I don't understand why the companies that do this crap aren't forced into bankruptcy cleaning up THEIR mess. A small fine isn't gonna keep these companies from exploiting the system.
they usually paid lots of money to locals when they were set-up. And they employ half of the locals. this way the locals feel responsible on the way out and don't say much
***** it's always the locals who sell them the land in the first place, and the mining rights. you do understand that yeh?. and it's always the locals who get the jobs. once again you do understand that yeh?? and the local shops suddenly double their trade overnight, oh yeh i bet they hate that too. without these things it would NEVER HAPPEN, that's the whole point. This is how they buy what they need.
+Space Cadet uhhh, yeah, local GOVERNMENTS, typically. The sites that they build most on are typically held by local governments or are confiscated under the guise of eminent domain where the owners usually paid pennies on the dollar of what the actual property is worth, or will be worth after being rezoned by the zoning board and then those savings are passed on to the corporations through tax incentives like rebates and credits. Those are the "locals" that are selling their land to big corporations like this.
***** you're speaking a whole bunch of shit. I live in australia. we see it happen all day long. they sell their land, they get the jobs. I have no idea why you're throwing away all your credibility. Govts dont usually mine on or rent their own land. it's called "crown land". it's dumbfuck broke locals who let it happen. your misaimed butthurt is annoying and not helping things by filling up the space with misinformation
Best part about Love Canal is that they sold the property to the local government for $1 and explicitly told them about the hazardous waste, warning them about the possible health risks and putting in the deed that they would not be held responsible for whatever the government did with the site. Fast forward 20+ years and they built a residential area over and around the site, and the local government wanted to sue Hooker Chemical Company because they did exactly what Hooker told them not to do. And somehow people use it as a cautionary tale about corporate greed, and not bureaucratic stupidity.
Because it's both. Selling it for $1 doesn't make them generous. It just means that IS truly what that piece of land is worth, considering how much they would have to spend to clean it up.
Angreh Kittunz They initially refused to sell the land, only when the government threatened eminent domain did they concede. The $1 wasn't them trying to just dump the land on the government, it was their way of pointing out what an absolutely terrible idea buying the land was. Had the government used eminent domain they would have had to pay thousands of dollars, if Hooker was only looking out for their bottom line they wouldn't have sold it for next to nothing. That's why the corporate greed spin on the story is only relevant for the dumping of the chemicals itself, everything after that was absolutely on the local government.
Imma be honest, our local government is shit. The Buffalo area is honestly one of the shittiest places to live. When every other industrial city modernized, we didn't... And that's why we're the third poorest city in the country and home to the NFL's most drunk fans.
Yeah, maybe that just proves that the laws themselves were garbage? In any event, it doesn't really absolve the company from being morally reprehensible for dumping a load of toxic crap anywhere.
The Love Canal area in NY is STILL contaminated. It was not cleaned up completely, despite their claim that it was safe in 2004. To this day, the residents surrounding the area are having serious health problems. Only SOME of the material was removed and moved. There are still serious chemicals like dioxin in the ground. The large main area remains fenced off.
The claims of safety really made my nose itch. Our government has been available to help companies for the right price for decades now. Id be shocked if any of the ‘safe’ sites were actually safe.
Same thing on Times Beach Missouri still is contaminated yet EPA say it’s all cleaned up. They got screwed over big time they dealt with the same stuff that was used to make Agent Orange
Anniston, AL had a huge contamination of PCBs from Monsanto when they were just dumping it into a creek for many years. It's amazing what these companies will try to get away with. And yet some people don't want them to be regulated at all...it's insane.
There was a creek near where I grew up in London, Ontario that was contaminated with PCBs that we used to play in when we were kids in the 1970s. The source was a Westinghouse factory about 10 minutes away from us and they built hydro transformers. The building sits empty now and for years the contaminated soil was buried in huge oil drums on the property until about 10 years ago. Might have something to do with why I have hypothyroidism now.
@@elizabethsullivan7176 that is awful I´m so sorry. I´m sure they were fully aware that they contaminated the creek and that kids were playing in it too, but didn't say anything because money. disgusting.
