Emelle is home to the largest hazardous waste landfill in the United States, called the “Cadillac of Landfills”, owned by Chemical Waste Management, Inc. This town of just a few dozen residents, became a center for controversy on environmental racism. Environmental racism is the idea that the majority of the nation’s hazardous chemical wastes are landfilled in African American, Hispanic and Native American communities. In 1978, Chemical Waste Management purchased a landfill permit of near Emelle in Sumter County. In Sumter County, one-third of the residents live below poverty level, which makes it one of the country's most impoverished regions. Over 90 percent of the residents near the landfill are Black, which to some qualifies this as environmental racism. This landfill has become the largest hazardous waste landfill in the United States and among the top in the world, as Waste Management, Inc. has landfilled 5 or 6 million tons of hazardous waste. Most of the waste disposed of in the United States, due to the Superfund removal program, ended up at the landfill between 1984 and 1987. It is on top of the Eutaw Aquifer, which supplies water to a large part of Alabama.