the past four years.
The difference is
the national media will be present.
[townspeople chatter]
[man] Before we open it up to the public,
uh, tonight we have a lot of guests.
We have a lot of, uh, media
here this evening.
Welcome to everyone
to the town of Wallkill.
Uh, I'd like to make a brief statement
about, uh, the media exposure
which the town of Wallkill Landfill
has recently received.
In order to ensure that this coverage
does not confuse the facts,
I would like to emphasize
the following points.
The Middletown High School students
have charged that the town of Wallkill
is covering up
by proceeding with the closure,
and has, at times,
publicly called upon the town
to cease construction on the landfill cap.
Now, I'd like to make this very clear.
This course of action would be illegal.
Federal and state law mandates
that we do exactly
what we are doing at this time.
Uh, with that, my comments are completed.
We'll now open the meeting
to public comment.
Anyone who'd like to speak,
uh, is welcome to do so.
[Fred] To me, there was something
about the story that was universal,
that had an appeal beyond its own time.
Hi, my name is Jonathan Wise.
-Daniel Andersen.
-Jackie Kordiak.
Hello. [clears throat]
My name is Melissa Kubik.
-I'm a sophomore
-I'm a junior
I'm a senior at Middletown High School.
[Fred] And I think it exemplified things
that we're taught
to believe are important.
-[man] Good evening. How you doing?
-All right, how you doing? Um
-My name is Jeff Dutemple.
-Welcome back.
-Huh?
-It's one of the graduates.
-Welcome back.
-Thank you very much.
[Fred] One would be
this idea of civic courage.
My question is in reference
to a quote you made
when we had you
into the media center for an interview.
You said that you had no problem hiring
an allegedly Ma-- Mafia-connected company.
And, um, I was just wondering
how the rest of the board felt about that.
And that became
one of our-- our mottos, civic courage.
It means acting as if you live
in a real democracy.
Was public health
any real concern of yours?
Because I know that the standards
are a minimum, but you can go beyond that.
Have you ever lost confidence in the DEC?
We've noticed there's
always a conflict of interest
between engineers and the town.
I know that your family has lived
in the town of Wallkill
for the past 200 years.
I was just wondering,
what is the legacy you'll be leaving
the generations of your family
in the future?
Next question.
[Fred] So we knew that a lot
of the things that we were doing
weren't going to bear any fruit
in terms of getting anybody arrested
or making any changes in policy.
But we proceeded
as though this is how it works.
If you provide evidence,
if you provide proof of something,
the right thing is going to be done.
[Jeff whispers inaudibly]
Mr. Isseks, Mr. Isseks hasn't gone yet.
I wasn't going to say a word.
I was just going to sit
in the back and watch. But here I am.
The fact that we have
national media here tonight,
I ask myself the question,
"What can a national audience learn
from this whole thing?"
So when you point out
that your hands are tied
and it's the DEC that's doing this,
I think it's a point well taken.
And now at a time when Governor Pataki
is looking to cut the DEC,
and whatever power it has now
is going to be lessened,
and when Congress is looking
to do the same thing to the EPA,
I hope that the American people learn
that it's going to be folks like us
that are gonna have
to take charge of things.
-Okay.
-And for that, I thank you.
[townspeople applaud]
[student] Turn it off now.
[people chatter]
[gentle music plays]
[students chatter excitedly on TV]
-[Jeff] Rachel! Whoo!
-[Rachel laughs]
Oh, my gosh.
-Hi.
-Aw.
[Rachel] Aww.
[Fred] So much has changed
since we all last hung out
in this room together.
[Rachel] It's crazy, right?
When you leave your favorite room
in high school, you just walk out.
[Mike] You think you're never
gonna see it again.
[Rachel] We'll never see it again.
I mean, I think this space put everybody
on a level playing field where
[chuckles]
Um
-[Mike] Need a hug, buddy?
-Maybe.
-[TV plays]
-[Fred speaks indistinctly]
[Jeff] It was a community.
It's one of the only reasons
I came to school.
Oh, my gosh.
This is so
[Fred sighs]
[hopeful music plays]
-[Fred and Rachel laugh]
-[Mike gasps]
[Rachel] Oh, my gosh!
-Oh, my gosh!
-[all laugh]
-[Mike] This is incredible.
-[Rachel] Right?
[Fred] I-- I think I remember this.
[past Rachel] This is a true story.
[student in sing-song] True story!
[boy 1] Of determined high school students
who chose to work for a cause.
[boy 2] By using camcorders and tapes.
-[girl] To find out what happens.
-[boy 3] When people stop standing around.
[boy 4] And start making a difference.
[all] This is the real world.
[laughing]
Everyone who's ever been in charge
at the town hall has said the same thing.
"Don't worry about that dump.
We'll take care of it."
"It doesn't pose a threat."
No one wanted to look into the problem.
Politicians didn't want to get involved.
District attorney wouldn't
even touch the issue.
Louis Mongelli used to live here.
He's now in
the Federal Witness Protection Program.
But he has never been charged
with any environmental crimes,
even though Round Lake was
the largest user
of the Orange County Landfill.
