Restoring ground, rebuilding communities.
From Detroit's vacant lots to tribal lands in the Southwest, residents are testing, treating, and replanting contaminated soil themselves. Here's how the movement works — and a practical framework for starting a project on your own block.
Across the American West, tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines sit in a legal gray zone where no one will accept responsibility for cleanup. We trace one Colorado site's decade of delay to understand who benefits from the ambiguity — and who pays for it.
Across the country, former Superfund sites are being transformed into housing, parks, and commercial corridors. But when cleanup schedules collide with urgent housing demand, who bears the risk — and who reaps the reward?
From coal country solar arrays to rail corridors turned greenways, a look at seven reclamation projects showing what's possible when abandoned land gets a second act — with the methods, costs, and transferable lessons for your own community.