Misconstrued Thoughts : Yesterday's Misconstrued Thoughts Today

Many kids enjoy playing in the dirt…making mud pies, rolling around in the dirt, throwing dirt clods at your siblings…yep, dirt can be pretty cool, and I’m fortunate enough to get to mess with it for a living. Dirt and death is the business that I am in…or I guess the proper term would be contaminated soil, but the other way sounds much cooler.

I have been able to travel all over the US to take soil and water samples and work on contaminated sites. Most of the places I have went are Superfund Sites, although they are not Super-Fun, like the name sounds they can be interesting. There are about 30,000 areas with hazardous waste concerns, but only just over 1,200 Superfund Sites on the National Priorities list, which are the ones that are bad enough to immediately work on cleaning up. They are located in just about every state, although New Jersey has the most (you don’t get the label “Armpit of the Universe” for nothing). There are even a few right here in Alabama (Red Stone Arsenal for one)

A little history on Superfund…In December 1980, on the heels of the 10th anniversary of the US Earth Day, and amid toxic waste fires in New Jersey and contamination at Love Canal, President Jimmy Carter signed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). CERCLA, or Superfund as it is more commonly known, was formed to primarily deal with cleaning up hazardous waste sites where owners had shirked responsibility. Basically, the government got all of the companies who did or made nasty things to pay a tax. All of that tax money went to a big fund, you could almost call it a SUPER fund. When people discovered abandoned hazardous waste sites and there was no longer a corporation to blame or they were not sure who put the waste there in the first place, the government would use the money in the Super-fund to clean up the area. Unfortunately the corporations no longer pay the tax and regular taxpayers foot the bill, so cleanup is a lot slower lately. Although it is a slow going process, sites eventually get cleaned up. Even the Love Canal has been removed from the NPL.

I hope this has some how filled the void in your life from never having a serious conversation about dirt, and if this has some how peaked your interest and you would like to know more about dirt or contamination in general, I would be more than happy to help you out.