ReGenesis found ways to leverage nearly $300 million in investments to address not only environmental issues, but also social and economic injustices within the Arkwright and Forest Park communities of Spartanburg.
Standing on a dead-end street in Spartanburg, S.C., Harold Mitchell can plainly see the history of injustice in his community. On one side lies the remains of his childhood home. On the other, a shuttered fertilizer plant that was operational when Mitchell was growing up. He distinctly recalls smells of ammonia and sulfur emanating through the neighborhood that “were so pervasive, you didn’t even think about it.” He remembers his father regularly cleaning white dust off their cars, and workers emerging from the plant gates “looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy” covered in fertilizer dust from head to toe. Sometimes, he’d walk with the plant’s night watchman, strolling alongside neon green sewage lagoons located not far from his bedroom window.
Reprinted courtesy of Bruce Buckley, Engineering News-Record and Pam Radtke Russell, Engineering News-Record
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