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Developer W.D. Flatt began his new Brightside housing development after registering his Plan 453 Survey in 1910.  Advertisements for the development boasted of the “clean bracing air” that workers and their families would enjoy. In reality, the emissions from a sewage treatment plant, the municipal incinerator, the dump, and the pollution of heavy industry filled the water, air, and soil of Brightside.  

Listen: Truth Or Dare & Sewage. Click the play circle below.

Show/Hide Transcript

Speaker 1:    

’Cuz Zasada’s farm there … all the sewage used to spew out there all the raw sewage. 

Speaker 2:    

We used to play Truth or Dare. 

Speaker 1:    

Yeah. 

Speaker 2:    

So, in our, in our, like the last kids where we would play a game called Truth or Dare, with a bunch of guys around, or maybe a couple of girls or not. 

You would say, um, do you choose Truth or Dare? 

And the guy would say, Truth. 

Well, the guys would say, well is it True that you kissed Lorraina last night? 

You know it’s like, 10 or 11 or 12. 

Or then the guy would say, Truth or Dare. 

Oh. 

And then the guy would go Dare. 

Oh, okay. 

[laughter] 

So, I Dare you to go on your bike and go down to where the s— comes into the bay. 

Speaker 2:    

Yep. 

Speaker 1:    

And scoop up a piece of s__ and come out, and put it in your carrier, and bring it back here. 

Speaker 3:    

Oh Gawd. 

Speaker 1:    

So, you’ve got to go down there, you couldn’t not accept it, a Dare. 

Yeah. I do go down there and figure out how to get, you know, those s__ wasn’t processed all that well by that place on the corner... 

Speaker 3:    

No. 

Speaker 1:    

…a lot of chunks came up. 

But prophylactics came up, that’s how you first learn the name Ramses, so you can actually see, you could see the stuff coming out of the damn pipe… 

Speaker 2:    

Yeah. 

…right into the bay. 

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