ABSTRACT
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the U.S. has been inundated with technolo-gy. This industrial technology has been a key component in the formation of thisnation. Benefits cannot occur without costs, though the costs are increasing in size and severity. Many of our adaptations as humans come with great environmental expenses. Our agricultural techniques rely heavily on things such as pesticides and insecticides which are known to percolate into underground water tables. The creation and manufacturing of plastics was a major step in human progression, but it hasn’t come without a cost. Producing plastics leaves volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chemical additives, cadmium and polymers at abandoned industrial sites. It is well documented that both active and inactive paper mills have long polluted environments with chlorinated compounds such as dioxin. 1
The rate at which technology has progressed is phenomenal. The invention of the gasoline engine in the early twentieth century was both critically important and dangerous. The production, use, and need for petroleum has never been greater, and the environmental costs of that are still not fully known. The movement into the twenty first century places substantial emphasis on the wastes being created by humans as a race. Every human produces wastes and has an environmental impact, some cultures more than others. The fact is that this waste must go somewhere. Here, in the U.S., the majority makes its way to landfills. The content of landfills is often known to contain both benign and dangerous materials. Some chemicals commonly found in landfills could range from household products and cleaners, methane and pesticides, to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs).1 The average person has probably seen or been to a landfill. Landfills are usually located on the outskirts of urban areas and are filled with our waste products. These landfills become heaping piles of refuse and are rarely given second thoughts. We must begin to consider that every thing consumed had to be produced. We are both a consumer and producer society, every thing is composed of certain elements. The problem is that each finished product also creates wastes. These wastes are often unsafe and hazardous compounds. Similar to consumers, industries
must also dispose of their byproducts, and this they have done. Up until the mid/late 1970s industries had no guidelines or regulations for the dis-
posal of hazardous wastes. Decades of activities such as spilling, discharging, leaching, dumping, and burying created and abundance of hazardous waste sites nationwide. 2 It wasn’t until the discovery of an enormous abandoned toxic waste site called Love Canal that this problem was given national attention. Love Canal in Niagra Falls, New York, became infamous in the late 1970s when years of illness, odors, and seepage culminated into a revelation exposing this massive toxic waste dump. From the 1950s through most to the 1970s, residents had noticed strange odors in the air and unusual seepage into their basements and yards. Abnormally high incidents of reproductive disorders and urinary tract disorders were being noticed and were finally cataloged by Lois Gibbs, the areas first and foremost activist. 3
The combination of media coverage, intense environmental lobbying, and a growing tide of public pressure created a need for a congressional response. Congress reacted by creating the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) on December 11, 1980. CERCLA was instituted to address the cleanup and remediation of inactive hazardous waste sites and to limit the threat to human health and the environment posed by these contaminated sites.4 CERCLA, also known as Superfund, was initially created to clean up the nation’s worst abandoned hazardous and toxic wast sites. Over a five year span a trust fund of $1.6 billion was allotted using the revenue raised from taxes placed on chemical and petroleum industries along with environmental taxes on corporations. 5
oration with each state’s environmental agency. In Massachusetts it is the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) <www.state.ma.us/dep/dephome.htm>;. Through Superfund, the EPA has the authority and ability to locate, investigate, and clean up hazardous waste sites. The Superfund program gives the EPA the capacity to
1. Establish prohibitions and requirements relating to closed and abandoned sites.
