Summary

In Chapter 5, “Where You Live Matters,” Villarosa presents Danielle Bailey’s story. Bailey “grew up in Walnut Cove, North Carolina” (90). Throughout her childhood, she spent “weekends at Belews Lake” (90). Danielle would later discover what few locals knew: the lake was “created in the 1970s to provide cooling waters for Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Stream Station” (90). The lake was polluted by this “coal-fired electric generating” plant (91). In 2014, residents learned how “the lake and the land around it might have sickened” them (91). In her thirties, Danielle was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Walnut Cove was one of many “so-called fence-line communities” (93). Because its residents were largely poor Blacks, local governments had sanctioned the erection of proximal “facilities that emit hazardous waste” (93).

When Danielle’s childhood friend Caroline learned about her condition, she started researching how coal ash contaminates lives (97). Per Caroline’s suggestion, Danielle moved...