OMG: Per DemocracyNow - There were Superfund Toxic Sites in NO...

[Junkdrawer]

Why the f**k would you put keep a toxic chemical cleanup site below sea level??????

According to the guest on DemocracyNow - they were poor black neighborhoods. St. Charles, if I remember correctly.

Listen Here: http://www.democracynow.org

On edit: The waste site was there, the controversy is what you do to clean it up.

[screembloodymurder]

1. The sites are there as a result of former industrial activity.

They weren't put there.

[Totally Committed]

10. This is where they put poor neighborhoods and government housing...

so they don't have to spend the time "cleaning up" the sites.

I grew up in a town where leather tanneries were torn down, and government housing for the poor, and two primary schools for their kids were built on the sites. They finally had to tear down the schools (the housing "projects" are still there) because the chemicals in the ground under the schools seeped back up through the flooring and made the children sick, and I'm talking Leukemia, not headcolds. You won't find a high-priced home withing 5 miles of that part of town now.

Corporations always see the poor as "expendable", and so it would follow that the elements of our governments who are supported by those corporations would see them the same, and vote the same. It is up to us to put a stop to this cycle here and now in our Party, imo.

TC

[democrank]

2. Of course they`re in poor neighborhoods.

You wouldn`t want the views to be ruined in gated communities, would you?

[theboss]

4. You also don't know what a superfund site is

See my post below.

[theboss]

3. You don't know what a superfund site is

Superfund sites are not toxic waste dumps. They are former industrial sites that have serious environmental damage. I grew up in a town that will probably eventually be one large superfund site.

[rkc3]

6. One near my hometown - Apollo, PA. An old B&W nuclear processing site.

They trucked out thousands of tons of earth a few years ago - now there's 15 foot tall fences ringing the site.

The Kiski River which was right next to the site used to be one of the most polluted rivers in the country - between mine runoff and this site the river was dead for years.

[rodeodance]

11. one of ours in WI is an old military amnuition site. I have not followed

what is happening to it. It was vacated long time ago.

[Junkdrawer]

16. See edit in OP...

:hi:

[theboss]

19. Well, it takes decades to get the sites in shape

The bottom line is most of our old industrial sites were built along rivers because that's how you got the product out. And then the railroads were built next to the rivers because that is where the industry was. The cities grew around them.

Once the industries leave, the clean-up is left behind.

It could be worse. China is going to be one large superfund site in about thirty years.

[Pallas180]

5. Well they also have

an oil spill now in the town - and they've always known they
would have toxic soup.

I wonder if they will move New Orleans now, 80 % of the town underwater, 40,000 houses underwater BEFORE the levy broke.

Seems to me it should be just plowed under, and moved to the other side of Lake Pontchatrain, or anywhere upstream where this could not happen again....just leave the port to the industries.

[rkc3]

7. Yup - makes you wonder why a major city would be built below sea level

next to the Gulf and between Pontchartrain and the Mississippi and in hurricane terrority.

[rodeodance]

13. LAND+Profit

[screembloodymurder]

14. The truth is NO will never be safe.

The whole city should be built on stilts. It's an American Venice.

[SoCalDem]

15. It did not start out as the huge place it is now..

They just gradually grew, like most cities, and as problems cropped up they figured out a way to work around them..They relied on "luck" and their luck just ran out.. Remember the midwestern floods of the 90's? Lots of those towns on the Mississippi, were devastated, and a few of them said.. enough already and relocated the whole town ...on higher ground.. It cost a lot, but they were smart to do it. The places where they used to be, are now park-like areas, commons for all to use in good times, and for the Mississippi to "borrow" from time to time when it floods.. Thats the way waterfronts should be.. a minimum of permanent structures, and certainly NOT homes ..

[Pallas180]

17. TVis reporting that it was gradually sinking in any case-

I forget whether it was Cayce or Michael Scallion who gave predictions decades ago that the Mississippi would become salt water.

We are definitely in earth changes and I wonder if this is the fulfillment of their prediction....certainly the salt water surge has
flowed up the Mississippi.

[SoCalDem]

18. Yep.. It's way past time to start re-thinking

how we house people and WHERE we house them.. New orleans may be the test case for a do-over..

[Pallas180]

20. Unbelievable. Army Corps of Engineers going to build/add on

to levies to make them higher.

Morons. MOVE the TOWN.

It wouldn't be the first time towns have moved from close to the Mississippi.

In Biloxi they thought they were safe from the surge 3 and 4 miles in.

The surge went 6 miles in.

I'm 5 miles from the beach in Florida....seems to me now that that is not far enough!

[rodeodance]

9. it is obvious all sorts of 'sites' are enveloped into that term. toxic to

people and the envirment no matter the source!

[Junkdrawer]

8. Here's an informational link: Agriculture Street Landfill Superfund Site:

The ASL site is a 95-acre site located in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The site was used as a municipal landfill receiving municipal waste and construction debris for more than 50 years prior to being developed for housing and businesses. The landfill was closed in 1965. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gordon Plaza Subdivision, Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) residences, Gordon Plaza Apartments, the Moton School, the Press Park residential area and community center were constructed over part of the landfill. Forty-eight acres of the landfill remain undeveloped and fenced. Metals, pesticides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been found in surface and subsurface soils throughout the site during environmental studies.

In December of 1994, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the ASL site on the National Priorities List (also called the Superfund list). EPA conducted a Remedial/Removal Integrated Investigation (RRII) of the entire site and released their results in 1995. During this investigation, surface soil, subsurface soil, groundwater, tap water, air, and indoor dust samples were analyzed for chemicals found at the site <1>. Based on those environmental results and health data, OPH/SEET in conjunction with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), released a Public Health Assessment.

...

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/PHA/agriculturest/agr_p1.html

[rodeodance]

12. thanks, I imagine the fear is that the toxins will seep up now?