After decades, some of America's most toxic sites will finally get cleaned up
NEWARK — The laboratories and other buildings that once housed a chemical manufacturer here in New Jersey’s most populous city have been demolished. More than 10,000 leaky drums and other containers once illegally stored here have long been removed. Its owner finished serving his time in prison three decades ago.
Yet the groundwater beneath the 4.4-acre expanse once occupied by White Chemical Corp. in Newark remains contaminated, given a lack of federal funding.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Douglas Freeman, who runs youth sports programs in nearby Weequahic Park, said on a recent gray autumn afternoon, gesturing to the crumbling brick buildings and junk cars that show how the Superfund site has stunted the city’s revitalization efforts.
But three decades after federal officials declared it one of America’s most toxic spots, it is about to get a jolt.
On that same day in November, President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that revives a polluter’s tax that will inject a new stream of cash into the nation’s troubled Superfund program. The renewed excise fees, which disappeared more than 25 years ago, are expected to raise $14.5 billion in revenue over the next decade and could accelerate cleanups of many sites that are increasingly threatened by climate change.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/after-decades-some-of-americas-most-toxic-sites-will-finally-get-cleaned-up/ar-AARVdwY
