The Perseverance of Palmerton​

A town lives with a toxic history, but refuses to be defined by it

Story and photos by Jason Grant
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Throughout the past semester, my environmental journalism class studied a town that had been polluted since the early twentieth century, and I thought for sure it would be a town covered in a green haze with black clouds perpetually looming over it. That town is Palmerton, Pennsylvania, which was built on the successes, and failures, of the New Jersey Zinc Company, who founded Palmerton in 1912. Palmerton is a tiny town located in the coal region of Pennsylvania, on the edge of the Lehigh Valley. The population of the town is only 5,306 people, so almost all of the families owe their origins in Palmerton to the Zinc Company. In 1912, the New Jersey Zinc Company opened their first smelting plant on the west end. The company flourished for decades, In 1980, the plant was shut down due to environmental regulation, and in 1983 the EPA put the Palmerton Superfund on the National Priority List.
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The superfund site now serves as an education center for visitors called the Lehigh Gap Nature Center. When I learned this, I assumed that the citizens of Palmerton would loathe the zinc company for contaminating the surrounding environment. To see it for myself, I drove through rural Pennsylvania on a Friday afternoon with my roommate. I assumed I would know where it was when the clouds began getting darker. My roommate used my phone for GPS and when he said we were a few minutes away, I was shocked. The scenery of the surrounding landscape was breathtaking. We drove over a small bridge above the calmly flowing Lehigh River, which flowed like a canal in the middle of two mountains. On the far side of one of the mountains sat Palmerton.
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“The Zinc Company is remembered very fondly, a few of the Board members are still active people in the community,” said Christine DeSousa, the Library Director at the Palmerton Area Library. “All the locals have an uncle, father, grandfather, brother, that worked at the refinery at one point.” Chad Schwartz, the Director of Science and Education the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, noted that the citizens of Palmerton are very hesitant to speak badly about the New Jersey Zinc Company. Their economy was solely based off the company, along with the benefits they received and the schools built in the area are all attributed to the company. “The town is still very much loyal to the company for the sheer fact that they built the town, from the houses, the hospital, the public places,” DeSousa continued. “They designed the town to be an industrial town, the physical infrastructure of the town was designed with the zinc company in mind.”
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Mark C. Urban, a biologist and associate professor in Ecology at the University of Connecticut, understands why Palmerton, and towns like it, are loyal to these companies, “I think that people need a job to feed their family and pay their rent,” said Urban. “That’s everyone’s first priority even if the business you work for is poisoning the city. It’s just too bad that too many people need to make the choice between a job and poison, a paycheck and a mountain. No one should need to make that choice in our country.”
I took the exit for Palmerton, and within a minute it led me directly to main street, in the center of town. Small businesses lined the street, a welcome sign that the local economy had successfully transitioned from zinc mining.
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As we walked down the road, we came up to a small park, aptly named Palmerton Park, across the street from the library and post office. Under the bodega in the middle of the park, there were hundreds of people gathering. The town has a population of barely over 5,000, and it seemed like they were all in the park. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday, I could not understand what could possibly be going on. Then it dawned on me, it was the prom! Hundreds of people were posing for pictures and chatting with parents, while their younger siblings ran around and raced to the playground. My preconceived notions about Palmerton had turned out to be mostly wrong. I say mostly because coincidentally, it was pretty dark and cloudy that day, but there was no sign of a green haze. The park was beautiful, different types of trees lined the park. The vibe made an ordinary Friday feel like the fourth of July.
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My next stop was the library, and when I asked about the superfund, I half expected the librarian to get mad that I even mentioned it. But she seemed unfazed, as if answering questions about the superfund to college students was her day job. She was also quick to add that, “Palmerton is a great place to live. Once a week in the summer, there is a movie shown on the lawn in the park.” Then, she told me to go downstairs where they had a plethora of books on the New Jersey Zinc Company as well as the actual EPA legislation mandating the cleanup of the Palmerton Superfund. It quickly became clear that they want to educate visitors about their history and how resilient they have become.
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Although Palmerton’s identity is strongly linked to their superfund, there are 127 superfund sites throughout Pennsylvania, according to the EPA, most of which go unnoticed. “Superfund sites can really stay hidden, especially if industry has grown on top of it,” said Holly Angelique, professor of community psychology and social change at Penn State Harrisburg. “My own campus sits on a superfund site and most faculty and students are completely unaware of it.”
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My last stop in Palmerton was at a little shop next to the park called Claude’s Creamery. I got dark chocolate milkshake to go before leaving, at the recommendation of the cashier, and it did not disappoint. On the car ride back, drinking that milkshake, I realized I had spent a day that was no less enjoyable than a day in my town or any other east coast town I’d been to. They do not blame the zinc company because it is a town that values what it has, not what it has lost. “One question to ask,” explains Angelique, “is ‘What good can come from blaming the company?’ If only bad things will happen, is there a benefit for people to hold the company responsible? Even when people do blame the company, how can they access the resources to prove it? And even if they can prove it, they still have a David/Goliath problem if they are able to go to court.” [the end]

Jason Grant

Jason Grant is a student at Muhlenberg College as a Political Science and Communications major. As a writer for the Muhlenberg Weekly and as someone who loves the outdoors, Jason has become interested in the preservation of land and in making sure that large corporations do not harm the land in pursuit of economic gain. A lifelong New York Yankees fan, the land he most wants to be preserved is the beautiful center field grasses of Yankee Stadium that are ironically surrounded by three levels of concrete.