(4 of 5)
Perhaps the most compelling symbol of Camden's role as trash heap is the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, which processes 55 million gallons of raw sewage each day. Camden's suburbs used to treat their own sewage, but several years ago they began shutting down their 46 treatment plants and pumping all the waste into Camden instead. Says William Tucker, a professor of psychology at Rutgers who has lived in Camden for 20 years: "The stink is enough to kill you."
Some business leaders prefer to characterize the relationship between city and suburbs as "symbiotic." The city provides services, says James Wallace, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey, and the suburbs provide the tax base: "Each without the other simply could not get along." But the argument that this is a fair trade is offensive to the people of south Camden whose neighborhood reeks of human excrement. Every year these residents, the majority of whom are poor, must pony up $275 for sewage treatment -- the same amount that rich suburbanites pay in communities with names like Tavistock and Haddonfield.
For all the sorrow and the danger, the stench and the dilapidation, it is sometimes easy to ignore the most visible sign of change in Camden -- a project that many people are convinced is the seed of a new city. Investors have pulled together roughly a quarter of a billion dollars that will bring to the Delaware waterfront the headquarters for GE Aerospace, plus a hotel, waterfront park, the nation's second largest aquarium and an office tower to contain the world headquarters of Campbell's Soup. The hope, says Thomas Corcoran, president of the Coopers Ferry Development Association, is that the complex will strengthen the tax base, bring in new jobs and restore to the residents a much needed sense of civic pride.
Given the prime swatch of real estate directly across from Philadelphia, the project has generated plenty of interest from future tenants and developers. But there remains the disturbing possibility that Camden's waterfront may become a daylight colony of suburbanites surrounded by a sea of urban decay. The ripples, say the skeptics, might never extend beyond the edge of the Delaware.
The reclamation of the rest of Camden, for the moment, rests in the hands of humbler agents. Dotted throughout the city are a number of tiny oases where abandoned homes are restored and sold at cost to families in need of housing. One such venture is Heart of Camden, which has so far rescued 55 of the city's 4,000 abandoned homes. Three years ago, the group also decided to bring in youths from the state juvenile facility to help with the renovations; they now manage their own operation.
The homeowners in HOC are turning their hands to the task of building more than just houses; they are also being given the chance to become the carpenters of their own futures. But the children of Camden, like all poor children in all dying cities, need more than pilot projects and symbolic gestures. "Camden is the purest distillation of our policy of not-so-benign urban neglect," says Congressman Rob Andrews. "We cannot afford to just write off 10% to 15% of the American public as irredeemable. Anyone who has any compassion must feel this."