Lots of water pollution. Slightly terrifying when you think about how nice and important it is to have clean and good-tasting tap water for free. Also not to have to be scared of swimming in any body of water you come across. Guanabera Bay is horrid and its hard to believe any government, national or city, could let it get that bad (then again, my mother has said that to me, so I know it happens). Unfortunately, it seems to be a decision entirely motivated by money, because what else is new? In a way, this case is slightly more understandable, due to the extremely large amount of money and effort it would take to clean up the bay. I’m assuming using the bay as a dump for everything dates back to the days when Rio’s population was small enough for the bay to dilute and wash away everything.
Now the problem has become paralyzing, with too many issues for any one change to seem relevant. They would need a new sewage treatment plant. Factories would need to come up either with ways to treat their hazardous wastes, ways to produce without them, or other places to dump them. Somebody would get the headache of trying to come up with a way of regulating boating without impeding anyone’s life or business. Underground storage tanks and landfills would need to be re-done or at least fixed. And then there would be a long wait for the bay to clean itself, unless someone was willing to do the heavy lifting. On the one hand, its sad that the only hope for the government to be motivated to clean the bay is the World Cup and Olympics. On the other hand: shhhhh, don’t say anything. As long as they do it.
The problems in New York State are a bit closer to home and therefore even scarier, even though they are luckily less overwhelming. The EPA set awesome goals for the bodies of water surrounding New York City, and I have to admit they’ve done a relatively decent job. At the very least, the water is cleaner than its been in a very long time. It’s still not great, but hey, I swam in the East River as a kid and I’ve never turned any funny colors. RCRA (1976!) was a good plan for the time, and the Hazardous Waste Management Program (1984!) was an improvement provided they kept up with the RCRA policies.
In regards to ecosystem approach versus chemical-specific approach, I don’t see why both shouldn’t be used concurrently for all substances. Kind of a whichever-comes-first approach.
Now for PCBs, I take the view that the original incident was just an unfortunate but relatively blameless accident. We still dump things into bodies of water thinking they are harmless, and we certainly couldn’t expect the company to know the harms of PCB’s in the 1940’s (unless they did know). The serious problem was the delay between discovering the problems of PCB’s and cleaning them out. It took not only an EPA injunction but several decades and trials to accomplish anything, and GE is still dragging their feet. There needs to be some kind of mechanism to prevent this. For instance, the company could have a limited amount of time to complete one appeal before beginning cleanup on a mutually arbitrated schedule, during which they could continue to appeal. Or better yet: if the EPA is confident enough that they are right, they could begin cleanup immediately, and pay for it themselves if the company wins the appeal.
I have no opinion on the small Texas toxic waste town. That is obviously a work of fiction.
