Ford toxic sludge dump
The Record won the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment for its “Toxic Legacy” investigative series on pollution caused by a Mahwah, N.J., Ford Motor Company automobile-assembly plant…
The award is to be shared by nine Record journalists who spent eight months investigating how actions of the company, government officials, and organized crime exposed northern New Jersey residents to environmental risks.
The Record’s series, which ran from Oct. 2 through Oct. 6, led to an unprecedented federal re-listing of the contaminated site as a Superfund national priority cleanup site. The series prompted the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General to initiate a first-ever investigation into whether “racial, cultural or socioeconomic issues” played a role in the government’s cleanup shortcomings, and it led to a federal recommendation for health screening of hundreds of residents in the Ringwood, N.J., area affected by the site.
The newspaper maintains a website offering the whole sordid tale of corruption and crime. Great job of investigative reporting. Now, it’s in the hands of New Jersey politicians and police — to clean the whole thing up — with the help and oversight of the Federal government.
Oh wait — wasn’t that part of their job description in the first place?
Waiting for the one on Nuclear fallout areas around nevada…And how long it took for the GOV to acknowledge it.
Waiting for the expose of what happened to Arizona, also…
Sounds too much like the GE Hudson River debacle, where the EPA made them waste billions to clean it up. Hopefully this is more of a disaster.
Thanks to this anti-environment Bush administration, you can be sure that this finding is a minor example of the true extent of the problem. It’s likely a pre-cursor to what will be discovered once this administration is taken out of power. It’s also likely that the Republicans will complain [about the tax raising liberals] when the Democrats look to provide funds to clean up this pollution caused by this administration’s nonexistent environmental policies and regulatory controls.
LOOK,
Bush Jr, has taken the money from ALL other offices in gov, to pay for this war.
Do you really think the EPA has any power or money NOW?
And when do you THINK they will be able to GET more money??
Not for at least 10 years After the war.
Sometimes there has to be a will to do something.
As an aside, it is quite true that very few people ever thought about the consequences 50 years ago. That is until Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published. It was only then that we started connecting the dots.
That doesn’t mean they were right back then. Or a lot of what happens today will be seen as right in another 50 years.
#4,,,Teyecoon….while this administration has hardly an inspiring record on enviromental issues…..this mess and many like it was made long before Bush 2 happened along.
No President for the last 20 years can claim to have been on the ball in cleanup of these sites, Republican or Democratic.
7,
CORRECT…
And even when they find a corp to Beat on…Its only a fine, and thats only like $200,000, out of a NET profit in the billions.
Now Bush is removing whistleblower protection for EPA personnel. That man is an embarrasment to this country.
7. There is a difference between administrations that don’t make an effort to [fund] clean up toxic sites and an administration like this one whose policies easily promote the creation of new ones. I don’t remember any stories about Democrats assigning government environmental protection positions to proponents of the polluting industries [at least to the extent] as this administration has knowingly done. It’s also known that environmental enforcement efforts have been drastically cut/stopped under this admin so there is little/no mitigation to be had by comparing to previous admins lax efforts. I remember when “Earth day” was a highly publicized day under the Clinton admin and now it is barely acknowledged.