Urban Control: "The Toxic Rim"

9. The Toxic Rim

Where does the nightmare end? Burgess was not greatly interested in urban boundaries. His Chicago dartboard simply fades into the "commuter zone" and, beyond, into the Corn Belt. The city limits of Dystopia however, are an intrinsically fascinating problem. In Blade Runner, it will be recalled. the dark megalopolis improbably yielded, at its outer edge, to Ecotopia -- evergreen forests and boundless wilderness.

No such happy ending will be possible in the coming Los Angeles of 201~. Postmodern geographer Edward Soja has observed that Southern California is already bounded, along an almost unbroken desert perimeter, by huge military air bases, bombing ranges and desert warfare reservations. Now a second, equally ominous circumference clearly is being drawn around this Pentagon desert. Choking on its own wastes, with its landfills overflowing and its coastal waters polluted, Los Angeles is preparing to export its garbage and hazardous landuses to the Eastern Mojave and Baja California. Instead of reducing its production of dangerous waste, the city is simply planning to "regionalize" their disposal.

This emergent Toxic Rim includes giant landfills at Eagle Mountain (the former Kaiser open-pit iron mine) and possibly near Adelanto (defunct Air Force base), the controversial radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley near Needles, and the relocation of such polluting industries as furniture manufacture and metal-plating to Tijuana's maquiladora belt. The environmental consequences may be almost catastrophic.

The proposed 300,000 barrels of nuclear waste, for example, in the unlined trenches of the Ward Valley nuclear dump will remain lethal for 10,000 years. They will pose the perennial risk of leaking radioactive tritium into the nearby Colorado River, thereby poisoning the irreplaceable water source for much of Southern California. For its part, the immense landfill at Eagle Mountain -- 2.5 miles long, 1 mile wide, and 2,000 feet deep -- will not only contaminate the water table but also create a toxic shroud of air pollution over much of eastern Riverside County. Meanwhile, the flight of hazardous industries across the Border, eventually including a large segment of Los Angeles' petrochemical production, will increase the possibility of Bhopal-like catastrophes.

In sum, the formation of this waste-belt will accelerate the environmental degradation of the entire American West (and part of Mexico). Today a third of the trees in Southern California's mountains already have been suffocated by smog, and animal species are rapidly dying off throughout the polluted Mojave Desert. Tomorrow, Los Angeles's radioactive and carcinogenic wastes may be killing life as far away as Utah or Sonora. The Toxic Rim will be a zone of extinction.

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