Galassia Grassetto thought she had found a quiet, safe place to live. Then she discovered what had been deliberately buried beneath her community. What began as a local mystery became a five-year investigation that reaches far beyond one neighborhood, into a secretive federal program designed to make toxic waste disappear. Drawing on never-before-seen depositions, undercover footage and the David-and-Goliath fight of a senior federal scientist turned whistleblower, Grassetto pieces together how this material found its way into the homes and lives of millions of Americans without their knowledge, and why a growing number of states are now beginning to challenge it.

A tenacious work of citizen-led reporting, The Sludge War weighs official assurances against the evidence, and asks what communities are owed when the people living with the consequences are the last to know.