Who Is Fred Isseks?
Isseks launched “Electronic English” in 1991 after Middletown acquired a handful of video cameras. Conceived as an alternative to a traditional English class, the course gave students access to editing equipment and considerable freedom over what they produced. They made music videos, homemade horror movies and even talk shows, learning how to shoot, edit and tell a story as they went.
The landfill project began after Isseks learned that former employees of the Town of Wallkill landfill were willing to discuss what they had seen on the job. Among them was Donald “Dutch” Smith, a former bulldozer operator who said he had buried large quantities of toxic and hospital waste. Other workers and drivers described industrial chemicals, paint sludge, medical waste and other materials that were not supposed to be disposed of in an ordinary municipal landfill.
The students soon widened their focus to include the Orange County landfill and privately owned Al Turi landfill. Their proximity to the Wallkill River and groundwater aquifers that supplied local wells heightened concerns about where contaminants buried at the sites might eventually travel.
What Middletown High School Students Uncovered
Over the next six years, hundreds of students took part in the investigation, interviewing former workers and waste haulers, attending public meetings and filing requests for government records.
One lead came from Dieter Bohnwagner, a former Orange County landfill employee who told the students about a dumping ground concealed in woods near a county-owned golf course. Following his directions, they searched the area and filmed partially buried 55-gallon chemical drums. Afterward, county officials warned Isseks and his students that they could be arrested if they returned.
Additional evidence was harder to obtain. For years, the students sought a logbook kept by sheriff’s deputies stationed at the Town of Wallkill landfill, only to be told it did not exist or could not be located. In 1996, a sheriff’s lieutenant finally produced the book for Isseks and two students. Its handwritten entries documented prohibited loads arriving at the landfill and citations issued to waste haulers. Many of those citations, the students learned, apparently never reached the local courts.
Garbage, Gangsters and Greed
The students also began looking closely at the companies hauling waste to the landfills and found that some had connections to organized-crime figures.
Mob-linked companies had long exerted control over portions of New York’s private waste industry through a system in which haulers claimed particular customers and routes, limiting competition and keeping prices high. The students examined those relationships alongside the evidence of illegal dumping and questions about how closely the landfills had been regulated.
The scrutiny brought resistance. Students recalled being followed after filming at a landfill, and one said he received a death threat warning him to abandon the investigation. County officials also threatened the class with arrest for trespassing.
The investigation drew the attention of Maurice Hinchey, then a New York state assemblyman known for his environmental work. Hinchey pursued allegations surrounding the landfills and held public hearings at which former workers testified. In 1995, The New York Times reported on the students and their investigation.
They continued working for another two years. In 1997, the class completed the hour-long Garbage, Gangsters and Greed, assembling years of interviews, documents and reporting into an account of illegal dumping in Orange County.
What Happened After the Investigation?
The three landfills eventually stopped accepting waste, but their closure did not settle the environmental questions surrounding them. Isseks and local activists have continued to question the adequacy of long-term monitoring and the potential for contamination to affect surrounding areas.
The privately owned Al Turi landfill, which closed in 2003, remains subject to post-closure oversight. A January 2025 state inspection found multiple violations, including problems with its landfill-gas and leachate-control systems. State records also document continuing groundwater monitoring, leachate collection and off-site disposal and maintenance of the landfill’s gas-management system.
Isseks has also questioned how the sites could withstand a major hurricane or flood, warning that severe flooding could spread contaminants beyond the landfills. Orange County officials have disputed that scenario, saying its landfill is capped with a waterproof membrane and sloped to prevent a collapse.
A New Documentary
Isseks held on to hundreds of hours of footage from Electronic English, preserving a record of the students’ investigation long after the class ended. Directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine learned about the archive after reading a 2020 Guardian article about Isseks and his students.
Moss and McBaine drew heavily on that archive for their documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025 under the title Middletown and was later retitled Teenage Wasteland. The film revisits the investigation largely through the students’ own cameras, much of it footage that had remained unseen for decades.
The students are seen interviewing former landfill workers, pursuing records, attending hearings and following leads. Moss and McBaine pair those scenes with present-day interviews with Isseks and his former students, who reflect on the investigation and their role in it more than three decades later.
For a few students, the experience also helped shape what came next. Rachel Raimist went on to a career in film and television. Jeff Dutemple continued working behind the camera as a professional camera operator, while Jon Gunther became an environmental lawyer, pursuing a field closely connected to issues he first encountered while investigating the landfills as a teenager.
