EPA mystified by stingy DDT pollution in SF Bay
EPA mystified by stingy DDT pollution in SF Bay
By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A half-century after California officials discovered that large amounts of the pesticide DDT had been discharged into a San Francisco Bay canal, the chemical is still poisoning fish and posing a threat to human health there despite numerous cleanup attempts.
DDT, a chemical banned by the U.S. in 1972, was dumped into a shipping channel near the city of Richmond by the pesticide processing company United Heckathorn starting in the late 1940s and ending in 1966.
In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed the former plant and the adjacent canal, called the Lauritzen Channel, as one of the most polluted places in the nation, and began the laborious and expensive process of trying to clean it up so far with limited success.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/03/17/state/n080555D34.DTL
It's too bad humans don't learn from these mistakes.