By Duane Craig
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| Industrial contamination has left its mark on NJ. |
While political pundits banter about a legacy of debt being left to future generations, the country's industrial past has already left a legacy of industrial contamination to them. The machine that supported millions for more than a century now taints water supplies, air supplies and vast expanses of soil.
Nowhere is this more evident than in New Jersey where modern generations now must deal with the industrial contamination left behind, and the potential health issues that come with it.
The kinds of activities that created this legacy are the ones that didn't take into account the true cost of creating chemicals and the manufacturing processes that used them. Other activities followed that added to the contamination problems. Ignorance about the effects of some of the chemicals that had been created, an unwillingness to bear the true cost of the products being made, and greed, led to the careless dumping of chemical wastes.
A recent example is the remediation plan released by the Environmental Protection Agency to cleanup the Lightman Drum Co. Superfund site in Camden County, NJ. No one will probably ever know, but perhaps to make it more efficient to clean metal drums they were simply relieved of the contents into a pit at the rear of the property before being sent out for cleaning. Tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene from the emptied drums eventually spoiled the water in seven public water supplies and numerous private wells.
You can read more details, here.
1 comment:
With U.S. EPA funding under assault from the right, the only logical ways to reallocate a shrinking budget pie would increase enforcement aggressiveness and move funds away from those states whose Congressional delegations vote to reduce EPA-funding. Leave those state agencies to their own devices or allow them to access EPA resources on a "pay as you go" basis.
Posted by Curtis Kruger
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