According to the EPA, "hazardous and nonhazardous wastes were disposed in several areas, including the West End and South Landfills that are adjacent to the plant. Surface water containing PCBs and other site related contaminants flowed into the 11th Street ditch, Snow Creek, Choccolocco Creek and the Coosa River." Bad news for the environment for sure, but not quite the same thing as "just dumping it into a creek."
+The Frenzied Wolf He was one of the best mexican songwriters. A party here isn't a proper party unless they play at least 5 of his songs. He is a legend.
I was hoping Berkeley Pit would be on here. As a fellow Montana resident I was constantly told of this site through my school years. I'm constantly surprised that something so awful has been allow to fester like that, and it serves as a good reminder to be conscious of the things you do to the environment. This was a pretty neat episode.
Flew into the airport there once. You could see the big blue-green spot way off. A strange sight. You'd think the city would actually be moved. Might happen someday I suppose. I bought my Montana Tech Orediggers tshirt there.
0:40 Love Canal 2:20 Reed-Kepler Park 3:20 Hart Senate Office Building 4:49 Blackburn and Union Privileges 5:40 Berkeley Pit 7:22 Hudson River 8:31 CTS of Asheville
You got to feel sorry for the teachers who want to talk about the Love Canal. Not only does it sound like an adult movie but add to the fact that it was polluted by the Hooker chemical company and any grade 6 class will be a huge challenge to keep from laughing.
pbreedu i took AP environmental science my senior year of high school and it was so hard not to laugh. My desk partner had a really gallows sense of humor too.
If wingnuts like SeSatanis become president, they will probably strike teaching of business-caused disasters from history books, like they did with Black history or banning books from school libraries.The next step is the burning of books they don't like. Stalin used to order removing subjects he didn't like from history and other books, and he had persona non grata removed from historical photos by the then technique of photo-shopping, called retouching.
+Gothead420 there is the argument that the production of necessary resources for batteries and wind power is more harmful than plain petrol cars or gas power plants
MrEppart Using cheap production-methods and not caring about pollution leads to such problems, not renewable energies per-sé. E.g. the mercury in solarpanels only has to be handled properly, its not leaking out for no reason or something... Humankind ONLY has this one chance to become truly sustainable, otherwise our civilisation will go down...
Gothead420 Then there is also the fact that solar doesn't work while cloudy and at night. They don't produce much in the first place. And wind is costs a ton of money for little power and can only operate under specific conditions. Nuclear energy is the future Electric cars are probably the future just not right now. Just making an electric car battery will create more co2 than a gasoline car will in it's entire lifetime.
I was expecting the Hanford nuclear mess in Washington to be on this list, its leaky tanks of nuclear stuff hasn't been fixed even though millions of dollars have gone towards fixing it.
Nightcore, I upvoted your comment, not because Hanford is a good thing but because you were right to point out that giant radioactive facility most definitely belongs on everyone's short-list of Superfund sites.
Hanford dumped 1.34 trillion gallons of nuke puke from 1948 to 1954 , they still have 120 tanks under ground that contain 64 million gallons of plutonium sludge , they leak and vent gasses up into the air , sickness is the biggest industry
@@katyungodly just watched a documentary about glyphosate aka monsantos round up weed killer sprayed on all crops around the world , 48.6 billion tons is years each year only 10 % stays on the crops the rest is air born and finds it,s way in all rain fall , all drinking water , all organic food grown unless it is produced in a hot house . Levels are so toxic most sickness and cancer is from this chemical and yet no one cares , radiation from nuke puke is our last concern me thinks
It's not considered a superfund site because the leaks aren't considered a risk to life or health currently. The waste is low activity and fairly well contained.
"Hauled away to a landfill." How many times was that said - - as if that was the end of things. Where are these landfills. How closely are they being monitored?
The quality of landfills themselves and the quality of their monitoring varies to an unsettling degree. Some of them are really well managed, others aren't monitored for "toxic seepage" at all. And you probably already knew that.
@Rulya Mórrigan Ard Mhacha then you know people including children died of cancer because the contamination drained into their basements & back yards. Yep, real F'n funny...
The EPA as it is now needs to be completely overhauled so it can concentrate on important stuff like this rather than enforcing pointless nonimpactful legislation. The entire safety industry has become a bloated monstrosity whose primary purpose seems to be creation and enforcement of unimportant regulations, "justifying" many useless programs that are really just about maintaining jobs.
