Environmental Justice in Onondaga County

Tim Kianka
October 14, 2007
Environmental Justice in Onondaga County


In 1980, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), more commonly known as the Superfund Program. The launch of the Superfund Program was a direct response to the infamous environmental problems associated with the "Love Canal" in Niagara Falls, New York. The goal of the Superfund Program is to clean up the numerous hazardous waste sites throughout the country that had occurred from the illegal or improper disposal of hazardous wastes and contaminants. The program intended to seek out the source of the pollution and hold the responsible parties accountable for the clean up of nearly 2,000 identifiable sites considered high priority environmental problems. The primary contributors to the problems as identified by the Superfund Program were oil and petrochemical companies, mining concerns and military operations. The intention of this Superfund Program was to levy the burden of the cost of cleaning these sites onto the direct sources of the problem. There is no doubt that the Superfund Program has been a benefit to certain environmental clean up concerns and Onondaga Lake provides an excellent example of the program’s intention. A continued effort by Congress to renew the intent of the program provides a vital resource for cleaning up the remainder of the sites still waiting to be addressed.
Up until 1995, Congress had adopted the "polluter pays" concept for collecting enough money (approximately $1 billion dollars annually) to clean up these hazardous waste sites (Knickerbocker). The taxes collected from corporate America have gone a considerable way in making the program workable. However, in the years after 1995, Congress has failed to renew the taxes originally placed on oil and chemical industries specifically targeted to pay for the clean up. As the government program approaches bankruptcy today, more and more private citizen taxpayer dollars contribute to the clean up of these hazardous waste sites created by large corporations as a result of their improper disposal of hazardous materials and chemicals. The percentage of taxpayer dollars being used today to help clean up these sites has increased from a low of 18 percent to 53 percent due to the fact that the "polluter pays" concept has lost its enforceability (Knickerbocker). The decrease in money contributed to the Superfund Program by the polluters themselves is responsible for a decrease in half of the amount of Superfund sites being cleaned up each year. While there have been some 886 hazardous waste sites cleaned up since the beginning of the program in 1980, and 40 in the last year alone, nearly 1,203 sites remain on the "National Priorities List" (Knickerbocker). Legal loopholes have stalled the effectiveness of the program and the survivability of the program is being carried by the taxpayer. Politically, it seems unlikely that the Superfund Program will be done away with; however, it is uncertain how the program is expected to continue in years to come. Congress’s lack of attention to reinitiating and strengthening the “polluter pays” provisions is problematic, and their reassertion that the costs of the program be the responsibility of the offending parties is critical to the program’s future success.
Onondaga Lake located outside of Syracuse, New York, is an example of a hazardous waste site that is being harmed by the gradual decrease in the amount of funding that is sent to the Superfund Program. For a substantial time throughout the 20th century, it has been known that Onondaga Lake has been one of the most polluted lakes in America. Jay Landers elaborates on this concept in the opening sentence of his article “New Life for Onondaga Lake” when he references that, “It has been called the most polluted lake in the nation- and with good reason…Nearly 100 years of severe industrial contamination and several decades of municipal wastewater discharges left their mark on the water body” (Landers 64). It was reasonable to conclude that from Onondaga Lake’s unwanted title as the nation’s most polluted lake that it needed to be placed on the National Priority List. The formation of the Superfund Program provided the primary impetus for Onondaga Lake to receive the much-needed environmental attention it has warranted.
However, Onondaga Lake wasn’t added to the Superfund National Priority List until 1995 (Onondaga Lake Partnership). Coincidentally, the year 1995 coincides with the year that Congress stopped recognizing the “polluter pays” enforcement and focused more on the collection of taxes from the general population to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. To this date, Onondaga Lake has failed to receive the attention from the federal government and the Environmental Protection Agency that it deserves. While Onondaga Lake has been recognized and protected by the Clean Water Act passed by Congress since 1972, additional resources are needed to complete the restoration of this natural resource (Onondaga Lake Partnership). With the organization of the Onondaga Lake Management Conference in 1990 and the completion of the Plan of Action adopted by the Conference in 1993, Lake Onondaga has the outline of a plan to restore the lake to its original condition (Onondaga Lake Partnership). The Amended Consent Judgment, as a part of the Onondaga Lake Management Conference, signed in 1993, mandates the upgrade of sewage treatment facilities and systems discharging into the lake. It is intended to achieve compliance for the conditions with the Clean Water Act for Onondaga Lake and its tributaries by the year 2012 (Onondaga Lake Partnership).
In 1999, further legislation drafted the Onondaga Lake Partnership to replace the Conference effective as of August 17, 2000 (Onondaga Lake Partnership). At the helm of the partnership is the Army Corps of Engineers spearheading the effort to coordinate the state and federal governments in a cooperative effort to fully restore Onondaga Lake. As a variety of clean up efforts are employed, including the listing of Onondaga Lake on the National List of Priorities and enforcing its need to receive resources, improvements in the conditions of the lake are becoming apparent. These improvements in the pollution status of the lake come after almost three decades where the people, the economic status, and the environmental quality of Onondaga County have been overlooked by their federal government. With continued efforts and appropriate management, Onondaga Lake will continue to be revitalized and the measurements of those efforts should become readily apparent.