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This book focuses on the toxic legacy of Native North America, which is pervasive but largely invisible to most non-Native peoples. Many toxic sites are located in out-of-the-way rural areas largely forgotten by the majority of America, but which nonetheless have supplied its industries with the rudiments of manufacturing for the better part of a century before being closed and cast aside. Thousands of contaminated sites exist in the United States due to dumped, left out, or otherwise improperly managed hazardous waste. These sites include manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills, and mining sites. Based on the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleans up these so-called Superfund sites, of which roughly 40 percent are located in Native country.The book links present-day Native American cultural and economic revival to a fundamental struggle to restore the health of both Native peoples and their homelands. It links past and present with a sense of Native Americans'perceptions of nature and the sacred land. By doing so, it also provides the majority society with an example to emulate as we emerge, by necessity, from the age of fossil fuels into a sustainable energy paradigm. This makes the book a must-read for students, scholars, and researchers of Native American studies, US politics, environmental studies, public policy, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of the environmental devastation of Native land and its consequences.

Winner of the 2020 Robert E. Park Award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association From a dive bar in New Orleans to a leafy residential street in Minneapolis, many establishments and homes in cities across the nation share a troubling and largely invisible past: they were once sites of industrial manufacturers, such as plastics factories or machine shops, that likely left behind carcinogens and other hazardous industrial byproducts. In Sites Unseen, sociologists Scott Frickel and James Elliott uncover the hidden histories of these sites to show how they are regularly produced and reincorporated into urban landscapes with limited or no regulatory oversight. By revealing this legacy of our industrial past, Sites Unseen spotlights how city-making has become an ongoing process of social and environmental transformation and risk containment. To demonstrate these dynamics, Frickel and Elliott investigate four very different cities—New Orleans, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon. Using original data assembled and mapped for thousands of former manufacturers'locations dating back to the 1950s, they find that more than 90 percent of such sites have now been converted to urban amenities such as parks, homes, and storefronts with almost no environmental review. And because manufacturers tend to open plants on new, non-industrial lots rather than on lots previously occupied by other manufacturers, associated hazards continue to spread relatively unabated. As they do, residential turnover driven by gentrification and the rising costs of urban living further obscure these sites from residents and regulatory agencies alike. Frickel and Elliott show that these hidden processes have serious consequences for city-dwellers. While minority and working class neighborhoods are still more likely to attract hazardous manufacturers, rapid turnover in cities means that whites and middle-income groups also face increased risk. Since government agencies prioritize managing polluted sites that are highly visible or politically expedient, many former manufacturing sites that now have other uses remain invisible. To address these oversights, the authors advocate creating new municipal databases that identify previously undocumented manufacturing sites as potential environmental hazards. They also suggest that legislation limiting urban sprawl might reduce the flow of hazardous materials beyond certain boundaries. A wide-ranging synthesis of urban and environmental scholarship, Sites Unseen shows that creating sustainable cities requires deep engagement with industrial history as well as with the social and regulatory processes that continue to remake urban areas through time. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology.

The Superfund program of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in the 1980s to address human-health and environmental risks posed by abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous-waste sites. Identification of Superfund sites and their remediation is an expensive multistep process. As part of this process, EPA attempts to identify parties that are responsible for the contamination and thus financially responsible for remediation. Identification of potentially responsible parties is complicated because Superfund sites can have a long history of use and involve contaminants that can have many sources. Such is often the case for mining sites that involve metal contamination; metals occur naturally in the environment, they can be contaminants in the wastes generated at or released from the sites, and they can be used in consumer products, which can degrade and release the metals back to the environment. This report examines the extent to which various sources contribute to environmental lead contamination at Superfund sites that are near lead-mining areas and focuses on sources that contribute to lead contamination at sites near the Southeast Missouri Lead Mining District. It recommends potential improvements in approaches used for assessing sources of lead contamination at or near Superfund sites.

Mutual distrust defines the relationship between those who are the sources of hazardous wastes and those who oversee their activities. A lack of credibility, argue the authors, is a formidable, if not the biggest, obstacle to properly managing hazardous waste in the United States. Nowhere is the credibility gap wider than where there are hazardous waste management facilities or where sites have been proposed.The purpose of this book is to provide comprehensive perspectives on hazardous waste sites in the United States. The sources of hazardous waste are described along with the scientific and legal climates that allowed wastes to be discarded with little attention to impacts. Evidence is weighed for and against public health, as well as environmental, economic, and social damages at abandoned sites. Political processes and analytical techniques are suggested and illustrated for those who are involved in the siting of new facilities. A strategy for hazardous waste management is offered, together with approaches to substantially reduce the difficulties faced by local planners and site managers who face a hostile public.A historical legacy of mismanagement, fueled by exaggeration of impacts and by a lack of information, characterizes hazardous waste management in the United States. This book will be important to planners, environmental scientists, and public health officials. In order to assure accessibility for the casual reader, the authors keep the explanation of mathematical methods and technologies in this area to a minimum.

USDA and Interior manage over 600 million acres of land, including sites contaminated from prior uses or events, such as mining or toxic spills. These lands are managed by five Interior agencies, including BLM and the National Park Service, and five USDA agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service. These agencies must identify and report to EPA certain facilities that may threaten human health or the environment and, under some circumstances, clean them up. They must also report cost estimates for addressing contamination at certain sites, called environmental liabilities. This book examines USDA's and Interior's efforts to identify these sites, funding to address the sites, reported environmental liabilities, and EPA's role in addressing the sites. Furthermore, this book provides a summary of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act and related provisions of the Act.

A thought-provoking investigation of an urgent issue facing American communities today, Edward C. Lorenz's book examines the intersection of corporate irresponsibility and civic engagement. At the heart of this case study is a group of firms responsible for seven of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the United States, the largest food contamination accident in U.S. history, stunning stock and financial manipulations, and a massive shift of jobs off shore. In the face of these egregious environmental, employee, and investor abuses, several communities impacted by these firms organized to confront and combat failures in corporate and bureaucratic leadership, winning notable victories over major financiers, lobbyists, and indifferent or ineffective government agencies. A critical analysis of public and private leadership, business and economic ethics, and civic life, this book concludes with a stirring blueprint for other communities facing similarly overwhelming opposition.

Hazardous Waste Management: Reducing the Risk is the first book to study and rate toxic waste disposal sites and to provide step-by-step guidelines for evaluation, decision, and action. The innovative and practical ranking system shows how to rate facilities on the basis of site, management, and technology.