The toxic chemicals at Love Canal were never relocated, as you mention in this video. They were covered with a clay cap and surrounded with a chain link fence, and remain on site where they were a century ago. The chemicals have leaked into local swage pipes in recent years which are located well outside of the confined area. People continue to live in close proximity to the site believing that it is safe, but I guarantee they at putting themselves at a higher health risk compared to anyone else not raising their family nearby the area
1) LOVE CANAL 2) REED-KEPPLER PARK 3) HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING 4) BLACKBURN AND UNION PRIVILEGES 5) BERKELEY PIT 6) HUDSON RIVER 7) CTS OF ASHEVILLE
Always breaks my heart to hear companies do things like this. I naively keep hoping people will one day learn from history that greed never pays off. Might make you a little money now, but it always costs more in the long run.
Well they wont learn tho? Since its not the companies paying for the cleanup right... the people who made the decision to pollute these places probably got away with alot more money than they started with 🙃
Anyone remember the Erin Brockovich movie from 2000? For years, the people of Hinkley, CA drank water contaminated by hexavalent chromium (Chromium-6), which causes cancer. And Hinkley isn't the only place with this kind of problem. It's still an ongoing cleanup site with the pollution plume reported to still be growing!! Reportedly, Hinkley has become something of a modern-day ghost town. California is my home state so this really P.O.s me, especially since I still have family out there, though not in that area specifically. And even earlier this year the SCGC was trying to downplay the effects of a major gas leak in L.A. Unbelievable. And they seem so surprised that people have stopped believing their so-called assurances concerning their health! Especially after Flint, which I notice didn't make the list. You could make a whole series about these places, easily. Money-grubbing a-holes. Makes me sick that people still get away with it over and over again all over the world. Wake up people!!!
There's a nice map online where you can see which waterways and water plants Chromium-6 has been detected and their percentages. It's kinda crazy. "EWG estimates that water supplies serving 218 million Americans - more than two-thirds of the population - contain unsafe levels of chromium-6." I don't think governments should have as big of roles as they do, yet they can't even do the few things they really should do.
@@truth4004 It is also the electorate's fault for electing representatives that instead of believing in the science believe that the 'free market' will make corporations properly regulate themselves.
Ohio just labeled her a terrorist threat because she had been to East Palestine Ohio twice after overwhelming residents asking for her help. Her townhalls are on YT.
Important point about the Love Canal case: the company that dumped the chemicals wasn't the bad guy. The real-estate company that knowingly bought the contaminated land and built housing developments on it and sold them to unsuspecting buyers without telling them was the bad guy. The dumpers made sure the developers knew the land was unsafe and tried to dissuade the developers from buying it.
DavidDylanFisher weeeeelll i mean they still killed millions of innocent creatures because they it was cheaper and they could and did get away with just throwing it in a lake rather than safely disposing the chemicals
Actually the true factual story is that the Hooker Chemical Company sold the land with all that buried waste to the Niagara Falls School Board for $1. They sold it to them under the stipulation that they were not to build anything on the land. Instead of following tthe NFSchool Board, built an elementary school, the 99th street school on it. For sure the NF School Board did a terrible thing, but the Hooker company, they KNEW it was toxic and they sold it to the school board? What did they think the school board wanted to do on the land?? Also, there were many houses built around the area, almost all of which have been destroyed .
I don't understand how the Wikipedia article gave you the impression that Hooker was blameless. To the contrary, it knew that it had serious liability exposure, and elected to give the land to the City in return for a release of liability by the City. Clearly, City officials were unaware of the extent of the danger. Nevertheless, the City was clearly culpable for not investigating the site before building a school. Hooker DID NOT do things properly. It carelessly disposed of dangerous chemicals. It failed to disclose the nature of the waste to the City. It basically washed its hands of the situation and tried to "dump" the problem on others. It deserved its fines.
When I clicked on this I was like “I probably don’t live too close to any of these” and then the first one is in Niagara Falls, NY... and I live in Buffalo, NY. -.-
I was thinking the same except I’m on the other side of the border :( sad how greed and willful ignorance make corporate profiteers apathetic and corrupt.
