Region’s three states work to redevelop a District of Columbia-sized heap of contaminated brownfields

By Frank Carini, ecoRI News staff (RI)

Southern New England’s three states cover 17,322 square miles and a significant portion of that space has been adulterated by two-plus centuries of incineration, smelting, metal plating, textile manufacturing, etching, electroplating, and dumping.

Much of the environmental harm and public health deterioration that followed came after laws had been enacted but were often ignored and inadequately enforced.

The combination of apathy, selfishness, and greed that continues to place profit over the well-being of both nature and humans has led to polluted landscapes — the worse of those identified as Superfund sites or brownfields — often surrounded by marginalized neighborhoods that predominantly house low-wealth families and people of color. The remediation of these sites is frequently funded by taxpayers via government grants and/or bond funding, robbing budgets of money that could have been used to educate, house, and care for people to cover the expense of cleaning up after careless others.

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For the entire article, see

https://ecori.org/southern-new-englands-contaminated-landscape-costs-plenty-to-clean-up/

Posted February 27, 2023