Three years ago, when Fred Isseks started a video journalism class at Middletown High School in upstate New York, his expectations were humble. He hoped to get students comfortable with the equipment and interested in current affairs. But when a local environmentalist introduced Isseks to two retired local landfill workers with a frightening story that they had never shared before i about massive toxic dumping in the local landfill -- the class syllabus changed. Soon the students were researching such things as water quality and land use, local politics and the mob.

Under Isseks's guidance, the students produced a videotape, parts of which were aired on two local television stations, that put the Wallkill landfill's complex history into perspective and raised more intelligent questions about the danger it may pose than had the local press, notably Ottoway Newspapers' Middletown Times Herald-Record. Among other things, the tape notes that the landfill had been built over a major aquifer, that the town had unwisely sold space in it to out-of-town customers, that there was a history of mob-linked toxic dumping in the region, and that there were reasons to question a consultant engineering firm's million-dollar report, which had found that the dump contained only "minor contamination." One reason was that the firm had never pursued the allegations of the retired workers, who claimed to have seen massive toxic dumping; another was that a state wildlife pathologist, who was interviewed by the students, said publicly that he thought the dump was "an ongoing environmental threa"

The students' research prompted hearings and continuing political debate about what to do about the now-closed dump, which environmentalists would like tested further to see if it needs to be cleaned up, and which the town of Wallkill would like to cap and forget. Isseks and his students continue to keep a video record of the controversy. He now teaches five television classes and 145 students.

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