The enactment of the “Sewage Sludge Ordinance” in East Brunswick Township can only be understood in the context of the historic treatment of Schuylkill County as a resource colony, an area that has been stripped of its resources by corporations that left behind communities stricken with poverty

Since the 1820’s, Schuylkill County has been used as a natural resource extraction colony and as a dumpsite for waste imported from other regions. Within decades of the discovery of anthracite coal in Schuylkill County, fortune-seekers targeted the area for intensive resource extraction.