Quote:
Originally Posted by yvanleterrible
SNIP
Love Canal was a heavy lesson. Most of the chemicals stored there still have no commercial use; they were byproducts. They could be destroyed but who'll fork the costs? Nuclear wastes face the same problems, most of them could be recycled up to 90% but no one wants to pay for it.
As you imply we rely on money obsessed entities to do the right thing. I still trust governmental agencies to force decency on companies more than the careless people around us.
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I wrote a great big post responding to this, but the server seems to have chewed it up and spit it out.
So, here goes for a 2nd try.
Going
and ranting away!
Love Canal was indeed a heavy lesson. Big bad Hooker Chemical pollutes a neighborhood, causing all sorts of bad things to happen. And there was a grade-school there, and everything!
WRONG
Go read
this article and have your views of what happened turned upside down.
The short version is this: Hooker Chemical built a dump in the '40s that met the RCRA standards of the '80s. They transferred it to the Niagara Falls School Board under protest (due to threat of eminent domain), making
absolutely certain that the school board was aware that the land was a chemical dump and was not suitable for any construction of any kind.
When the school board decided to put their school
on top of the dump instead of next to it, Hooker Chemical went back and argued with them. Hooker took out ads in the local paper about what a bad idea it was! When the school board wanted to sell parts of the land to be developed into a subdivision, Hooker went back
again reminding them that they really
didn't want to breach the clay containment of the chemicals.
But the school board broke the clay containment building a school. And scraped off 1000s of cubic yards from the top of the dump to use elsewhere as fill. And the city put a storm drain and a sewer line through the dump. And the NY State DoT put a bleeping road foundation right through it, breaching the clay containment yet again!
Go read the article. Just about everything you thought you knew about Love Canal turns out to be wrong.
End of
rant. We now return to your usual ebook related discussion...
Xenophon