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amount of toxic waste. The indus–
try has enjoyed immense growth
since World War Il. Production
and use of chemicals has increased
100 times
during those years. New
chemicals are produced at the rate
of l ,000 a year.
"We generate a ... lot of [chem–
ical waste] in this country, stuff we
eventual ly have to put in the
ground," notes a vice president of
the Chemical Manufacturers' As–
sociation.
Chemical dumps are altogether
too likely to be on top of the local
water supply or near populated
areas. There are (no une knows for
sure) somewhere between 50,000
and l 00,000 industrial dump si tes
in the United States alone. This is
in addition to another 40,000 sites
used for sewage and solid wastes
from cities and towns. For its part
the EPA has listed close to 32,000
sites that could contain "hazard–
ous" waste.
The estimates are uncertain
because past dumping practices
have been so haphazard that no one
can be sure just where all the toxic
wastes are buried! Sorne recent dis–
closures of hazardous dump sites
carne about accidentally. In one
case evidence carne out during the
course of a legal tangle unrelated to
pollution.
For decades the world has
dumped chemicals so carelessly as
to be, in one writer's phrase,
"beyond belief. " Many si tes went
for years with very little attention.
Sorne of the sites have been cov–
ered over. "People can be living in
a gorgeous, beautiful area and be
totall y unaware of the dangers
underneath their feet," declares
one EPA administrator.
In the heady days after World
War 11, people believed in the slo–
gan, "Better living through chemi–
cals." Manufacturers did not real–
ize
at that time
that they were
dumping substances that could find
their way into the local water
supply, or combine with other ele–
ments to become hazardous. In
sorne cases, in the words of one
investigator, the companies "just
pour[ed] 'em out on the ground.
Glub, glub, glub. "
Today, for example,- rivers and
lakes in western Michigan are pol–
luted from dumps created decades
January
1982
ago. An average of half a ton of
toxic wastes has seeped into White
Lake every day for years from an
u.nderground stream polluted by a
dump site. Yet when the dump site
was created, it was created in
accord with · the standard, legal
practices of the day! The same is
true for other sites across the
United States.
Of course, those practices
today
seem like the height of irresponsi–
bility: workers would take 55-gal–
lon drums, turn them on e nd ,
chop holes in them, fill them with
the res idue from insecticide mak–
ing, put them on trucks, haul
them to a dump and push them
off. This slipshod process allowed
sorne of the residues to spi ll on
the ground. And, by not sealing
the dump (with clay, for exam–
ple), toxic wastes ate their way
out of the sides of the drums, and
then into the ground and water
supply. But bacJ.c in the l940s and
1950s, the simple burial seemed
good enough.
Yet once waste is improperly
buried, it sometimes becomes
ev.en more dangerous to disttirb it!
At least part of the tragedy at
Love Canal, for example, stems
from
/ater construction
in the
waste disposal area, which allowed
wastes to seep out of the canal
itself (see accompanying story). In
another instance, at a dump in
Edison, New Jersey, a bulldozer
driver hit a container of flamma–
ble chemicals.
It
exploded and the
man died with hand sti ll on the
gearshift.
In effect, the site itself may
become a time bomb. Ten, even 30
years, later, disaster strikes. In
Triana, Alabama, production of
DDT was halted more than a
decade ago. Yet 4,000 tons remain
undumped on the bottom of a near–
by stream. Residents of Triana
today carry about lO times the
"normal" amount of DDT in their
bodies.
In New York, in the area around
Bethpage a nd Farmingdale,
dumped chromium from war facto–
ries during the 1940s now con–
tamirtates drinking water. Writes
Jimmy Breslin, "Children are in
danger of being poisoned by the
sarñe war that their grandfathers
fought and won."
The Mldnlght Dumper&
While the legitimate dumping
practices of chemical companies
may have been less than desirable
in years gone by, a far greater
problem may be found by
il/ega/,
secret
dumping in just any old
dump site, even roadsides or near–
by ponds!
A New Jersey businessman,
since convicted of illegal dumping,
claims that 80 percent of waste is
illegal/y
dumped. Perhaps he was
overestimating to make himself
look less guilty. Even so, the EPA
has said there is a virtual "army"
of trucks that cruise country roads
at night looking for places to dis–
pose of unwanted waste. Often
they dump their cargos into the
nearest sewer, stream, lake, ditch
or field.
Part of the problem stems from
the high cost of disposing of waste
properly, which can be as much as
$500 a barre!. Many businessmen
faced with a choice between going
out of business and laying off
their workers, or illegal dumping,
chose dumping. Moreover, in the
words of one city atto rne y,
"there's no way to police a
dump." City dumps never in–
tended to serve as chemical waste
disposal si tes become easy targets
for the midnight dumpers.
Even organized crime has seen
the enormous amounts of money
to be made in illegal dumping.
Operating as supposedly legiti–
mate disposal firms, organized
crime charges high prices, suppos–
edly to bury the waste properly,
and then turns around and dumps
the stuff on the nearest vacant lot,
city dump or ditch beside a coun–
try road.
"It's so easy to mix toxic wastes
with ordinary garbage," one in–
former told a congressional com–
mittee.
Probably the worst example of
illegal dumping occurred in North
Carolina. A Raleigh transformer
company paid a midnight dumper
to dump oil contaminated with
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
The dumper sprayed the oil along
210 miles of rural roads. One resi–
dent living near to those roads had
a stillborn child and another child
was boro with massive heart
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