This was my very FIRST exploration. I think I was 9. I grew up about a mile from this place and as kids would venture out to Ciba Geigy on bikes to check out the operation.
I would not call myself an environmentalist but what I witnessed as a kid should have made me into one. Ciba Geigy was surrounded by a web of access gates, small ponds, train tracks, and the Pawtuxet River.
Me and some friends would explore the woods surrounding the plant and stumbled upon multiple locations of giant faucets dumping raw pollution into the river. ... And it smelt very bad. Actually, a good 1/4 mile around the plant smelt bad. It's kind of funny now that I think about it since one Ciba Geigy's big products was Binaca, a spray breath freshener that was popular in the 80's. Oh well.
We were dumb kids. While we discussed telling the newspapers/media what we found, we thought we'd get in trouble for trespassing and did nothing. Instead, what did we do? We went fishing in the nearby pond which as freaking phenomenal for fishing! I remember years of days in the summer whipping up a doughy mix to bring with us as bait and going to this pond to pull up the biggest (in retrospect, most genetically altered) fish and nasty snapping turtles ever!
I could easily say that Ciba Geigy got me interested in exploring.
Now, in 2011. Would love to see inside.