I read a few of the essays published by Aldo Leopold from 1998 to 2001 in a book of collective essays called For the Health of the Land. The collection is a plea from Leopold for the development of land ethic. He believes that humans have the responsibility to interact with the land in ways that promote its good being. Even though the essays were published over 50 years ago, progress in Leopold’s concept of land health has just begun.
The EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) are helping by conducting cleanups at sites where hazardous chemicals have been released into the environment. These cleanups take place at abandoned waste sights, federal facilities, and where any storage tanks have leaked. Cleanups may also include the reuse of sites and redevelopment of natural habitats. The greatest EPA cleanup program is called the Superfund program. This program locates, investigates and cleans hazardous waste sites throughout the US.
Superfund starts when the release of hazardous materials or a possible waste site is reported. The EPA then investigates the site and compiles a database of hazardous materials and their location. After cleanup is complete, the EPA continues to see to compliance monitoring of the site. The sites cleaned up by Superfund are ones outside of Federal control and are therefore the responsibility of the independent owners. The owners must pay for property cleanup, aftercare, and monitoring of the site. They are charged penalties or fines if they fail
Aldo Leopold is another American environmentalist who was dominant in the development of modern environmental ethics. Aldo was more for holistic ethics regarding land. According to him, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.” He describes in his article that politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which free-for-all competition has been replaced by co-operative mechanism with an ethical content.” He thought that ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. Also he believes that community should be
The relationship between people and their environment in A Land Remembered is one where the profit from land exploitation is naturally corrupting and exponentially increases the exploiters lust for larger profit, leading to the exploiter planning larger scale endeavors in the future. The author, Patrick D. Smith (1984), suggests the idea that communities naturally grow in a hedonic cycle to crave more resources to fuel loftier endeavors that require even more resources from the environment, an idea that is also discussed by Aldo Leopold in the Land Ethic as wholly negative, and that is also part of my world view that is rather more optimistic.
Joint Base Cape Cod (JBCC) is located on Cape Cod. The JBCC is recognized as a Superfund site in 1989 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The base contaminated the groundwater in the surrounding towns. “Contaminated areas were the result of chemical/fuel spills, fire training activities, landfills, and drainage structures (cumulis.epa)”. The site is currently being cleaned up by the National Guard Bureau and the Department of the Air Force. The Air Force is cleaning one part of the base under Superfund. The Army is cleaning the other part under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA is overseeing that everything is being cleaned to their set standards. Currently the Air Force holds public meetings to explain the results and new
cubic yards of contaminated soil make this site the one of the largest Superfund projects (EPA, 2013).
1) The remedy chosen must attain a degree of cleanup that assures the protection of human health and environment. 2) The hazardous substances that will remain after the cleanup, they must meet the applicable and/or relevant and appropriate requirements under federal and state law (ARARs). 3) The remedy chosen must utilize permanent solutions and alternative treatment technologies or resource recovery technologies to the maximum extent applicable. 4) There must be cost effective response, taking into consideration total long-and short-term costs of the actions. And 5) It must be in accordance with the NCP to a practicable
Aldo Leopold is on the forefather of modern environmentalism. His book, A Sand County Almanac, is based on the notion of viewing land as a community and as a commodity. In the chapter “The Land Ethic”, Leopold invokes a rethinking of our relationships to our world and is based on the principle that ethics are “a process in ecological evolution” (238). Leopold describes the stages of ethic evolving and explains that the rules for socializing were originally defined for human beings. These rules are expanded upon in the next stage of “Ethical Sequence” (237-238), describing how humans interact toward their community. The third stage is the ethics between humans and the land. Upon analyzing “The Land Ethic” I have come to the conclusion that in order to have respect and ethic for land, or anything, one must make a personal connection.
