Model City USA: The Environmental Cost of Victory in World War II and the Cold War

Long shrouded in a cocoon of national-security secrecy, the history of the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works site in western New York sheds light on the enduring environmental, political, and social costs of victory in World War II and the Cold War. A micro-study of a nuclear waste site, this article analyzes connections among U.S. nuclear weapons waste management and the environment, local politics, grassroots activism, and international diplomacy. Ultimately, it argues that a spirit of patriotic sacrifice, combined with a culture of secrecy, overrode concerns about safety. The end result of that sacrifice is today a legacy of environmental contamination and the progressive decline of local democratic controls over natural resources.