7.1 Systems of waste management  (Page 6/43)

Effects of improper waste disposal and unauthorized releases

Prior to the passage of environmental regulations, wastes were disposed improperly without due consideration of potential effects on the public health and the environment. This practice has led to numerous contaminated sites where soils and groundwater have been contaminated and pose risk to the public safety. Of more than 36,000 environmentally impacted candidate sites, there are more than 1,400 sites listed under the Superfund program National Priority List (NPL) which require immediate cleanup resulting from acute, imminent threats to environmental and human health. The USEPA identified about 2,500 additional contaminated sites that eventually require remediation. The United States Department of Defense maintains 19,000 sites, many of which have been extensively contaminated from a variety of uses and disposal practices. Further, approximately 400,000 underground storage tanks have been confirmed or are suspected to be leaking, contaminating underlying soils and groundwater. Over $10 billion (more than $25 billion in current dollars) were specifically allocated by CERCLA and subsequent amendments to mitigate impacted sites. However, the USEPA has estimated that the value of environmental remediation exceeds $100 billion. Alarmingly, if past expenditures on NPL sites are extrapolated across remaining and proposed NPL sites, this total may be significantly higher – well into the trillions of dollars.

It is estimated that more than 4,700 facilities in the United States currently treat, store or dispose of hazardous wastes. Of these, about 3,700 facilities that house approximately 64,000 solid waste management units (SWMUs) may require corrective action. Accidental spillage of hazardous wastes and nuclear materials due to anthropogenic operations or natural disasters has also caused enormous environmental damage as evidenced by the events such as the facility failure in Chernobyl, Ukraine (formerly USSR) in 1986, the effects of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, Japan .

Adverse impacts on public health

A wide variety of chemicals are present within waste materials, many of which pose a significant environmental concern. Though the leachate    generated from the wastes may contain toxic chemicals, the concentrations and variety of toxic chemicals are quite small compared to hazardous waste sites. For example, explosives and radioactive wastes are primarily located at Department of Energy (DOE) sites because many of these facilities have been historically used for weapons research, fabrication, testing, and training. Organic contaminants are largely found at oil refineries, or petroleum storage sites, and inorganic and pesticide contamination usually is the result of a variety of industrial activities as well as agricultural activities. Yet, soil and groundwater contamination are not the only direct adverse effects of improper waste management activities – recent studies have also shown that greenhouse gas emissions from the wastes are significant, exacerbating global climate change.