"Since the [Superfund] program was launched 30 years ago, only three of the 13 [hazardous waste] sites in Bergen and Passaic counties have been fully cleaned. Eight sites have been on the list for more than 25 years."
"The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion."
"BINGHAMTON -- A pair of [New York] state legislators on Wednesday showed an improved version of a website mapping cancer instances statewide as well as buildings and other facilities holding chemicals, gases or producing air emissions."
"A U.S. appeals court rejected on Tuesday a legal challenge by General Electric Co to the federal Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) orders that direct companies to clean up hazardous waste."
The Superfund tax on oil and chemical companies that helped support cleanup of abandoned hazardous waste sites expired in 1995. Now the Obama administration plans an effort to revive it.
In 1981, EPA labeled the 26-acre Price's Pit landfill in New Jersey as the most serious environmental problem in the U.S. Thirty years later, a permanent remedy is just beginning and residents nearby are wondering about their long-term health problems.
The Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program has been slow to start and finish hundreds of cleanups.
"Environmentalist Jeff Spoelstra says an 80-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River that runs through toxin-laced land in southwestern Michigan was on its way to becoming safe again. ...Then, in January 2009, Lyondell Chemical Co. filed for bankruptcy protection. The Houston-based petrochemical giant argued in court that as it reorganized, it could avoid what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said were about $2.5 billion in cleanup costs...."
EPA added Brooklyn's long-polluted Gowanus Canal to the Superfund National Priority List -- along with nine other sites. The designation means that EPA will oversee the cleanup. New York City Mayor Bloomberg had been pushing for a city-run cleanup.
"The U.S. arm of chemical giant LyondellBasell is in negotiations to settle its environmental cleanup liabilities — which include the Kalamazoo River Superfund site — with the U.S. government, according to a company spokesman."
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