There was an organization dedicated to cleaning up certain dumps
throughout the U.S. in the late 80s, early 90s, N. Hollywood Dump
being one of them. This (pretty long) article talks about how they got
local church's involvement in their organization (mayvbe a good
question to ask for future interviewees), along with giving a pretty
detailed view of the dump itself. It also talked about two other
dumps, but further down the article they focus solely on N. Hollywood
Dump.
http://www.sfaa.net/eap/memphis.pdf