Chapter 5: Environmental Crime is based a lot around politics and how various officials and city/state workers have let down their cities. In Jersey City, industries made deals with city officials to release toxic chemicals known as Chromium into the sewers and to mix it with building fill. These companies did as they pleased while health inspectors and county engineers looked the other way while the toxic waste was poured onto empty lots right beside the places where children play and families live. It doesn't make any sense how at least one person didn't try to stop it and take all this documentation to federal court. The chemicals killed and these officials walked away with extra money in their pockets. Organized crime in New Jersey saw the "reward" in controlling the illegal disposal of hazardous materials, but not the harm in what it could do. Mafia run garbage trucks would pick up regular trash and toxic waste drums to combine them to make it seem like regular trash. Corrupt politicians tried to manage the dispose of the waste signing open service contracts whenever they could which was a big score for people like building inspectors or permit writers who were only making a couple of dollars, but now getting more.
The Chemical Control Corporation hazardous waste storage, treatment, and disposal facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey started out as a legitimate business, but soon a mob-controlled hazardous waste site. Drums would pile high- so high was the pile that when NJDEP inspectors went to visit, they found overflowing pallets placed dangerously close to one another, corrosives stored next to flammables, and acids atop explosives. Eventually an explosion happened - was nobody smart enough to realize that it was a bad idea for this to happen? They were most likely too busy rolling around in their dirty money to realize that their actions were detrimental to the environment and were most likely to go wrong. Either that or they knew, but the money was too much for them to care about the dangers. The explosions sent drums of flaming toxic waste spiraling high into the sky for two days as firefighters from a dozen surrounding communities tried to get close enough to spray down the fire of toxic chemicals without breathing the black smoke that engulfed them. Many were overcome and developed lifelong health problems from exposure to the smoke. The drums shot off life rockets landing in New York and bleeding the toxins into the New York Harbor from the Elizabeth River. The the toxic chromium was mixed into heating oil and sold to the public for home use. A mud concoction was created with the chromium and sold to use a fill in construction, road grading, building foundations, filling for wetlands, and even for use in municipalities like high school tracks, a movie theater, baseball fields, and public park. Not only used for buildings, but when in the ground it leaked into the drinking water too. The unseen hazardous toxins were surrounding the public and little did they know also affecting their health. Corporations knowingly distributed the waste for "beneficial" reasons just to save a few dollars on their budget all while harming the health of the public. People were dying from such high amounts of the toxicity especially those working or leaving near or on the waste. Chromium at its hexavalent state is a powerful oxidant and the most toxic form. It can cause ulcers of the skin and irritation of the nasal mucosa and gastrointestinal tract; it also has adverse effects on the kidneys and liver. Chromium-6 is listed as an inhalation and ingestion carcinogen in humans by the USEPA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It took many years and many lawsuits from various organizations and individuals to begin the process of removing or fixing the sites that were made with the chromium-6. New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey filed lawsuits naming Honeywell, Occidental Petroleum, and PPG Industries liable for the COPR sites and sought reimbursement for the cleanups. 17 At the time, Harvey said: “Clean water, air and land are a right, not a privilege and . . . for too long, the residents of these communities have lived with the threat of this highly toxic chromate waste. Our lawsuit will compel the responsible companies to clean up the remaining chromium contamination" (95). By 2008 the PPG Industries’ Garfield Avenue facility was still only partially remediated despite the release of studies that the exposure could lead to cancer. The buildings were demolished and the mud piles removed, yet tons of “heaving chromium” still move under the interim cap. Heaving chromium is caused by groundwater interacting with the waste and binding it into hard layers that push upward, breaking the surface layer and possibly breaching the protective cap (96). At the end of the day over half a million people were exposed to carcinogens and millions of dollars spent on remediation all at the hands of some greedy people who wanted to take the "easy way out".
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Gabriella Brycea Junior at Seton Hall University studying Elementary and Special education with Environmental Studies. Archives
April 2018
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