My grandmother worked near Love Canal while she was pregnant with my mom! My mom was born with a cleft palate, same with my nephew and cousin. A lot of us also have Sticklers Syndrome.
It's all an equation. The profit margin is destroyed if you actually use the money you make to clean up all the mess made in the process. It's hard to handle but most of the things you use in modern Life have nasty biproducts, that's why green chemistry is such a big deal. There's better ways of doing things but often times it's unavoidable. Unless you want to pay 4 times as much for the same product it's a fact you have to live with.
In a lot of cases they actually thought it was fine. It wasn't until well into the post ww2 era that most began to understand the environmental impacts of dealing with harmful chemicals.
I think what you meant to say is how ignorant can you be, and the answer is very ignorant. Dilution was, and still is, thought to be a satisfactory waste disposal method. Dilution definitely can be a viable waste reduction method, but the degree of dilution necessary for a chemical/compound to become non-harmful varies greatly. The science that identifies how much of/if a chemical is hazardous usually lags behind its production and application. Many times though, even with substantial evidence to back up a claim that something is toxic, it takes an immense effort to get people to make any change away from what is easy and readily available. Again, as someone else already pointed out, people that dump toxins are not idiots (for the vast majority). Ignorance or greed is often the problem, and sometimes it's indifference. Stupid people aren't usually in a position to be able to make harmful choices that have such a large impact. Only when idiots group together and vote can they make such choices (see almost every politician in the last 100 years for examples).
It's like Minimata disease, caused by the company Cheeso dumping industrial waste into the water in Minimata, Japan. Because the Japanese have such a fish-based diet, many suffered severe mercury poisoning from the metal waste that had accumulated in their fish. It was first seen in cats (because their bodies are smaller, the effects took hold quicker), who would have a dance-like seizure, earning the illness the nickname "Dancing Cat Disease". Why Cheeso would dump it into the place they get their own food, I have no idea. Humans disgust me sometimes. (I do believe the citizens of Minimata won a large lawsuit against the corporation, though. So that's good)
I'm surprised there was no mention of Picher, Oklahoma, which I'd always heard was the most toxic superfund place in the US. Also no mention of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in California (neither of these places have been fully cleaned up), but mostly Picher. *Picher is a nightmare*.
I expected to see pitcher too....or North st louis and the currently burning landfill filled with nuclear waste and coldwater creek ....or times beach.....or...jeez we really are terrible
I remember watching a documentary about Picher, and how the lead chat was being used in sandboxes. I can't imagine how much brain damage was caused by the lead exposure, and that it was done knowingly is ghastly. It stuns me that Eagle-Picher is still around today, and weren't bankrupted and made pay for the town they destroyed.
@@BluetheRaccoon Gotta study lead exposure somehow! They really dropped the ball with leaded gas too. That stuff went everywhere and small planes are still allowed to use it. There's now an "acceptable amount" in almost everyone's tap water. I've got a hunch it's why our world is so screwed up and likely why these idiots made such poor decisions with their waste, not to mention our lackadaisical response to pretty much all of it. These companies and more should have been boycotted out of existence long ago.
I live in an 11 minute ride away from a landfill that contains nuclear waste that is super close to a huge underground fire that will burn for decades because they don’t know how to put it out and it’s at risk of getting to the waste
@@dendrobialbright7616 Westlake landfill in Missouri. It's an abandoned landfill that has radioactive material,trash and God knows what else mixed all together and it just happens to be on fire. It's a dirty secret that some people are doing all they can to keep a secret. I moved my family as soon as I could after finding out I lived 2.1 miles east of this place. I've lived around this burning landfill my entire life and only learned about it 3 years ago,I am in my late 30s.
I think it's worth mentioning - West Valley, New York has had a huge nuclear waste issue thanks to used-bars of radioactive material being buried under the ground without a whole lot of protection, and it's been effectively contaminating the Cattaraugus Creek basin. It's not uncommon for fishermen of the prized Lake Erie steelhead to find their catch with numerous birth defects.
I live near by a toxic clean up sight. Most of it is fenced off and it's really nice to see that dandelion and other weeds have found there way in there.
Something scary: fracking fluid can now be dumped on agricultural land. It can contain all sorts of contaminants, including radiation from radium deposits.
