Superfund Sites of the Mid-Atlantic - a Visual Guide
In 1980, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, frequently referred to as the Superfund, was signed into law. This legislation, designed to clean up the most polluted sites in the country, came on the heels of significant environmental disasters. The immediate catalyst for Congressional action was the tragic case of Love Canal, where a school was built right on top of a toxic waste dump, and eventually an entire neighborhood had to be relocated. In the years preceding the Love Canal disaster, other events occurred which helped create momentum for a commitment to environmental clean up. Examples include the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, and the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River, in Ohio, catching on fire.
The Superfund legislation created a mandate, a structure, and a source of funding for the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up areas where toxic waste could affect the health and well being of Americans. The “fund” part of the Superfund came from a tax on oil and chemical companies, based on the consensus that these industries should help pay for the environmental costs of their products. The tax was paid into a trust fund for the EPA to use in instances where responsible parties could not, or would not, pay for clean up of identified sites. This tax was abolished in 1995, and the fund was exhausted by 2003. Cleanup of identified sites has slowed proportionally.
This photographic survey began with a simple question: what does a Superfund site look like? This question led to many more. I wanted to know where these sites are and what kinds of places had been selected to be polluted and to be cleaned up. Who are the neighbors of a Superfund site? What flora and fauna survive there? If you drove by a Superfund site, would you know it, or are they hidden in plain sight?
My intent is to create a visual resource to document the answers I find. Perhaps in doing so, I can draw attention to another question, broader in scope: do we as a society want to leave behind a toxic legacy? In many ways we seem to have stepped back from a commitment, made 30 years ago, to treat the land differently than we had before and to acknowledge the costs of our industries, and our way of life. Perhaps it would be better to have this discussion now, to renew our commitment, rather than wait to be reminded by another Love Canal.
George Bedell