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by - January 14, 2008 - 11:08 AM
Superfund is both an actual fund and a shorthand term for the list of America’s nastiest toxic waste sites. One in two Americans lives within ten miles of a Superfund site. Currently, there are about 1,300 sites on the list, although it fluctuates. New Jersey has the most Superfund sites, with over a hundred. Nevada and the District of Columbia have one apiece. Here’s a closer look at some of the notable ones.
Love Canal
Love Canal is the granddaddy of Superfund sites. It started out as a gleam in the eye of a developer named William Love. In 1892, Love proposed a seven-mile canal around Niagara Falls. Like any good developer, he named the project after himself.
Love had to abandon his plan after digging only one mile of the canal. Locals swam and fished in the canal while chemical manufacturers used it as a landfill. In 1953, with the canal full of toxic waste, it was capped. But later developers ignored warnings and eventually built houses, schools and playing fields over the abandoned canal. Predictably, residents started getting sick, and in 1978, Love Canal was declared the first federal disaster area created by a man-made disaster. The government ultimately bought out the homes of 278 families.
Spurred by Love Canal, Congress levied a special tax on oil and chemical companies to clean up such sites. It raised $1.8 billion—plenty, they assumed, to clean up all the toxic waste in the country. But as more and more toxic sites were identified—at one point, 30,000 were nominated—and as Love Canal recedes into memory, funds have dwindled.
Picher, Oklahoma
One present-day Love Canal is in Picher, Oklahoma, which was once a boomtown for mining lead and zinc. Pollution has killed off many of the trees, and huge piles of mine debris create a stark, lunar landscape in the Oklahoma countryside. With the entire town on the verge of collapse due to unstable mineshafts, Uncle Sam has offered to buy out the homes of all Picher’s residents. Still, some are staying out of loyalty to their hometown. [Photo courtesy of Red Fork State of Mind.]
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor contains a Superfund site. Actually, it contains 30 hazardous waste sites where stuff has been dumped or spilled over the years: mercury-contaminated sediments dredged from the harbor, waste oil, leaking landfills, you name it.
Anniston, Alabama
Though New Jersey has the most Superfund sites, the most polluted place in the nation may be Anniston, Alabama, where Monsanto ran a huge chemical manufacturing plant. The company paid out $700 million to residents in 2003.
The Cleanup
What does it take to clean up a Superfund site? It involves removing a lot of dirt—contaminated dirt, that is. It’s often trickier than it sounds, though. Sometimes the dirt you have to remove is at the bottom of a river, for instance. That’s the case at the Kalamazoo River Superfund site in Michigan. The project has a cool website where you can look at pictures of the work in progress.
If you think those yellow haz-mat suits are very fashion forward, then working at a Superfund site might be a perfect job for you. The EPA compiled a photograph archive of some of the chicest rubber suits ever, modeled at some world-class dumps. There’s also a picture of a fish with a tumor (above).
To find sites near you by zip code, use the Pollution Locator.
Chris Weber is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com.
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I live in Medina, Ohio. They used to dump toxic waste behind a residential area and a large number of people got cancer and lumps. No one put two and two together but me! What can I do about it?
posted by joe on 1-14-2008 at 11:16 am
I don’t claim to live in Anniston, just near it in a town directly north.
In addition to the Monsanto cleanup, BTW, we also have an abandoned Army fort, the ranges of which are still FULL of unexploded ordinances.
FUN place to live!
A few years ago, my son went to an event on the old fort where, to my horror, he was given refrigerator magnets depicting things which might be found lying about and were not to be touched under any circumstances.
Oh, and out on the Army Depot we still have there are lots of leaky old chemical weapons!
Yeah Bama!
posted by Jennifer on 1-14-2008 at 11:24 am
@Joe –
I used to work for an attorney’s office who was handling a Toxic Tort case against a chemical & dye company here in NJ. If you’re seriously interested in trying to pursue litigation, you basically need to find the richest lawyer in your area. These types of cases take years to pursue, and just about always involve astronomical amounts of paperwork. Usually the party responsible for the contamination is a large corporation, which means they have a team of lawyers who will try to bury their competition in legal motions. (If the responsible party is not a large corporation, there’s not much point in pursuing a case, as they probably won’t have the money to pay out any damages and will just file for bankruptcy.) Many attorneys won’t want to take the case because they know what kind of a headache they’d be getting themselves into.