I grew up in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, right near the Ohio River (most polluted waterway in the country! Woohoo!). There was one place that I was always told to stay away from and which was always fenced off for a long ways around it that I later found out was a Superfund site. It was the previous location of a chemical plant of some sort (there are still several chemical plants in the region, my dad still works at one... and there was a chlorine gas pipeline leak at one of the other ones just the day before yesterday that required evacuating hundreds of homes). My grandfather told me that before the place was recognized as a Superfund site, the place had been abandoned for a long time and they used to play there when he was younger. Apparently there were loads of arrowheads you could find buried there... in the soil that was declared contaminated down to a depth of something like 10 feet. He also told me about how they would go to the shoreline of the river that was on the same property and that you could reach down into the mud and pull up just handfuls of mercury. Apparently it has since been cleaned up, though. Now that there are oil and gas companies everywhere in that area thanks to the recently discovered natural gas deposits, one of them purchased the whole area and built a bunch of structures on it (I believe gas storage tanks judging by the appearance of the things built there). I imagine they had to foot the bill to clean it up but I'm not sure. They also just recently (like a month ago) spent in the neighborhood of $300 million to tear down an abandoned coal power plant right across the river from the Superfund place. Apparently their plan is to build a $2 billion cracking plant there. We'll see just what they leave behind...
Blame Obama for literally creating tax cuts specifically designed for GE. I'm not kidding either. Obama tells them what all of the future tax cuts are going to be for their industry so they can set themselfs up to catch all of them.
I find it interesting that Obama is responsible for laws that were passed in the 1990s and early 2000s that precipitated much of General Electric's tax breaks. Especially since these were passed before he was even a senator(Last big tax break bill that benefitted them was passed in 2004, Obama didn't start serving in the Senate until 2005)
When i learned about these in high school, i thought the teacher was saying "superfun sites" for about two weeks before I got to the test and saw it was superfund, not superfun.
My mother was a child who lived in Love Canal! She actually raised mice for the health department to study the effect the toxic chemicals had on birth defects.
Hey Hank, big fan! I worked at the top 2 and a short stint with # 6 on your list. Guess what, huge neurologic and autonomic health problems. In case you were (really) wondering, that stuff will mess you up. Then there were others that didn't experience the same problems.
Steven Puglisi You worked on the issue @ Reed Keppler Park/ Kerr- McGee? Grew up there, played at the park. Always wondered if the cancer in my family & my best friend was caused by the Thorium ...
Not humans. Only capitalist uncaring parodies of human beings who would sell their own mothers if it weren't already done. Not all humans bear the responsabilities of these corporate criminals against Humanity and Earth.
Not just humans. Cyanobacteria's destruction of Earth's atmosphere has persisted for over 2.5 billion years. The level of climate change they perpetrated is beyond any scale we can imagine today. So complete was their destruction of the environment that they caused the extinction of a multitude of species on a scale that has never been seen since.
in its current state, conservation effort is basically like bribing the landlord with milk and cookies so you don't get kicked to the curb. True, Earth is doing fine, but I like a good nice roof over my head thank you very much. So more milk and cookies, and perhaps actual cooperation and funding for the issue.
Very apt that it was recommended to me now, when the CDC was sent to East Palestine, Ohio within the past few days because of a train derailment that held toxic chemicals, and yesterday, Jimmy Carter's family announced he is in hospice.
When I looked it up I found evidence of there being 43 EPA Superfund sites in my grandmother’s small town in New Jersey less than 10 miles outside of Manhattan.
New Jersey is the worst, if you look at the national map of superfund site all states have many of them but New Jersey is completely covered with dots.
WHEN YOU SAID MISSOULA I GOT SO HAPPY (not in the toxic water context lol) I JUST MOVED HERE AND IVE BEEN WATCHING THIS SHOW FOREVER AND I DIDNT EVEN KNOW THAT YOU GUYS WERE HERE 😂
So basically they just moved shit around. "Yay we cleaned this land fill by moving contaminates to a different landfill" lol how the hell does that fix anything?
Energy Man it does so mostly because the previous sites had insufficient control mechanisms to prevent the material from escaping into the surrounding environment, whereas the new sites would be better equipped to handle the material.
