Targeting Reform: Superfund, Industri-Plex, and Pollution Remediation in the United States

The Industri-Plex Superfund Site in Woburn, Massachusetts, now the site of a Target Superstore, has been hailed as a success story. Woburn played a pivotal role in creating, shaping, and reforming Superfund, formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. Despite contention over Superfund, defenders of the program looked to Industri-Plex as a model for how Superfund can work in remediating a contaminated landscape for productive reuse. By focusing on Industri-Plex to understand this legislative history, the article reveals how Superfund reforms led to Industri-Plex pioneering a model for addressing toxic contamination across the United States during the late twentieth century that emphasized public-private partnerships and economic growth. The model overcame partisan divides and later was replicated at other sites across the country. By relying on private investment, however, the model failed to offer a solution for hundreds of polluted sites across the country with limited economic returns from redevelopment.