Word: epa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...toxic wastes into shafts that fed into the Butler Tunnel, an outlet for waste water from abandoned coal mines near Pittston, Pa. Three men were convicted of violating the state's Clean Streams Act, and one was sent to prison. The three and their company were fined $750,000. EPA supervised the cleanup of the river pollution, and in 1982 it took the site off its priority list. But heavy rains from Hurricane Gloria sent 100,000 gal. of oily, smelly chemical wastes rushing back up to the surface of this presumably cleaned-up site and into the Susquehanna. "There...
Another of the six sites that EPA claims to have successfully cleaned is in Baltimore, where strong acids and aqua regia, one of the most corrosive liquids in existence, had been stored throughout the 1970s. For years, residents in 20 row houses along Annapolis Road complained of eye, nose and throat irritation; eight people were burned in July 1979 when chemicals leaked into a playing area. EPA removed 1,500 drums and scraped off up to twelve inches of topsoil. The land was sloped and sodded and declared fit for a playground. But critics cite tests showing that the contamination...
...toxic industrial chemicals on a 3.5-acre site along the Pine River near St. Louis, Mich. A county golf course was developed beside the dump. By the mid-'60s, fish in the river contained high levels of such known or suspected carcinogens as PBB, PCB and DDT. Working with EPA, the company in 1982 agreed to spend $38.5 million to clean up the area. At the golf course, all soil was removed to a depth of 3 ft. below any signs of contamination. That involved hauling 68,204 cu. yds. of dirt away. Fully l.25 million gal. of contaminated groundwater...
...sites chosen by the EPA for quick action should probably not have been on the top-priority list in the first place. In Greenville, Miss., Walcott Chemical Co. had stored 226 drums of such chemicals as tetrasodium pyrophosphate and formic acid in a warehouse that the state of Mississippi had seized for failure to pay taxes. The state considered the chemicals a fire hazard (rather than a contamination threat) and asked EPA to put the site near the top of its list. The agency merely had the drums hauled off to an approved landfill in Emelle, Ala. Problem solved. Similarly...
...California environmental groups recently surveyed seven landfills in that state. Though the EPA was monitoring them for leaks, the groups reported, "every one of the sites examined is leaking, without exception; and every one is out of compliance with currently applicable regulations." Wastes placed in them from other failed sites may soon have to be picked up and moved once again. The result is a bleak game of chemical leapfrog...