Also, the tone of your comment makes it sound like this is something that might have happened a long time ago. There could be a statute of limitations involved, depending on your state and the offenses that the company can be linked to. If it’s something you want to pursue, do it soon.
posted by cb on 1-14-2008 at 11:53 am
Ahhh, yes! The all American “bury them with paper” approach to justice.
posted by Scott on 1-14-2008 at 12:14 pm
I grew up in Buffalo. I remember the whole Love Canal mess. Mostly, I remember my favorite newspaper headline of all time. On the front page of the Buffalo Evening News “CAUTION URGED IN PROBE OF LOVE CANAL”. It still makes me smile.
Oddly, I moved to St. Louis in the early 1980s. Remember Times Beach?
posted by Anna on 1-14-2008 at 12:38 pm
I can’t believe you left out the Berkely Pit in Butte, Montana. It’s one of the largest superfund sites in the country. From wikipedia: “The Berkley Pit is a former open pit copper mine located in Butte, Montana, USA, about a mile and a half wide and about 1,780 feet deep. It contains about 900 feet of water that is heavily acidic, with a pH level of 2.5, and laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals such as arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.” There are so many chemicals in it that they actually ‘mine’ the water for traces of dissolved metals. New species of bacteria have been discovered that seem to have evolved specifically to live in the muck. It’s horrifyingly surprising you left this one out, it’s larger that any of the ones you posted.
Driving through Butte, you can’t help but notice it and gasp. It’s a big scar on the landscape, right next to the city, and is full of liquid so putrid that birds land and never take off again. The water level is constantly rising and threatens to breach the pit in several years. Residents in the whole valley are concerned with the fog that the pit produces and that rolls into town. There’s also a viewing platform.
posted by Rachel on 1-14-2008 at 1:48 pm
Hmm. My mom owns a SCUBA shop in Georgia and often takes people to do certifications, practice dives, etc at a rock quarry in Anniston. Anybody know which one I’m talking about? Are we going to grow gills/webbed feet and untold radioactive super powers from diving there?
posted by Jen on 1-14-2008 at 1:50 pm
I used to work cleaning up sites in RI and MA. The weirdest was the Picillo Pig farm. One day Mr. Picillo decided his pigs weren’t profitable enough, so he invited chemical companies to dump on his land. It was stopped when neighbors heard an explosion and saw a fire. 30 years and millions later, the water is almost clean.
posted by Jessica on 1-14-2008 at 2:24 pm
My town found a huge thorium deposit about 10 years ago. It was located in probably the worst place possible: next door to a school bus depot and across the street from the only farm in town.
Why yes, I live in New Jersey. No, that thorium deposit is not a superfund site, I looked.
posted by Liz on 1-14-2008 at 3:24 pm
Thanks for this downer. The day after the Cowboys loose I find out my zip code is in the 90th percentile of most polluted areas.
Shouldn’t be surprised though, I live less than 2 miles from the Houston Ship Channel, and there are so many chemical plants.
posted by Witty Nickname on 1-14-2008 at 3:37 pm
What an absolutely terrifying website. I’m in Cincinnati and guess what’s here? P&G! Among at least 50 other highly pollutant factories in various fields.
I knew we were pretty bad off, but really.
posted by Lea on 1-14-2008 at 3:53 pm
Apparently the junk we release here in the Metro Detroit area isn’t toxic enough. We are one of the worst for toxic releases, but have very few superfund sites.
I say, just wait until all the automotive related plants around here are eventually torn down. Then we’ll hear about all of it.
BTW, there was an auto plant in Chicago a few years back that filled in an open pit. Not long after that, they decided they needed the pit. It was not quite as easy as diggin out the old hole again. I guess the original pit was grandfathered in under the old rules, but the EPA made them clean up and decontaminate the site when they wanted to build the “new” pit. It cost them a fortune!
posted by It's good to be the King on 1-14-2008 at 4:17 pm
Hey witty nickname, I grew up very close to the Houston Ship Channel as well. I remember every time a plant had an explosion we would a) wonder if it was the one where my dad has worked the past 20 years or b)wonder what fun smells we would get over the coming weeks. I remember one that exploded back in 2001 or 2002 that filled the air with a stench that made you want to vomit for about a month. Ahh good times…
posted by Brandi on 1-14-2008 at 4:52 pm
The Anniston area is being cleared of chemical weapons; it might even be done by now. The company performing the cleanup is Washington Group International.
