“Let me say a few words about Gluppity-Glup. Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop making Gluppity-Glup.   Also Schloppity-Schlop. And what do you do with this leftover goo?…”      From The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Ever since the disaster at Love Canal focused national attention on the problems of hazardous waste disposal, we have been struggling to cope with the realization that our industrialized society creates enormous quantities of leftover goo. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some 57 million metric tons of hazardous wastes were produced in 1980, and the rate of generation is increasing by 3% annually.

What makes these figures especially disquieting is that no one knows where all these wastes are going.   The EPA estimates that there are between 32,000 and 50,000 sites containing hazardous wastes in the U.S., and that as many as 2,000 of these endanger human health or the environment.   Frustrated by the lack of specific data on the problem, the House Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee conducted its own survey of the 53 largest domestic chemical manufacturers and found that about 762 million tons of waste (hazardous and non-hazardous) had been discarded at 3,308 facilities between 1950 and 1979.

Amazingly, the EPA estimates that about 90% of the hazardous material produced in this country has been dumped improperly and that more than one million Americans may be exposed to moderate or severe health hazards by faulty disposal.   The projected cleanup cost is already $44 billion, and many old sites still await discovery.

With five million tons generated each year, California ranks fourth in the production of hazardous wastes, behind New Jersey, Illinois, and Ohio. The Bay Area alone created about two million tons in 1980. Of this Bay Area refuse, 20% was transported to special dump sites for hazardous materials, a mere 1% was recycled and the rest was treated or eliminated on the grounds of the industrial plant where it was produced.   Some 500 such “on-site” treatment, storage and disposal facilities exist in the Bay Area, and at least 32 sites have been identified where wastes were clumsily handled, creating cleanup costs estimated at $300,000.

Cases of waste pollution in the Bay Area have appeared with alarming regularity.   In 1980, herbicides stored in evaporation ponds by the Stauffer Chemical Company in Richmond leaked into the groundwater and were suspected to have contaminated the Bay. Fearing that several storage ponds would overflow because of heavy rains, Chevron USA released three million gallons of highly toxic fertilizer wastes into the San Pablo Bay. The groundwater beneath U.S. Steel’s 70-year-old Pittsburg dumpsite, which receives industrial sludges laden with zinc, chromium and other heavy metals, was found to be tainted with these compounds, probably threatening nearby Delta waterways.

“Most industrial facilities in the Bay Area that treat, store or dispose of hazardous waste are not currently required to monitor the groundwater beneath their sites,” said Mike Belliveau, a research associate with Citizens for a Better Environment, a Bay Area-based environmental group. “Until public agencies become more responsive to this deficiency, the environmental threat posed by many old dump sites will remain unknown until it is too late for preventive measures.”

Midnight Haulers
Currently, landfills and surface impoundments such as open ponds, pits and lagoons are the cheapest and therefore the preferred method of getting rid of hazardous wastes.   Much of this dumping has been done on company property, to avoid the costs of transportation and the prying eyes of regulators.   But many manufacturers do not want to deal with their own wastes, and a whole separate industry of waste disposal firms has sprung up to fill their needs.   They range from conscientious firms using sophisticated disposal methods to unscrupulous “midnight haulers,” who make big money by ridding industry of troublesome wastes by dumping them illegally.

In 1978, one such company sprinkled more than 201 miles on North Caroline roads with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), known carcinogens that are infamous for their persistence in the environment.   Some companies have also eyed the Third World as a handy dumping ground: some of California’s waste is suspected to disappear over the Mexican border, and last year at least one U.S. corporation had contracted to ship its wastes for processing in Sierra Leone.

Hazardous wastes can cause damage in several different ways: direct fouling of soil or surface water, groundwater contamination, air pollution from the evaporation of liquid wastes, accidental fires and explosives and accumulation of poison in the food chain. Of these, groundwater contamination is perhaps the most insidious and widespread. Water percolates through the buried chemicals to form a toxic “leachate,” which can then migrate through the soil to the water table. Once an aquifer is polluted, it is often impossible to clean and may not be drinkable again for decades or centuries—a serious loss when one considers that over half the country’s drinking supply comes from such aquifers.  A recent report prepared for a Senate subcommittee documents 128 incidents of tainted groundwater caused by improper waste disposal; about 1363 wells serving nearly half a million Americans had to be closed.

