Ivy Solar Landfill Final Design Report; A Case Study of Environmental Injustice in Post-Industrial Detroit

My technical project and STS project both focus on issues surrounding the formation and existence of brownfield land. As discussed in my STS paper, brownfield land is land that due to prior human development, is deemed in some way hazardous or unsuitable for further development, in its current state. In a world that is continuously occupying and then discarding natural resources, such as the land itself, the question of what to do with this now repudiated land becomes prominent. My technical project lays out an approach to reutilizing brownfield land, navigating the constraints of the site while providing new opportunities. My STS project takes a few steps back, considering the ethical implications behind the placement of these sites in the first place. My STS research is informed by an awareness of the fact that brownfield sites such as the one utilized in our technical project, often have vastly negative impacts on the communities surrounding them.

In my technical project, my group was tasked to develop a solar power facility atop Ivy Landfill outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Ivy Landfill is a capped landfill; this means that the waste has been encapsulated by landfill liners and is now fully covered by an 18 inch layer of soil and vegetation. Due to the fragile nature of the landfill, the potential developments which can be placed on top are limited to those that will not puncture the landfill cap, bear minimal load on the landfill, and avoid disturbing the location of landfill infrastructure such as gas vents. Our final design is a solar array on the eastern portion of the landfill, with a capacity of 3 MW power to the grid. Our final deliverables include an existing site conditions sheet, an Erosion and Sediment Control Plan, a solar array layout model, a cost estimation sheet, and a community engagement plan. One of the most notable takeaways from the design process was thinking through the special considerations that are involved in developing on brownfield sites.

In my STS research, I was interested in understanding more about why brownfield sites are where they are, and how that may be influenced by racial, economic, and historical factors. I decided to conduct a case study of environmental injustice due to the existence of brownfield sites in Detroit, Michigan. I began with a brief overview of Detroit’s background as an industrial city, followed by a contextualization of discriminatory urban planning practices in the United States. I compiled several different frameworks theorizing the mechanisms behind environmental justice, and applied them in an analysis of zip code 42817, a highly polluted neighborhood in Detroit. Aided by Langdon Winner’s framework of Technological Politics, I supported the claim that unjust planning decisions result from the designs that engineers create, and thus fall under the ethical responsibility of engineers to serve the welfare of the public.

Challenging engineers to consider technical and social factors simultaneously enables engineers to contextualize their designs beyond the purely technical. In the realm of siting developments and infrastructure, there exists a complex history of marginalization and malpractice. However, identifying social issues as in part technical issues, open the doors for a fresh kit of perspectives, tools, and approaches for navigating these intricate problems. Through my STS and Technical projects, I strive to provide a potential path forward for addressing societal issues of environmental injustice from a multidisciplinary standpoint.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering
Technical Advisor: Leo Liu
STS Advisor: William Davis
Technical Team Members: Mina Gorani, Caroline Maher, Maggie Collins, Demari Johnson, Erik Hammerquist