posted by Radwaste on 1-14-2008 at 5:27 pm
I agree with Rachel, the omission of the Berkeley Pit in Butte, MT is pretty amazing. I’ve been there many, many times growing up, even back in the day when you could watch the pit when it was an active mine with massive dumptrucks crawling up the walls. A few years ago, if you were lucky, you can watch as small aluminum boats are lowered into the water by helicopter so samples could be taken. The boats were airlifted because the water was so corrosive they would have been comprimised before they made it to the center and back. My father was one of a few scientists who submitted proposals to the EPA for the cleanup of Berkeley Pit in the 1990’s, using a system to extract much of the heavy metals back out and hopefully pay for the cost of the whole project. But the EPA pulled out funds, and today the pit sits untouched. I believe it is still one of the US’s largest Superfund sites.
Sadly, it’s just one of many reminders of Butte’s fall from grace. While few people have heard of it, at the turn of the last century, it was one of the wealthiest towns in America, pulling massive amounts of copper from the ground. Today, all that is left is tailing ponds, open pits, mineshaft headframes, and a downtown full of historic – and often disused – beautiful buildings.
Best Chinese restaurant I’ve been to though, I believe it’s on the historic register. Things may change when the water from the pit gets into the aquafer however….
posted by spinthelights on 1-14-2008 at 9:01 pm
You left out the world’s longest Superfund site: The Hudson River! About 50 years ago, GE dumped a bunch of PCBs (a known…well, now…carcinogen that is contained in transformers, capacitors, and such) into the river up around Mechanicvill,e N.Y. Now, the stuff is leaching into the river and flowing all the way to NY City.
A variety of schemes have been proposed for dredging, drying out, and disposing of the contaminated river muck, but decades of corporate opposition (to some schemes) and public opposition (to others) have held up progress in and out of court for more than 20 years.
Not to mention that there is a school of thought that says that the stuff would probably be less dangerous if it were just left alone, than if it were to be disturbed by dredging.
It’s a huge mess…in many ways.
posted by Mike on 1-15-2008 at 8:10 am
And do not forget Hanford, the nuclear site in Richland, Washington where the plutonium for ‘Fat Boy’ was manufactured.
posted by Zane on 1-15-2008 at 11:40 am
Libby, Montana would be a good candidate for this list.
posted by Mike on 1-15-2008 at 11:47 am
Some of this data’s really out of date. A couple of the St. Louis sites were several stages into remediation in 2005 when I temped for the Army Corps of Engineers, and the database doesn’t reflect that.
I would advise people not to panic until they know the current data for their areas. If you’re worried, contact the EPA and ask what the status of a site is now. There’s no use in worrying about something that may have been taken care of already.
posted by Kiwi Carlisle on 1-15-2008 at 11:54 am
Hey Joe, I live in Medina as well. Where is this place you speak of? I’ve lived here for almost my entire 40 years and this is news to me.
posted by terry on 1-15-2008 at 12:21 pm
I just made this map showing the locations of all the superfund sites in the US. apparently you can’t link here, but its at GeoCommons.com, search for superfund
posted by Bill on 1-15-2008 at 12:31 pm
I’m no treehugger, believe me, but sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to be born back before our modern industry exploded. Living off of the land and drinking fresh water out of a stream. When I see all of the trash on the side of the road and read stories like these, it makes me long for better, cleaner times.
posted by Tommy on 1-15-2008 at 1:15 pm
I grew up in Macomb County, Michigan, where we have three superfund sites. They are all toxic waste areas. There is one area of about 40 acres that is fenced in. However, there is also a huge area of about 150 acres that is not fenced, and has been leaching into the ground for some time. There is both groundwater contamination and air contamination. There is a high level of zinc, arsenic, and PCB contamination. Houses are built all around the area, less than a mile away, and there is a high risk for contaminated water to migrate to those homes. I remember driving by it all the time and getting chills because it is so scary to think that was only about six or seven miles from where I lived.
posted by Danielle on 1-15-2008 at 1:19 pm
Oh, that was Macomb County Michigan. About 50 miles from Detroit.
posted by Danielle on 1-15-2008 at 1:21 pm
Yes this is not a real list if you don’t include the Berkely Pit in Butte, Montana.