The next Superfund that has greatly influenced the environment of Butler County is the Skinner Landfill. The Landfill is on 85 acres in West Chester (2). The facility was privately owned and was never actually licensed, so it closed in the 1970's (5). The landfill contains about 100 drums of chlorinated organics, and heavy metals. Along with the presence of the drums is the fact that a nearby lagoon was once used as a disposal for these contaminants, and that the site had problems with unauthorized dumping (5). Fortunately, no contaminants have been discovered leaving the site (5). The presence of these
The importance of comprehensive site investigations and getting the right report, and by an EPA accredited auditor can be seen in the court case Charben Haulage Pty Ltd v Environmental & Earth Sciences Pty Ltd (2004) FCA 403. In this case Caltex had obtained development consent from the local council to decommission a suburban service station and remediate it to residential standards. A condition of the consent was that an auditor accredited by the EPA would sign off the completed decontamination.
Two major laws that are regulated by the EPA are the Clear Air Act and the Clean Water Act. These laws, passed by Congress, give the EPA the authority to write regulations. The Clean Air Act regulates emissions of hazardous substances into the air. The set the air emissions standards in which businesses must abide by or face penalties. The Clean Water Act restricts the release of pollutants into water. The goal of both of these laws is to protect the public and provide clean drinking water and sustainable habitats for marine life. The EPA also regulates many other environmental health concerns. They regulate hazardous substances such as asbestos, lead, and mold. They also have a large role in tackling major environment
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since
What exactly is land ethics? According to Leopold, “Land ethics expands the boundaries of ethics by including soils, waters, plants, and animals,” (Leopold, page 239). However, a land ethic cannot prevent the alteration, management, and the use of the resources stated above. Basically, Leopold states that land ethics change the role that we humans play from that of a land-conqueror to that of a citizen and member. In class, we learned that land ethics imply respect for the surrounding community. We as humans are important, and thus, have more responsibility to protect the environment.
Enacted in 1972, the Clean Water Act was formulated with the goals of putting the end to the discharging of high quantities of contaminated materials into water resources, and further prevent pollution of water , and making sure that surface waters met the standards needed to support human and agricultural usage. Essentially, the Clean Water Act stipulates the fundamental structure used in the regulation of discharges of toxic pollutants into water resources of the US and ensuring conformance of quality standards for groundwater (Environmental Protection Agency). The Clean Water Act was draws based on the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, which was later developed and revised in 1972 to the Clean Water Act. Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is authorized to implement programs to control pollution example being the establishment of standards for wastewater discharge for various industries. In addition, the CWA establishes the water quality standards applicable to all groundwater contaminants. The Clean Water Act makes it illegal to unload any contaminant material from a point source into navigable water bodies without acquiring permit from EPA. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program, under the EPA, helps in controlling discharges (Environmental Protection
Hazardous waste and its proper disposal have become a major sociological problem today due to its capability of contaminating the area in which we live and its potential to be lethal to all living things. In order for the United States and the rest of the world to save itself from a potentially life threatening problem they must fix the causes which lead to the improper disposal of hazardous wastes and like materials. Some reasons that hazardous waste has become a problem in the United States today is due to the breakdown in enforcing laws for the proper disposal of such wastes, a lack of initiative on big companies behalf to spend money on proper disposal, and the ease of disposing of such wastes illegally.
Congress passed The Solid Waste Disposal Act in 1965. The Agency of Environmental Safety considered this Act as the primary effort made by federal authority for efficient waste clearance technology. This act controls the dumping material; manage storage and management of solid, both and non-precarious and precarious wastage. It highlights the processes that are environmentally liable to dispose waste at the commercial, municipal, industrial and household levels (Tchobanoglous & Vergara, 2010). This was considered as primary initiative of a chain of systems focusing on resource management and air cleaning (Gerlak, 2005). There have been several major adjustments made to the Act with the reference to Resource Recovery and Conservation Act (1976). The involvement of federal
The Generation of hazardous waste by the human activities increase the risk of the damage to the environment and the human health. These create a very negative impact if not disposed properly. In the state of Illinois the implementation of the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is referred to as hazardous waste. This act consists of the changes to the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1956 and signed into the law of 1976. The regulations related to the implementation of