Nowadays government, industry, environmentalist and citizens’ groups all agree that hazardous waste is a complex and serious problem that needs attention. According to a June 1980 Louis Harris poll, over 83% of Americans want stricter hazardous waste regulation, with 86% giving this problem “very high priority.” About 83 percent want dangerous sites cleaned up regardless of the cost, which would probably eventually be borne by the consumer and taxpayer. What they do not agree on is how this problem can best be solved, and—the real crux—who should pay for it.

Who Should Pay for the Clean-up?
Attempts to regulate hazardous waste disposal have been beset by bureaucratic delays and industry resistance. Here in California, a working permit system for treatment, storage and disposal facilities is far from being implemented, although the state has some of the most progressive hazardous waste legislation on the books. Three years after the ambitious licensing program began, only 18 permits had been issued, although 6,235 facilities may require them under current law.

On the federal level, the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) provided for the regulation of current and future hazardous waste practices. The EPA, however, missed its deadlines for publishing these regulations, and so little changed for several years.   Finally, in May 1980 the EPA issued more than 2,000 pages of rules, including a list of 501 wastes, waste-producing processes and specific chemicals defined as “hazardous” by the four criteria of ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity and toxicity.

The RCRA, however, contained an enormous deficiency—it said nothing about the clean-up of existing dumpsites. Several bills were introduced into both houses calling for the establishment of a ‘superfund” to clean dangerous sites, with money coming primarily from taxes on the chemical industry.

The $100 billion-a-year chemical industry squawked “unfair.” The Chemical Manufacturers Association pressured members of Congress to weaken the bills, and the political action committees (PACs) of large chemical corporations, which contributed $2.67 million to congressional races through November 1980, poured their funds into the campaigns of opponents to the superfund. Assisted by $94,200 in contributions from chemical PACs, Iowa Republican Charles Grassley defeated incumbent Senator John Culver, a sponsor of one of the strongest superfund proposals.

The chemical industry argued that since all of society benefits from the use of synthetic chemicals, everyone should share the cost of safe disposal. They complained that a superfund would unfairly burden the industry and result in higher prices for consumers. But as consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted in his recent book Who’s Poisoning America (Sierra Club Books, $12.95): “The fund should be financed by the industries responsible for the dumps, not by the taxpayers suffering from them. If this financing increases the costs of certain products, it will simply provide consumers with a more accurate picture of those products’ true costs.”

No Compensation for Victims
In December 1980, Jimmy Carter signed a superfund into law.   Formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), it establishes a $1.6 billion Hazardous Substances Response Fund, which ensures that the government will be redressed for damages in case the polluters are unknown, can not, or will not pay. About 87.5 percent of the fund comes from levies on industry, and the rest from general revenues.

The law does not provide, however, for the compensation of victims whose health suffers from toxic releases, nor does it cover oil spills. Though better than nothing, CERCLA is considered a compromise bill forged in the face of strong industry opposition. A California counterpart to CERCLA, SB 788, has been introduced by Senator Nicholas Petris (D-Okla) to establish a more comprehensive cleanup superfund through taxes on petroleum and chemical products.

A real solution to the hazardous waste problem will require more than remedial action, claim many environmentalists familiar with the issue. The most effective way to prevent toxic waste disaster is to reduce the amount of dangerous by-products that have to be stored. Some ideas for accomplishing this include altering production methods so that less waste is created, recycling and reusing as much as possible, detoxification of particularly potent compounds by incineration and other techniques and using sophisticated landfill methods as a last resort.

There are some signs that the “just dump it in the ground” mentality is changing.  But until companies begin to feel the long-range effects of their actions as well as short-term economic ones, the problem will remain. As Nader concluded, “Managers who assert that their accountability ends at the balance sheet hardly can be expected to cherish the rights of future generations.   We must cherish the rights of future generations.   We must cherish these rights, by making the companies with the power to create more Love Canals both accountable and responsible.”   For in a very real sense, we all live near Love Canal.

Editor’s Note: Gale was a 21-year-old senior at Stanford University when she wrote this article.

Transcribed with permission from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 19, 1981. Vol. 15, No. 38