posted by Eric on 1-15-2008 at 1:50 pm
Danielle, 23 mile is only…(hold on, counting fingers….) 15 miles from 8 mile. If you look at a satellite map of the 2 sites on Hamlin and 23 mile, there are housing developments with man-made lakes/ponds right across the street. How dumb is that?
posted by Chuck on 1-15-2008 at 2:33 pm
Another massive superfund site is the the area surrounding the old American Smelting And Refining Co (ASARCO) smelter in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State. This smelter processed ore from Copper and Gold mines in the northwest, and in the process it emitted clouds of arsenic and lead into the air. Much of the soil in King county is contaminated, which is causing alarm for parents whose kids play outside in the dirt. It’s going to be a LONG cleanup effort….
posted by Kyle on 1-15-2008 at 2:39 pm
My personal favorite is Dead Creek in Sauget, Ill. Monsanto used to dump chemicals there. Kids used to cause flash fires by riding their dirt bikes through the creek bed, and some of the EPA documentation includes a report about a perfectly healthy dog running into the creek bed, coming up the opposite bank, and dropping dead. I know a guy who used to work out by a rail yard near the Monsanto plant. He said he and the other guys used to sit around on their breaks and watch the water glow in all these weird psychedelic colors.
I always thought it ironic that nothing could live in Dead Creek. The name predates Monsanto by many years and supposedly comes from a local Indian tribe’s practice of floating their dead down the creek to the Mississippi River.
posted by Emily on 1-15-2008 at 4:05 pm
This makes sense I live less than 5 miles from the Houston Ship Channel, where there is a lot of chemical plants.
posted by sinbad on 1-16-2008 at 3:29 pm
Where’s Times Beach??
posted by charlie on 1-16-2008 at 11:49 pm
I live about 8 miles away from Picher.
posted by star_tigerlily on 1-17-2008 at 12:12 am
I used to investigate hazardous waste sites before I retired. I’ve worked on Love Canal, Anniston, and more than I want to remember. Worried about living near a hazardous site? Then don’t live near a gas station or a dry cleaner. Many have underground storage tanks that leak. The main issue would be if you have a residential well that you use for drinking water.
In general, industrial sites are bad, DOD sites are worse, and DOE sites are the worst. Listen to what Zane said above, Hanford!
posted by terrabyte on 1-19-2008 at 7:53 pm
Superfund sites are horrendious to be sure, and my native Michigan has plenty-
the Tittabawassee/Saginaw rivers’ water-
sheds should qualify thanks to the Dow Chemical Co. Just as scarey are all of
the “mini-sites” in this state- sites of
old mills, chemical plants, and, still being created, the clandestine dumping grounds of the oil & gas companies who
are poking holes all over the place. It is almost a matter of pride to some of
these yahoos (I deal with many) to dump a few barrels here, a few there…
posted by Faron Hite on 1-21-2008 at 11:18 am
ah. what a douring list. strange to see one of the best is missing though.
Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, New York, is the long standing holder of the title “Most Polluted Lake in the USA” and often ranks out as a top polluted lake in the world. the EPA has marked it a Haz Mat site, and it contains our friends Phosphorous, Ammonia, and enough Mercury to fill the next ten years production of light bulbs!
the main plant responsible for all the refuse has been shut down, but other plants, and additional unresolved and unknown sources, still pour more pollutants in to this lake.
curiously, the mercury content is the least accounted for, something that has poor syracuse scratching their heads.
its also got an incredibly rank algae bloom every year because of the chemical mix.
posted by killjoy on 1-29-2008 at 12:22 am
It may be mostly cleaned up by now (except for the groundwater which may still take decades), but let’s not forget Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado. 27 square miles total, with one portion that was once called “The Most Polluted Square Mile on Earth”. Just think pesticides, nerve gas, and all the nasty combinations that anyone can think of.
posted by Creede on 2-27-2008 at 11:08 am
A friend of mine just moved to Butte with his 4 year old daughter. From what I have read here it is not a very nice place to live let alone bring a small child. Do they have any studies on the health of individuals who live here? That comment about the fog scares me to death! It can’t be a healthy place to live. please answer me back ..Jeanne
posted by Jeanne on 3-1-2008 at 6:45 pm
Liz: Are you talking about the W.R. Grace plant in Wayne? Because that is a Superfund site (I put the link on my name). If not, that’s weird, because you described it exactly. I grew up in Wayne, and I remember when all the soil from the park down by the river was dug up and moved up to the Superfund site.
posted by Jack on 10-23-2009 at 2:27 pm