Fiasco at Wagner Electric: Environmental Justice and Urban Geography in St. Louis

Abstract

The announcement that the Wagner Electric Company planned to close the Hillside Works in 1981 devastated residents of Wellston, Missouri, even if it did not take them entirely by surprise. Over the previous two decades, the company had diverted production to factories in other cities, trimming its Wellston work force from a peak of six thousand to less than fifteen hundred. For the small, incorporated municipality, located just across the western boundary of St. Louis, the most serious consequence of the plant closing was the loss of revenue. Wagner Electric was the city's largest taxpayer, with an annual assessment of $37,000. Wellston was in no position to absorb such a loss. Once a bustling retail center, it suffered from industrial, commercial, and residential white flight during the 1960s. By 1980, when African-Americans comprised over 90 percent of Wellston's population, one out of three families lived below the poverty line. With an unemployment rate approaching 20 percent, rising crime rates, and the signs of physical decay rampant throughout the city, Wellston was a textbook example of the nation's urban crisis. Wagner Electric's departure would be a tough pill to swallow for a community already mired in hard times.' The news soon became worse. When Wagner Electric abandoned Wellston, few residents knew that its property was contaminated with toxic waste. Only after the company transferred title to the property to St. Louis County did inspectors discover that the company had left behind more than four thousand gallons of oil containing PCBs.2 Initially, the county anticipated converting the 55-acre site into an enterprise zone that would attract new business into the depressed area. Instead, it spent the next decade wrangling with Wagner Electric to determine liability for removing the toxic material and negotiating with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to devise an acceptable redevelopment plan for the property. Although a 1987 settlement with Wagner Electric's parent company, Cooper Industries, guaranteed enough money to fund a partial cleanup of the site, redevelopment proceeded at an excruciatingly slow pace. As of April 1997, the site remains mostly vacant.