From its inception, New York City has had a problem with its waste. As it rose to prominence as an industrial and mercantile powerhouse, waste piled on the streets, was discarded into the ocean, and burned in incinerators. As the city grew wealthier, a disturbing trend– in which both waste and people deemed undesirable for wealthier residents to reside near – namely ill, immigrant, and incarcerated populations – were colocated together on Islands surrounding Manhattan’s mainland, where they were physically and visibly isolated. (Melosi, Fresh Kills)

As NYC began to pivot to a finance/real estate based clientele and the fight for environmental justice began, regulations banning incinerators and closing local landfills (notable Staten Island’s Fresh Kills in 2001) began to materialize long fought battles for justice within the city. The problem of waste did not go away – in fact, NYC now produces over 14 million tons of trash a year, which it now exports out of state. (Melosi, Fresh Kills) Much of this waste from the west side of Manhattan, a region in which Columbia University, the largest private landowner in NYC, owns significant property is burned in the densely populated, predominately working class Latino and Black neighborhood of the Ironbound. (Newark, ERI).

As defined by Ironbound-based activist Maria Lopez-Nuñez, the intense industrial clustering adjacent to her neighborhood denotes her community as a “Sacrifice Zone,” in which the health and well being of residents is harmed to fuel the consumerist lifestyles of whiter, wealthier cities. (The Sacrifice Zone). In this paper, I explore how Columbia's relationship with the Ironbound manifests within the greater phenomenon of the Sacrifice Zone.