Superfunds

The purpose of this paper is to explain what superfund sites are, the need for the superfund law, and the impact on the environment in one specific place, Orange County, New York, the county where I was born and raised.

In spite of all the wonderful technological advances our society has achieved in the last 150 years, there are consequences to these actions. The large scale industrial and manufacturing plants of the early part of the 20th century had many waste products that were new to people, and they did not know how these wastes and their disposal methods would affect the environment and the people who are in contact with them. Different industries obviously had different wastes and disposal processes, and some were worse than others. Chemical plants, nuclear facilities, medical facilities and some other industries that used heavy metals all had waste products that are potentially hazardous to human health, the water table and the rest of the environment. The disposal sites and methods that they used, even though they didn’t know it, have caused several almost disaster like scenarios like contaminating drinking supplies, crops covere

The fourth Superfund site and the only one that has been taken off the NPL is the Warwick landfill. This 19-acre site was closed in 1977 because of leachate samples that indicated VOC’s, phenols and heavy metals. 2,100 people live within 2 miles of the site, mostly with wells, but well monitoring has shown no contamination. It was decided that the 4 responsible parties would pay for a synthetic landfill cap, which was completed in 1998. There are going to be several testing and monitoring dates in the future, but the site had been deemed clean and taken off the NPL for Superfund sites (www.epa.gov). Assemblyman Howard Mills, who represents the Town of Wallkill said, "A lot of hard work has gone into ensuring that this site is properly cleaned up. It is critical that we enact the Governor's Superfund proposal and refinance this important program in order to complete the work that has begun at this site and so many other contaminated sites throughout New York (www.dec.state.ny.us)."

4) Backfilling and regrading of excavated areas with clean soil (www.epa.gov).

The public was not aware of these horrors of industry and the toxic chemicals released into their neighborhoods until a book by Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring, was published in 1962. Her book focused on the spraying of a pesticide for mosquitoes called DDT that was sprayed onto crops all across America and around the world. It was the most influential book of the last 100 years in regard to the awareness of the environment, and it eventually lead to President Kennedy to launch a full scientific investigation into the issue. Her book eventually led to the banning of DDT but more importantly gave the public an awareness of toxic chemicals and the dark side of science, before this people were happy knowing that agricultural input was going way up. This quote by Carson shows the path that she thought American society was heading down:

Not only have RCRA and CERCLA called for the clean up of toxic waste disposal sites across the country, but it has also lead to several more laws that regulate toxic discharges into the environment and also what toxic chemicals are legal to use. Some of these include the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Amendment of 1972 which makes manufacturers of these chemicals register with the EPA, and the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 which not only banned PCB’s, but also allowed the EPA to get information from companies regarding their chemical uses and to control or ban these substances if they feel that the substances are harmful in any way (Daniels).

The law gave two approaches to cleaning up these sites, the short-term approach, which addressed life-threatening toxics that needed quick cleanups for the health of the people around them; and the long-term approach, which focused on permanently reducing the threats on public health, that are not immediately life-threatening. An example of a short-term approach would be the cleanup of Love Canal in Buffalo, NY that was a great risk to the people literally living on top of a toxic waste site and the children who went to school on top of it; and an example of the long-term approach would be any of the four Orange County sites I will discuss later (www.epa.gov).

Some topics in this essay:
Port Jervis, County York, Law CERCLA, Waste Disposal, Priorities List, City Newburgh, Orange County, NPL Warwick, Act RCRA, PCB’s VOC’s, toxic waste, toxic chemicals, orange county, superfund sites, waste sites, superfund law, waste disposal, toxic waste sites, toxic substances, silent spring, port jervis, waste sites •, clean toxic waste, hazardous waste sites, superfund law daniels,