Are Superfund Sites Really That Bad?

[Razors Edge ★]

And, honestly, what else is northern NJ gonna do with its land?  And Nevada and North Dakota seem like their taxpayers are getting screwed!  ND is good (green), and NV only has the two spots.  Seems a bit unfair.

[ChrisL]

The former  USMC base El Toro in my neck of the woods was/maybe still is a super fund site.  The base closed in the early 1990’s and it sat unused for decades as the toxic waste had to be cleaned.  The aquifer was contaminated and residents on base and in the neighboring city of Irvine complained of chemical smelling water from their taps  for years.  I wonder if there were ever any long term studies in those residents as drinking that water had to be harmful. 

Nearly 30 years after the base closure the land, which is prime real estate,  is mostly undeveloped but that’s not all due to the contamination. 

[donkpow]

Money grab and that's the ruin of it.

[Randomguy]

The ones I know of locally are horrifically bad.  Super bad.

[Dirtyhip]

I guess it depends.  We had one.  It was due to the property developer not properly mitigating asbestos removal.  They built homes there and then people realized they had high concentrations of asbestos. I have ridden my road bike up there often.  No plans to plant up there, so it is not an issue.

 

[donkpow]

GM took care of their responsibilities over here. They had a lot of land used for factories for a long time. Time back when everything was dumped in the ditch.

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

2 minutes ago, donkpow said:

GM took care of their responsibilities over here. They had a lot of land used for factories for a long time. Time back when everything was dumped in the ditch.

What about that nuclear / uranium processing company?

[Razors Edge ★]

5 minutes ago, donkpow said:

Time back when everything was dumped in the ditch.

A simpler and better time, for sure.

[donkpow]

1 minute ago, Old No. 7 said:

What about that nuclear / uranium processing company?

I don't know. I think they turned that into a museum and public housing unit. 

No really, I don't know. Are you talking about Mound Labs?

[2Far ★]

I've been to 3 (NH, NJ & AZ), all TCE sites (well, the 3rd had TCE as well as a bunch of other polychorinatedBMFs). Basically they drilled wells around the periphery of the site, pumped out the ground water, treated it (adjusted pH, dosed with hydrogen peroxide, ran it thru a high powered UV light) & pumped it back into the ground.

The AZ site was special. Circa 60s-70s, a guy started recycling solvents. Surrounding manufacturers would give/sell-cheap to him, he would clean them up & sell back to them. The residual sludge was pumped into a pit to evaporate the remaining solvents & get buried. Problems was that the pit was unlined. All that shit drifted down towards the water table. Motorola came in & bought the guy out (don't remember if it was to expand their own recycle business or get his customer list or what). Anyhoo, they shut down the site immediately & locked the gate. Several years later, when ground water contamination became a liability issue, the EPA hammered Motorola for significant costs, even though they never sent anything there or used the site for anything.

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

Are Superfund Sites Really That Bad?

 

Ask Jimmy Hoffa. He's spent several decades next to one, while stuffed into a 55 gallon drum.

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

56 minutes ago, donkpow said:

I don't know. I think they turned that into a museum and public housing unit. 

No really, I don't know. Are you talking about Mound Labs?

Yeah, that’s the one. Didn’t they process  uranium or some such there? I remember reading a story about that. 

[donkpow]

7 minutes ago, Old No. 7 said:

Yeah, that’s the one. Didn’t they process  uranium or some such there? I remember reading a story about that. 

Here's the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Laboratories

Superfund site cleaned up by 2010.

 

Something over by Piketon was/is a mess. I don't know for sure.

[12string]

I can't see NJ on that map, somebody drew a bunch of red where it's supposed to be.

Oh, we've been "assured" they're clean now.

Friends bought a house in a new development right beside one of those sites.  They were "almost finished" cleaning it up.  Sat on the back porch drinking, watching guys a few hundred feet away working - in full hazmat suits.  But they said we were safe

[groupw]

We have 3.  One was a former military ammunition plant. The dump pit for their  “dud” explosives leeched into the soil and groundwater. They were burning the soil from the dump pit and processing the groundwater some how. The groundwater plume was under our neighborhood. It had been private wells until they got the news. The city annexed the area, installed city water and sewer.  Took 30 years, but the plume is gone. 
The 2nd was a dry cleaner long out of business. Dumped his solvent in the alley for years. They just finished that one. 
The last was by one of the largest manufacturers in the city. My dad worked there. At the time, power trains were shipped from their home plant in Europe. They ran on 12v so they would be sent with 2 6v batteries in series. Local higher ups didn’t like that so they replaced with new 12v batteries and left the 6v batteries in a pile in a field. Pretty sure there were other things as well. That one was still running last I knew.