Revisiting a hazardous waste site 25 years later

The starting point for this research was a case study of illegal hazardous waste disposal published 25 years ago in the Journal of Environmental Health. The site, located in rural upstate New York, would eventually be managed under county, state, and national remediation programs. For this paper, the authors conducted a historical analysis of reports published about the site. They also interviewed federal, state, and local officials, as well as nearby residents. Drawing on the data obtained in these ways, the paper reviews remedial efforts and community involvement. Despite considerable time and resources invested by stakeholders, groundwater pollution persists at the site. As responsibility for remediation moved through higher levels of government, the character of community involvement shifted from proactive to reactive to quiescent. Today, neighboring residents perceive health problems and demonstrate feelings of powerlessness. Remedial activity has required greater investigation over time, resulting in more documents detailing a larger number of parameters with increasing scientific sophistication. This approach has boosted understanding of groundwater pollution. At the same time, recent remediation has been deprived of useful knowledge that could have been provided by greater local participation in decision making.