Essay On Superfund

Lois Gibbs and the other homeowners at Love Canal had no idea that their neighborhood was built on a chemical dump. So for this question I went to the EPA website and looked up three different superfund sites closest to me. My findings were actually shocking. There were four to five different super fund sites near where I live and most of them were in Newark. I did not realize that they were only two towns away. Before this assignment I had no idea about these superfund sites. I did know that Passaic river is a dirty river because Newark was an industrial hub before.

toxic waste began. The toxic footprint of the Hanford site is enormous, in absolute and relative terms: 43

When it comes to Superfund sites there are few more complex and challenging than Portland Harbor. The site covers around ten miles of river (miles 3.5 to 9) form the southern part of Sauvie Island to a bit past Fremont Bridge. There are numerous potentially responsible parties (PRPs) that date back to over a hundred years of contamination that includes a smorgasbord of pollutants. There are endangered species act (ESA) concerns and the area is culturally noteworthy to six Native American tribes. Portland Harbor is located along the Willamette River and has an extensive history of commercial, shipping, and industrial activities. There are also significant amounts of natural and cultural resources. In 1997, a mutual study conducted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that sediments in the harbor were contaminated with DDT, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), petroleum, and pesticides. Upon the discovery of this data, in 2000, the EPA established Portland Harbor as a Superfund site. The EPA purposed a list of Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) in August of 2011 called the Lower Willamette Group. The

I searched high and low to find a social situation that is important not only to my family but to my community. Areas like politics, and religion are a large aspect of my family but I decided to go in a different direction and speak on behalf of the environmental issues that plague my community, but one federal program in particular; the superfund program. In this essay I will present

So often humans extract for resources like Lead, Aluminum, coal, marcellus shale, natural gas, or asbestos, and over time leave behind a environmental contaminated location. When nearby people start getting sick, showing up with health issues linked to the contamination in their environment, then the EPA usally gets involved. In a different light, the ecological effects from these sites can be things like habitat fragmentation, or in particularly vulnerable species, extinction. For example, in Wyoming, when the coal extraction began, a nearby lake is inevitably going to be contaminated with acid mine drainage. Say a specialists amphibian lived symbiotically with a moss or algae in the lake ecosystem, and without intervention the species dramatically suffer. Superfund sites are a popular topic sustainability and conservation biologists should use their popularity in the nation to aide in the local community remediation methods. For example, I am working to sample vegetation, water quality, fish biomass, and macro invertebrates biomass in local acid mine drainage remediation sites here in Indiana. This is a direct impact from human

Moving on, there are some issues with the legislation that has been passed in order to conserve the water, especially concerning the Clean Water Act. People are having opposition with the rules of the Clean Water Act. Small business owners feel that this act is restricting the way that they tend to their property. For example, several farmers use pesticides, herbicides, and other fertilizers to keep harmful insects and other animals off of their crops, so they can grow properly. These pesticides eventually end up in our local rivers, lakes, and oceans which are making humans and animals very ill. However, they make money by the crops they sell, and to them, the Clean Water Act has a very negative economic impact on them (Landers). Although

Two years ago a small Michigan city called Flint was quietly exposed to toxic waste that would continue to impact their lives for years to follow. The water supply for the city was switched to a river that everyone knew was a waste in a failed attempt to save money. As the citizens began to notice all the changes their homes were overtaking due to the water, they were ignored or reassured. Some of the effects caused by the water are irreversible and maybe deadly.

Although drinking water is not yet known to have been affected, the groundwater was contaminated with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals (5). Both of these types of contaminants have been linked with one or several of the following: cancer, liver, kidney, and nervous system problems (4). In July 1979, the State Court required that all material be removed from the site by July 1980 (5). The state has spent over $300,000 cleaning this site (5). According to EPA standards, this site is in the "construction completed" stage of clean up. This does not mean, however that actual cleanup is complete because groundwater may need to be treated more than 30 years before contaminants are at accepted levels (5).

After the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, the US realized that the National Pollution Funds Center was not adequately funded, and the laws were not current on how to respond to this type of a crisis. In particularly, they were insufficient in funding, and the ability to handle the capacity of the damages to compensate under federal law.

Have you ever enjoyed walking, eating, or shopping by the riverfront, in downtown Green Bay? It is currently being covered by coal dust daily and no one is stopping it. Coal piles have disrupted people around the riverfront since 1978. The Koch company has recently sold the controversial Coal Piles to a coal industry family in Pennsylvania, this could be what the locals have been waiting for as the coal piles could be removed. However, the family has stated that they don’t plan on moving the piles in the future. The Coal piles in downtown Green Bay are ruining land, peoples homes, and is bad for the environment.

Everything in this world we use comes from the ocean in some way. The air we breathe, the water we drink, even the products we use day to day, would not be possible without the ocean. That's why the issue of ocean pollution is so important and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. We depend on the ocean for so much in our life, without it we would surely become extinct. People seem to think that since the ocean is so large and vast, we can dump as much waste as we'd like into it and it will never have an effect on us. However, since we've been polluting the ocean as far back as Roman times, the evidence of ocean pollution becoming a major problem is all too clear.

Air and water pollution is one of the biggest problems the environment faces today. It is one of the highest leading cause of death. Air and water pollution has been affecting the environment for many years causing many diseases among people especially children. I will study and examine the early childhood growth between two countries which are Australia and Tanzania. I will discuss how clean and polluted their air and water is for each country. Their access to clean water. I will also explain the effects that can occur when water is contaminated. How children are affected when they don 't have access to primary essentials and how each country and their environment and living condition might threatened a child 's life.

Hazardous waste and its proper disposal have become a major sociological problem today due to its capability of contaminating the area in which we live and its potential to be lethal to all living things. In order for the United States and the rest of the world to save itself from a potentially life threatening problem they must fix the causes which lead to the improper disposal of hazardous wastes and like materials. Some reasons that hazardous waste has become a problem in the United States today is due to the breakdown in enforcing laws for the proper disposal of such wastes, a lack of initiative on big companies behalf to spend money on proper disposal, and the ease of disposing of such wastes illegally.

Pollution is the introduction of harmful substances or products into the environment. It is a major problem in America and as well as the world. Pollution not only damages the environment, but damages us also. It has cause many problems ranging from lung cancer to the greenhouse effect. It is all among us but we continue to live in our own filth. What is the reason behind this flawed logic? In this paper I will examine the problems and solutions for this issue.

Pollution has become a major issue over the years because it contaminates the Earth’s environment and affects human health. While some environmental pollution is a result of natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, most is caused by human activities. The increase of various types of pollution has made cancer pollutant more prevalent among the people, raising the risk of getting cancer. After being exposed to theses pollutants, the effects may be immediate or delayed. Some of the delayed effects, due to the exposure, can go unnoticed for many years. Another major issue that pollution creates is the tremendous cost for preventing and cleaning it up. However, we can not regulate the pollutants to the extent where there are no more possible