Page 33 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

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4 Waste Management Practices: Municipal, Hazardous, and Industrial

FIGURE 1.1 The ill-fated “garbage barge” from Islip, Long Island. (Greenpeace/Dennis Capolongo. No
archiving; not for resale.)

functioning Increasingly stringent regulations for landfill construction, operation, and
final closure were forcing underperforming landfills to shut down. Those that remained
in operation were compelled to charge higher tipping (i.e., disposal) fees, often in the
form of increased municipal taxes.
5. Love Canal. This event galvanized American society into an awareness of the acute prob-
lems that can result from mismanaged wastes (particularly hazardous wastes). In the
1940s and 1950s, the Hooker Chemical Company of Niagara Falls, New York, disposed
over 100,000 of hazardous petrochemical wastes, many in liquid form, in several sites
around the city. Wastes were placed in the abandoned Love Canal and also in a huge
unlined pit on Hooker’s property. By the mid-1970s chemicals had migrated from the dis-
posal sites. Land subsided in areas where containers deteriorated, noxious fumes were
generated, and toxic liquids seeped into basements, surface soil, and water. The incidence
of cancer, respiratory ailments, and certain birth defects was well above the national aver-
age. A public health emergency was declared for the Love Canal area, and many homes
directly adjacent to the old canal were purchased with government funds and the resi-
dents were evacuated. Numerous suits were brought against Hooker Chemical, both by
the U.S. government and by local citizens. At the time, however, there was simply no law
that assigned liability to responsible parties in the event of severe land contamination.

With greatly enhanced environmental awareness by U.S. citizenry, and with public health, envi-
ronmental as well as economic concerns a paramount focus of many municipalities, a proactive and
integrated waste management strategy has evolved. The new mindset embraces waste reduction,
reuse, resource recovery, biological processing, and incineration in addition to conventional land
disposal. Given these new priorities, therefore, the importance of documenting the composition and
quantities of municipal solid wastes (MSWs) produced, and ensuring its proper management
(including storage, collection, segregation, transport, processing, treatment, disposal, recordkeep-
ing, and so on) within a community, city, or nation cannot be overstated.