Re:What America looked like before the EPA, in photos
by vidarh on Friday March 16, 2018 @06:56AM
(#16599810)
> every parcel of land would have some advocate who cared very deeply about the environmental quality of their land.
Commodore Business Machines for several decades had their plant in Westchester, PA, leak assorted chemical related to their chip manufacturing. When this was identified, they started some improvement work, but didn't fix the problem. The site was eventually sold to a company that bought it knowing it was contaminated, who continued to operate a chip manufacturing business there, until the demanded improvements made it impossible for them to operate.
Despite corporate ownership for years, nobody advocated or cared very deeply about the environmental quality of this land until they were forced to by the EPA, because it did not affect their business. Other people nearby would largely have remained unaffected for many years too, until chemicals started seeping out, at which point Commodore was in decline and eventually went bankrupt.
I'm sure there are cases where the issue is that nobody has any direct legal interest in a piece of land, but a lot of serious environmental issues have explicitly happened or escalated because the owner did not care or could not afford to remedy the problems.
The bigger fiction is to think that the owner will always "care very deeply" about the environmental quality of their land.
Commodore Business Machines for several decades had their plant in Westchester, PA, leak assorted chemical related to their chip manufacturing. When this was identified, they started some improvement work, but didn't fix the problem. The site was eventually sold to a company that bought it knowing it was contaminated, who continued to operate a chip manufacturing business there, until the demanded improvements made it impossible for them to operate.
Despite corporate ownership for years, nobody advocated or cared very deeply about the environmental quality of this land until they were forced to by the EPA, because it did not affect their business. Other people nearby would largely have remained unaffected for many years too, until chemicals started seeping out, at which point Commodore was in decline and eventually went bankrupt.
Here's one of the documents regarding this site: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/03/50245.pdf
I'm sure there are cases where the issue is that nobody has any direct legal interest in a piece of land, but a lot of serious environmental issues have explicitly happened or escalated because the owner did not care or could not afford to remedy the problems.
The bigger fiction is to think that the owner will always "care very deeply" about the environmental quality of their land.