A place called home: Place, culture, and politics in three communities near Superfund sites

This dissertation examines the acute sense of place, culture, community, and politics produced a new cultural identity and attachment to home of such depth in three communities near Superfund sites. This identity and the resulting connection with a specific physical environment served as a core driver in their political negotiations for federally funded cleanup and relocation projects. Neighborhoods in Pensacola, Florida, Denver, Colorado; and Seattle, Washington represent the grassroots history of the Superfund era. This history merges the internal development of these communities with legislative environmental reform.;Regional location and specific environments for families in this study appeared less important than the internal development of their communities that rooted them emotionally and physically to their homeplaces. Each study group experienced a steadfast binding to a specific place, which illuminated similarities in their internal development and external challenges that created the link. Similarities in challenges included forced isolation, marginalization, and necessarily choosing between the competing realities of immediate needs for subsistence and more distant, but harmful results of living in a toxic environment. Characteristics of their internal development included alliances, reliance on kinship, tribal, or community networks, and adaptation through use of their networks. These factors operated as the primary determinants of a nationally shared attachment to place.;This new identity helped shift the balance of power toward a more equitable relationship between the Environmental Protection Agency and the study communities because residents merged their kinship networks with the power of CERCLA, SARA, and Executive Order 12898. The historical tendency to provide generational leadership in meeting immediate and long-term needs aided in strong political relationships between communities and government agencies.;The ways in which communities influenced and used legislative reform revealed a grassroots history of the Superfund era. The role of EPA-designated Community Advisory Groups took a prominent place because they evolved from recognized kinship and neighborhood networks and held the trust of neighborhoods suspicious of government representatives. The politicization of these networks into Community Advisory Groups provided a formal system through which the communities in Pensacola, Denver, and Seattle demonstrated the importance of their cultural identity and attachment to their home places.