One Woman, One Year, and Lots of Hazardous Waste
Hazardous rankings accumulate every day on the web site for Superfund365. Cleanup costs mount. And "visualizations" of contaminants unfold like beautiful, terrifying fans.
A location deemed by the EPA as a "Superfund" location is one that has been lost to "heavily contaminated toxic waste." The team behind Superfund365 will visit a different Superfund site every day for a year and present that catastrophe's chemical makeup on the Web. We wrote about the endeavor several weeks ago. Now, we check in with Brooke Singer, the director and producer of the project, to find out how it's going...
Hey, Brooke. Tell us how Superfund365 came about.
For a little over a year now I have been working on a documentary with cinematographer Brian Rigney Hubbard about the EPA and the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City. Specifically, we are looking at the extent of toxic contamination and the federal response (or lack thereof).
The health consequences of WTC dust are now being reported and New York representatives are pushing for legislation to pay for adequate health care, both short and long term, for the first responders and residents of Lower Manhattan. We have been examining a slightly different angle, which includes the internal debates and struggles post-9/11 inside the EPA, the agency charged with handling the environmental consequences of a national terrorist attack.
The agency was by no means unified behind the head administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, who stated just seven days after the WTC collapse that the air was safe to breathe and life could resume as normal in Lower Manhattan. For example, Robert J. Martin, the former National Ombudsman of the EPA, described to us in an interview how several people within the EPA were discussing declaring all of Lower Manhattan a Superfund site after 9/11... Inquiries by EPA employees into exactly how the EPA should respond to the catastrophic environmental dimension of the WTC collapse were prematurely halted when Whitman made her statement that everything was OK.
After our interview with Martin, I did a lot of research into Superfund. I knew that it was quite serious to say that Lower Manhattan should have been declared a Superfund site… and I wanted to know exactly what that meant. Superfund365 is the result of that research. The documentary process is rather lengthy and launching shorter projects along the way keeps me charged and engaged. We have also released a video short called "800 Steps Apart" that highlights another portion of our research.
We know the project's at its beginning still. But has anything about it surprised you so far?
A couple of things have surprised me so far. First, I knew that the Superfund Trust Fund was bankrupt (it's not so super any more!). This is due to the fact that the Polluter Pays tax "sunsetted" in 1995 and Congress has yet to renew it. This means that U.S. taxpayers' dollars are being used instead of money from the companies that pollute and are responsible for the toxic mess. Without a robust trust fund, Superfund not only translates into a burden for taxpayers but is weakened politically. The program becomes more like a Band-Aid than a remedy.
Very recently, I found out that the Superfund account has been broke exactly four years to the month that Superfund365 went live online! I had no idea and am pleased with the timing. This means that the five year anniversary of the fund going bankrupt will coincide with the month my project ends in September 2008. Wouldn't it be cool if there were no 5th year anniversary and that was the outcome of this project!?
That would be incredible timing.
Another surprise for me is the nature of the Superfund sites themselves. I had anticipated them to be remote and desolate with a big sign saying "Beware! Superfund." This is not the case. Superfund sites often are in the middle of heavily populated areas and the people in the immediate surroundings typically have no idea that they are there. Sometimes a Superfund site is barren, sometimes it is fenced off. But many times when I arrive at a site, I am surprised to find nothing like this but rather a big box store (like Home Depot and Wal-Mart) instead.
Yeah, we always imagine them like deserted wastes. How are people reacting to the web site?
So far I have received a lot of positive responses both from people who had no clue about Superfund and those who are deeply involved for one reason or another. The people who do not know much get a bit overwhelmed when they see all the sites. I tell them to take a look at a few and then come back later for more.
Those who are already involved (whether they live near a site or work on toxic exposure issues) are grateful that the project is spreading useful information to a more general audience. I am just starting to encourage people who live near one of the 365 sites to send photos and descriptions in order to represent more perspectives and get some discussion going.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, 1 in 2 Americans live within 10 miles of a Superfund site, so I am hoping many people can and will want to get involved. It is too early to tell how successful this will be but if anyone who reads this is interested, please email volunteer@superfund365.org for more information!
What do you hope that people get out of Superfund365?
One specific goal is mobilize people to demand that Superfund gets it funding back by reinstating the Polluter Pays tax. There is a campaign at Safefromtoxics.org that people can check out.
More generally I am interested in learning about our industrial history and the types of companies that create toxic messes. I want to know how so many Superfund sites have come to be and why this happens.
For me this project has become a kind of alternative history to the U.S. and I am sharing what I learn along the way. For example, I have visited the former U.S. Radium Corp. in New Jersey, which between 1915 and 1926 extracted and purified radium-226 from carnotite ore to make luminous paint for watches and instruments.
This was the first large factory to produce glowing watches and they hired mostly women to paint them. The U.S. Radium Corp. would instruct the ladies to lick their brushes to create a fine-tip point for precision and the workers' absorption of so much radium caused what became known as "radium jaw." This horrible disease made women's jawbones deteriorate and spontaneously fracture. Their teeth would break and fall out and their gums would ache with bacterial infections. Some of these women developed bone cancers and some even died. Though they put a stop to lip-pointing, U.S. Radium initially tried to deny any connection between radium and illness. It was not until the 1960s that the production of radium finally ceased altogether.
I also visited Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York. It is now entirely occupied by a rather massive shopping mall. There is zero indication that this used to be an army (and then commercial) airfield, except the name still lingers (The Roosevelt Field Mall). The EPA does not disclose a source for the well water contamination, although it makes sense that the organic compound chemicals found in the water were once used to preserve aircraft engines and repel dust, rust, and moisture.
These are just two of the stories I have discovered from the first two weeks of Superfund365 and included in my weekly email recap. For those who are interested, you can sign up for this email list on the project site.
Thanks for talking to us, Brooke. And good luck with the project!
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