Code Enforcement Beware!

Is this how it was done at Walden Pond?

Environmental Expense: Understand The Responsibility To The Environment

Beginning in 1942, Hooker Chemicals and Plastics (now Occidental Chemical Corporation (OCC)) established a landfill which was used for the disposal of over 21,000 tons of various chemical wastes, including halogenated organics, pesticides, chlororbenzenes and dioxin. Dumping ceased in 1952, and, in 1953, the landfill was covered and deeded to the Niagara Falls Board of Education (NFBE). While the dump was not effectively developed, which resulted in failed containment, the deeding of the property…a sale at the price of $1…properly reported the waste site and excluded Hooker Chemical from most liability. 

Subsequently, the area near the covered landfill was extensively developed, including the construction of an elementary school and numerous homes.

By the early sixties contamination began to emerge from the 16 acre chemical waste site, later to be identified in 1978 by NY state’s EPA as a hazard and evacuated, and then taken over by the US EPA as a Superfund Waste Site, prosecuted and managed for 21 years from 1983 to 2004 as one of the most noteworthy examples of environmental distress in the history of the United States… at least one that we can point our fingers at as an example of public adoption of an industrial environmental expense.

In 1995 the EPA suit against Occidental Chemical Corporation was finalized and OCC was charged a settlement totaling $129M to meet the claims against Hooker Chemical.

 Attorney General Janet Reno said the settlement "should send a message of federal persistence and tenacity."

"If Congress will give us the resources, we will work to get polluters to pay their share," said Reno. She noted that Congress is currently attempting to cut environmental enforcement.

The cost however for the Love Canal cleanup has been estimated at $250 million, though no one knows for sure. Studies indicated that numerous toxic chemicals migrated into surrounding areas. Runoff drained into the Niagara River, contaminating the river sediment. Dioxin and other contaminants migrated from the landfill to the existing sewers, which drained into nearby creeks. Those sediments are recognizable today in samples taken from these waterways.

Ironically, twelve years after the neighborhood was abandoned, the state of New York approved plans to allow families to move back to the area, and homes were allowed to be sold. In 2004 the EPA removed the site from the Superfund list…

These red dots represent current Superfund Sites.

Love Canal is not the only hazardous waste site in the country that has become a threat to humans--only the best known. Indeed, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that up to 2,000 hazardous waste disposal sites in the United States may pose "significant risks to human health or the environment," and has called the toxic waste problem "one of the most serious problems the nation has ever faced."

This is a prime example of industry benefiting from the environmental expense that comes from manufacturing. Air pollution, contamination, water waste and pollution are just the start of the list that needs to be compiled and the effects that need to be corrected so that we better understand how to become a sustainable planet…now and into the future. It isn’t about taxing industry to solve non-industrial problems. Its about correcting the problems caused by oversight and intentional pollution and waste that is experienced when organizations fail to understand their responsibility to the environment.

Energy Policy Letter ...to our Senators

We need leaders, not professional politicians more concerned with their careers than the future of the United States. We need an Energy Policy….let me say that again… WE NEED AN ENERGY POLICY!

I support you as a valuable member of the Senate… and I (we) need you to demonstrate real leadership because if our politicians continue to make decisions based on changing political winds, if special interests keep blocking meaningful reform, if captains of industry and party leadership continue to shrink from bold steps out of caution then we will get the mediocre energy
solutions that this will bring…and the United States will fail to lead the world in the innovative creation of real answers to our energy challenge.

Florida is in trouble…as is the rest of America, and we need you to act now to get us off of OIL and COAL by 2050 or sooner…and it can be done, but only if you lead.

I highly recommend that you read the Rocky Mountain Institute book “Reinventing Fire”, by Amory Lovins, and that you take it to heart, act immediately to address the issues identified in this book, and help to effectively create the Vision of an America (USA) leading, not following China, Germany and others into the Oil/Coal Free energy future that can be achieved if you, our leadership, take the immediate steps and create the policies and reforms needed to create the
Smart Grid Energy System that will address the needed integration in Transportation, Building & Construction, Industry, Electrical Generation and cultural change that will make us the world’s leader who truly moves the world forward into the future.

Don’t disregard my comments Senator. Read the book and provide the leadership. Create an Energy Policy that works and that will yield the Trillions of Dollars of real profit that will ensure our continued national success.

Sustainability ...then and now...

Updating the definition of Sustainability: How do you and your ‘Industry Partners’ define Sustainability today?

As early as June 1972 the United Nations, at its Conference on the Human Environment, focused on what mankind had been doing to our environment, and considered the goals that should be set to ensure the health of our planet by the year 2000. Then, in 1983 the Secretary General of the United Nations appointed Gro Harlem Brundtland, a Social Democratic politician (then serving Prime Minister of Norway), diplomat, physician, and international leader in sustainable development and public health, to head the World Commission on Environment and Development with its focus on environmental and developmental concerns for all regions of the world.

Over the next four years she (Brundtland) guided the World Commission, later to be referred to by most as the Brundtland Commission, in defining the need for global focus on environmental concerns which resulted in the delivery of  the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development to the 96^th plenary meeting on 11 December 1987 in which they coined the often-quoted definition of sustainable development as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” ^[1][2]

While the United Nations holds this as its definition of desired actions, quoting the Brundtland Commission and repeating the intent of the Commission in follow-on meetings like The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, and later implying its impact at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1997) in which the Kyoto Protocol established steps approved by 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through the use of binding targets, many organizations seem to have moved forward from this 25 year old standard.

Now, with Rio +20 just weeks ahead...what is our stance on Sustainability. In many communities (global) sustainability seems to be a synonym for environment. We often reject the concept of maintaining and/or improving economies and ensuring the future for generations to come. So...how do you define sustainability? Is it only about environment, or does it have a much broader...deeper meaning for you. And is your organization paying attention to sustainable practices in their business models and production and service processes? How do you define Sustainability and are you living it?

Sustainability isn't a passing fad, it is a future for our planet...and one we need to understand a champion.

1.       ^ United Nations. 1987."Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development." General Assembly Resolution 42/187, 11 December 1987. Retrieved: 2007-04-12

2.       ^ Smith, Charles; Rees, Gareth (1998). Economic Development, 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-72228-0.