Polluted by Design | Episode 3: Westport — The Truth Behind the Machine

Episode 3: Westport — The Truth Behind the Machine In Westport, the towering smokestacks of the incinerator long known as BRESCO—now Wheelabrator’s WIN-Waste Incinerator—stand as a daily reminder of political decisions made without community consent. In 1981, after protests from wealthier white neighborhoods, Baltimore officials placed the city’s largest waste incinerator in this predominantly Black, low-income community. Residents have since endured elevated exposure to pollutants linked to serious health harms, while corporate narratives frame the incinerator as beneficial. The Truth Behind the Machine explores what that framing obscures. The episode documents a community fighting back—challenging the incinerator’s permit renewal as a “renewable” energy source and questioning who should have the right to determine what kind of infrastructure belongs in a neighborhood. Through this examination, Westport emerges not as a site of decay, but one of resistance and revival. --- Polluted by Design: Histories of Waste and the Struggle for Environmental Justice in South Baltimore is a four-part documentary series created by students in the Environmental Justice Workshop at Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University, in partnership with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT). The project was developed with the guidance of instructors Chloe Ahmann and Anand Pandian and filmmaker Andrea Conte. --- The South Baltimore Community Land Trust is a community-led organization working to build permanently affordable housing, development without displacement, and zero waste in Baltimore. Learn more at sbclt.org.