e.p.a. approved chemicals decade new files

The dam will have broken, put the kids on top of the desk and hope for the best. If you hear three bells, it will be too late. So they told us teachers in a private meeting that if you hear two bells, take the kids down to the buses to be taken out of the area. Newman: So he decided, well, we needed to set up some kind of an evacuation plan for that school. But you know how it goes: Eventually, word leaks out - as it were - to the school superintendent. Thing is, the officials - they don’t tell anyone. And these toxic floodwaters flow down to Glen Avon. So to ease the pressure, local officials release poisonous liquids - enough liquids to fill a pool at the Olympics. It’s about to bust the dam holding it back. So as it pours, back in 1978, this toxic lake starts to rise. Our manufacturing binge of the 20th century. They hearken back to our industrial might. This site is known as the “Stringfellow Acid Pits.” It was once an old rock quarry that became a toxic pond. We’re talking General Electric, McDonnell Douglas, Sunkist. See, for decades, hundreds of companies making engines, aircrafts, lightbulbs, dumped their industrial waste there. Tong: It turns out, there’s a chemical dump site in the hills above Glen Avon, and it’s filled with oils and sludge. My youngest son during this time at the elementary school, he’s the one who would come home from school and talk about the tetherball poles standing on top of each other. Newman: We saw the kids who were playing in the puddles, that their shoes started disintegrating. Tong: Penny Newman is the mom of two young boys at the time. Penny Newman: Kids who'd been going to school, they'd been playing in these puddles and, you know, making beards out of the foam that they came across and becoming toxic snowmen. And these floodwaters carry this strange gray foam stuff. Tong: “Disaster,” because this happens once a century. (Soundbite of archival news: Since the heavy damage and destruction in California from almost endless rains, mudslides and floods, the president declared the state of disaster area tonight.) The town is Glen Avon, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Rain, and then floods, clobber a working-class town. The first episode of Captured tells the story of what happened when Gorsuch came to the agency and what forces seeded concerns about regulatory capture - when a government agency becomes beholden to an ideology or certain corporate interests - among the EPA staff. As soon as she arrived at the agency, Gorsuch began to clash with many of its scientists and lawyers over what the role of the EPA should be. He appointed a conservative lawmaker from Colorado named Anne Gorsuch to lead the EPA. In 1981, former President Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform to rein in government spending and regulation. And more Americans grew concerned about major health risks from toxic waste in their communities.īut not everyone believed that the federal government should play such a large role in preventing pollution or cleaning it up. At the start of the decade, former President Richard Nixon created the brand-new Environmental Protection Agency.Ĭongress passed sweeping laws about protecting air and water. The 1970s represented an environmental reckoning for many Americans. The Court of Appeals says the state Department of Environmental Conservation can require polluters to restore sites to a level the judges call 'complete cleanup.' (AP) 15, 2011 that the state can require polluted Superfund sites to be returned to pre-industrial conditions, a win for environmentalists. New York's top court ruled Thursday, Dec. 5, 1978 file photo, Mark Zanatian, one of the children endangered by the Love Canal Chemicals under 99th Street, waves a banner in protest during a neighborhood protest meeting in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

E.p.a. approved chemicals decade new files