@ leaching is a concern no matter where you put the waste (short of specialized pollutant-specific measures like glass fusing for radioactive waste). A well designed landfill with a waterproof lining and active leachate pumping and treatment systems is the best we can do for large scale waste containment.
That's a different sort of issue. Lethally flawed plumbing is different from contaminated soil. The end result is about the same though, probably worse.
I remember the anthrax scare. People were warned to watch out for letters with dust in them. There was one year when an elementary school in my district was moldy when school started. Some mold had gotten into the air conditioning units and spread all over the building. They had to shut down the building for some time and send the kids to other school buildings for classes while they cleaned it up.
I'd love a segment about areas on the planet, that are deemed inhabitable forever... And maybe how many new sites have been polluted since this episode... :)
I grew up near Fernald Feed Materials Production Center. They DOE enriched uranium for weapons use. It was shut down shortly after a whistleblower was found incinerated in one of the furnaces. Lovely sight today. Now it is a nature reserve although I highly recommend staying on the trails.
Just lost a little respect for GE. Come on, how do these companies go about dumping shit without considering the consequences? I understand it's often times an accident, but there are still plenty of incidents where they deliberately chose the cheap route (though it would come back to bite them after all the lawsuits).
Connor O'Brien Um, all of these were from like the past 60 years. We've known what pollution is for _way_ longer than that. This isn't the industrial revolution or something
Living less than a mile from the Hudson, I grew up beIng taught that we couldn't eat the fish. I am told the river used to look gross too. I take for granted that there are pcb's in there, but I would hardly call it "super toxic". I mean, I wouldn't drink from it, but I wouldn't think twice about wading into it.
I'm surprised that the Hanford nuclear site wasn't listed among these, since there wasn't really a strong showing of anything else nuclear related. Hanford had to be one of the worst and even now they are still working on the site and/or the surrounding areas.
I feel like instead of just Love Canal, the entire city of Niagara Falls should have been on this list. Radioactive slag dump sites are popping up all over the city (there's roughly 100 known sites across western Niagara county, some of which our local government have known about since a study was conducted in the1970s), the air quality here is horrendous, and of course we have our ever growing mountain range the city calls the dump.
Yes incredibly they skipped over the Lewiston contamination site that borders the entire school district and homes they are containing or I should say leaking a majority of the Manhattan project there! When droves are getting thyroid cancer that lived there..this cannot be overlooked any longer!
Yup, i live by Hanford site. Pretty common for someone to get cancer from working there. My coworker's husband who worked there got cancer last year. On our local tv stations we get ads that inform past workers they get special benefits even after retirement since cancer will hit them. Pretty sad but that place pays well for the risk. I heard janitors make about $25 an hr. Would i do it? Nope.
Ticking time bomb, yeah, like the 65' long crack in the Wanapum dam in 2014. That made me pucker. All these wildfires are a reassuring thing to me, no rain, no stress on the dam. And then we get the yearly average in 2 months...
yes because, people who don't care that word A doesn't mean word B, based on association, those people know what =/= means and if not, care to find out.
@@rayj1131 its is far from the river however there is a huge illegally dumped area they are working on to stop it from entering groundwater. Rhe worst part of Hanford is its proximity to CGS nuke plant because they are both surrounded by active earthquake faults. If CGS has a meltdown, Hanford tanks would blow up in the two week minimum evacuation. Next to Fukushima, Hanford is the most dangerous toxic site on the planet.
Wow if I had had a child at the time that was lost due to this bs id be pretty damned mad, yet corporations continue to do it in other countries as well without recourse. How lost we are.
Should have mentioned that the US military also used Love Canal but was never held accountable for what it buried there. Also, Hooker Chemical used the "state of the art" design at that time on Love Canal (which was a dump long before Hooker acquired it). There was no indicated problems with the site until Hooker was court ordered to sell the area to the city (for a $1), and then promptly violated the containment of the landfill and destroyed its integrity. The City also excluded a clause from the plat that indicated the presence of the landfill and the there was to be no land disturbance ( digging ) in the area. The City then pawned the land off on unsuspecting home buyers ... on purpose! The City was never held accountable. While Hooker certainly pollutes, they can not be help solely responsible for Love Canal.
