Harriet Washington, an award-winning New York author, is working on a new book that explores environmental harms in heavily industrialized communities of color like East Chicago, Indiana. The EPA began investigating contaminants at the USS Lead Superfund site in the 1980s — but the city's Calumet neighborhoods were not earmarked for cleanup until 2009 and families didn’t learn the full magnitude of the problem until summer 2016. Those in public housing were forced to move, but adjacent homeowners were not given that option as EPA began excavating their yards.