[director] Is Garbage, Gangsters and Greed
a good film?
No! [laughs]
It's a little bit clunky.
But that's not really the point.
[Jeff] I think you can watch
Garbage, Gangsters and Greed
and be amazed
at how messed up the system is.
And there's a level of jadedness
that-- that comes with
like, knowing you're right.
The Ford Motor Company operated
a huge automobile plant here
at the New York-New Jersey state border.
Ford is gone now, but their mess isn't.
I just thought at 50
I was going to get cancer and die.
Then I turned 50,
and I don't have cancer,
and I'm healthy.
I bought a big house,
and I got a notice
that there's a landfill with toxic waste
within a few miles of my new house.
I don't know how much
17-year-old Rachel understood.
But 50-year-old Rachel now knows
how important everything
that Fred was teaching us really is.
Maybe that's why Fred won't give up,
because it's not a story that ever ends.
Since Ward Stone was thrown
out the dump in 1992,
no one has done any real tests to see
what pollutants are washing off the site
and into the wetlands and aquifer below.
[student] It looks like our children
and our children's children
will be tending
to this lethal garden forever.
[dreamy music plays]
[David] I don't know. I feel like we had
a good confidence and focus.
Feel like we were doing pretty good
for kids that age.
[director] Anything you'd say
to that kid, you know, if you could now?
Keep going. Keep going!
Ke-- Keep going, right? Um
There's a Rolling Stones song.
"Isn't it wise sometimes
to never grow up?"
Like, what if we could get it right?
What if society could turn
the world back right-side-up?
[voice breaks] Yeah.
Very proud of all of us.
I hope-- I hope Fred's as proud as I am.
[birds squawk]
[dreamy music continues]
[Fred] Landfills almost seem
like a secondary problem
compared to the warming,
compared to the way
the oceans are changing,
the poisoning of the cropland.
All these things seem to be
more dire and more threatening
than abandoned landfills at this point.
But I think the landfill
can stand in for that,
because it represents
a problem that can be addressed,
that should be addressed,
but just [clicks tongue]
kind of gets kicked off to the side.
[music turns somber]
When I returned to school
in the fall of 2006,
I walked into a windowless room
that looked like a shoebox.
And all of the stuff
that had been in the studio,
the equipment, the cameras, the tapes,
boxes, cords, cables, everything,
kind of just [exclaims] plopped down
in a pile in the center of the room.
And it sure looked
an awful lot like punishment.
[paper ruffles]
The ancient Greeks had respect for place.
It's the Greek concept
of topos versus khra.
[Jeff] This was the football field,
and then these were the windows
-To the library.
-Yeah.
[Fred] Topos means a physical place.
One you can find on a map.
So was the door to the hallway there?
Oh! There was a door
Yeah, there was one over
by that editing room.
You came in, or the other side.
It was the whole end of the building.
[Fred] Whereas khra
is the specificity of a place,
and what the place opens up as a theater,
as a-- a space for creation,
as, uh, a womb, almost,
for the birth of something.
[director] Still rolling, guys.
Still listening, looking at the video.
["Parade" by Kevin Morby plays]
If you come to find out who you are
Then may you find out
May you find out who you are
And if you come search
For what is lost
Then may you find it
May you find it at any cost
And if you come, oh, so soft
You may look up one day
And you'll be hard
If I were
David came back to the hotel yesterday,
and he mentioned that you were considering
the name Garbage, Gangsters and Greed 2.
And it put a big smile on my face.
I love it.
I th-- I think that's fantastic.
I'm waiting for
Garbage, Gangsters and Greed 3, 4, and 5.
[laughs]
Putting my body on display
In the parade
All my friends were there
Waiting on me
Oh, Laurie was there
Waiting on me
And Anna
Was there
Waiting on me
I've come and I will go
Just the same
If I were to die today
Puppet in that gray charade
Last thing that you hear me say
Is "Bury me in different shades
Of the parade"
Passing slowly through the town
My feet, they cannot touch the ground
Go now, you'll go but, oh, just how?
Never leave this
Never leave this town
Of the parade
["I Am A Scientist"
by Guided by Voices plays]
I am a scientist
I seek to understand me
All of my impurities
And evils yet unknown
I am a journalist
I write to you to show you
I am an incurable
And nothing else behaves like me
And I know what's right
But I'm losing sight of the clues
For which I search
And choose to abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah, and just unlock my mind
I am a pharmacist
Prescriptions, I will fill you
Potions, pills, and medicines
To ease your painful lives
I am a lost soul
I shoot myself with rock and roll
The hole I dig is bottomless
But nothing else can set me free
And I know what's right
But I'm losing sight of the clues
For which I search
And choose to abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah, to just unlock my mind
I am a scientist
I seek to understand me
I am an incurable
And nothing else behaves like me
Everything is right
Everything works out right
Everything fades from sight
Because that's all right with me
Right.
Well, I hope you liked the video.
This is Chris Cordani signing off
for MHS TV in Middletown, New York.
Thank you for watching. Good night.