The ecological-symbolic perspective posits that community response to toxic contarnination is shaped by both the nature of the environmental disruption and the interpretive frames through which those disruptions are apprehended. Full utilization of this perspective has been hampered by the deterministic underpinnings of the current chronic technological disaster model, which presents local conflict as a virtually inevitable outcome of these events. We draw upon the more contingent framing of the ecologicalsymbolic perspective to analyze the experiences of two communities that displayed consensual response patterns. We identify ecological and organizational factors that facilitated an interpretive framing of "limited danger".Complex problems associated with technological hazards have risen to increasing prominence in the decades since World War I1 (Cutter 1993). Such technically based disasters confront community residents with unprecedented dilemmas (Kroll-Smith, Couch, and Marshall 1997; Kroll-Smith 1995). Reflecting on the reactions to such crises, researchers have reported a convergence toward a community response pattern that William R. Freudenburg and Timothy R. Jones (1991) have labeled "the corrosive community" and that Kai Erikson (1994) has attributed to "a new species of trouble." Inherent in this second designation is the idea that toxic, contamination constitutes a disruption of biospheric processes profoundly different from anything that has preceded it in human history. In communities confronted by this "new trouble," the "ties that bind" neighbors, families, and friends become unglued, setting in motion a pattern of intracommunity conflict (Freudenburg 1997). ~ ~~~Direct all correspondences to Valerie Gunter,

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Our paper reports a toxic disaster in St Louis, Michigan and surrounding non- metropolitan Gratiot County that was linked to the contamination of Michi gan's human food chain with the fire retardant polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) in the 1970s. This case produced a resilient local response as area officials and residents worked to obtain outside resources for contamination problems with out destroying the fabric of community life. The Gratiot County case cautions against overgeneralizing about the inevitability of community conflict follow ing toxic disasters. Nevertheless, area strategies based on recognition of limi tations on the County's place in the larger political system defined an inher ently reactive response with long-term costs for area recovery.