Keef
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- Dayton, OH
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An issue I've been particularly interested in for some time now is that of hazardous waste cleanup efforts in my local area. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, a historically industrial city in the "rust belt" of the United States with strong ties to the Big Three auto manufacturers, metal manufacturing and chemical industries. My dad grew up in Old North Dayton, an area just north of Downtown that is on the rough side these days, never was particularly nice and is still slowly declining. Something about it just doesn't feel clean to my suburban skin. Plus, the stories my dad always told me about how dirty the air and water used to be, plus the fact that he used to play in the trash dump right near his house...
I did a little research on the dump. It was called Valleycrest Landfill. My dad had his fun there in the late 50s and early 60s, but by the mid 70s it looked like this:
And that, my friends, put me on the floor.
What I learned from this was that the EPA, our Environmental Protection Agency, was formed in 1970 mainly as a result of massive public outcry around the country, especially in the industrial areas of the midwest and east coast. Millions of people were protesting because they were tired of this happening:
They're all images of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH, on the shores of Lake Erie. At the top you can see the positively barren industrial landscape surrounding the river and at the bottom you can see the river on fire in the 50s. A river. On fire. That wasn't the first, nor was it the last time that sludge pit of a river caught on fire.
The EPA eventually set up this thing called Superfund which is a program by which various agencies have authority to identify, investigate, clean up and even prosecute parties involved with hazardous waste dump sites around the country. Of the numerous sites I've read about, it seems like most of them came about during the 50s, 60s and 70s, especially the 60s. it must've been an extremely careless time period as far as industry and the environment goes. The EPA discovered what seems to be the majority during the 80s but I've found sites in my area discovered as recently as 2012, typically hidden back in the woods or boonies where nobody ventures very often.
And as it turns out, the Valleycrest Landfill (and the petroleum tank farm directly to the west of its barren field as seen in the Google map of Old North Dayton) ended up being one of them. The EPA identified hundreds of sites around the country very quickly after the Superfund program was enacted and Valleycrest was one, though to my knowledge not one of the more famous or controversial sites. I've made a habit of scouring Google Maps looking for the telltale signs of old landfills and cleanup sites such as manicured barren land, fence lines and monitoring wells dotted all around the field, then researching the story on the location. Look up the story of Love Canal and follow up on the sources if you want to read something sketchy. A couple of my favorites are ones I discovered while dating a girl who grew up in St. Louis. The first involves a town that got completely shut down by dioxin contamination and the other, ongoing site is about a neighborhood in northern St. Louis where you've got a 50% chance of dying from brain cancer. Gotta love that Manhattan Project.
Anyways, I've learned quite a bit about the operations in the US, including a pretty gnarly (short video) coverup (hour long special investigation) I learned about earlier today, but I'm curious about similar operations in other countries. What does the UK or Australia have that's equal to the EPA's Superfund project? Are local toxic waste sites a similarly worrisome environmental problem? Are they maybe even more common than in the US? I personally live in a clean area of Dayton but there are several Superfund and National Priority List sites within just a few miles of my house.
If any of you guys are interested in or know of similar local environmental problems like this, share the info and discuss the issue. This is a problem that really does ruin lives without people ever knowing.
Also, just for fun, here's a map of EPA sites around the US.
I did a little research on the dump. It was called Valleycrest Landfill. My dad had his fun there in the late 50s and early 60s, but by the mid 70s it looked like this:
And that, my friends, put me on the floor.
What I learned from this was that the EPA, our Environmental Protection Agency, was formed in 1970 mainly as a result of massive public outcry around the country, especially in the industrial areas of the midwest and east coast. Millions of people were protesting because they were tired of this happening:
They're all images of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH, on the shores of Lake Erie. At the top you can see the positively barren industrial landscape surrounding the river and at the bottom you can see the river on fire in the 50s. A river. On fire. That wasn't the first, nor was it the last time that sludge pit of a river caught on fire.
The EPA eventually set up this thing called Superfund which is a program by which various agencies have authority to identify, investigate, clean up and even prosecute parties involved with hazardous waste dump sites around the country. Of the numerous sites I've read about, it seems like most of them came about during the 50s, 60s and 70s, especially the 60s. it must've been an extremely careless time period as far as industry and the environment goes. The EPA discovered what seems to be the majority during the 80s but I've found sites in my area discovered as recently as 2012, typically hidden back in the woods or boonies where nobody ventures very often.
And as it turns out, the Valleycrest Landfill (and the petroleum tank farm directly to the west of its barren field as seen in the Google map of Old North Dayton) ended up being one of them. The EPA identified hundreds of sites around the country very quickly after the Superfund program was enacted and Valleycrest was one, though to my knowledge not one of the more famous or controversial sites. I've made a habit of scouring Google Maps looking for the telltale signs of old landfills and cleanup sites such as manicured barren land, fence lines and monitoring wells dotted all around the field, then researching the story on the location. Look up the story of Love Canal and follow up on the sources if you want to read something sketchy. A couple of my favorites are ones I discovered while dating a girl who grew up in St. Louis. The first involves a town that got completely shut down by dioxin contamination and the other, ongoing site is about a neighborhood in northern St. Louis where you've got a 50% chance of dying from brain cancer. Gotta love that Manhattan Project.
Anyways, I've learned quite a bit about the operations in the US, including a pretty gnarly (short video) coverup (hour long special investigation) I learned about earlier today, but I'm curious about similar operations in other countries. What does the UK or Australia have that's equal to the EPA's Superfund project? Are local toxic waste sites a similarly worrisome environmental problem? Are they maybe even more common than in the US? I personally live in a clean area of Dayton but there are several Superfund and National Priority List sites within just a few miles of my house.
If any of you guys are interested in or know of similar local environmental problems like this, share the info and discuss the issue. This is a problem that really does ruin lives without people ever knowing.
Also, just for fun, here's a map of EPA sites around the US.
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