Esssay 2: Superfund and Onondaga Lake

A green wave is sweeping the nation. New attention is being paid to environmental issues and people, now more than ever, are watching how they treat the environment. People are wondering what they can do to ensure a better, cleaner future for their children and grandchildren. The trouble, however, is getting the government and governmental organizations to follow the trend. In November of 2003 the Christian Science Monitor published an article titled “Superfund Program: A Smaller Cleanup Rag” in which they look into how a federally funded program that helps restore industrially polluted waste areas is slowly but surely going bankrupt. The fund, which brought in over a billion dollars a year, is now struggling to finish projects it had already started and is having even more trouble starting new projects. This lack of funds is leading to, as the title suggests, a smaller rag to clean up the large amounts of waste that contaminate some of our most precious ecosystems and communities.
The Superfund program has cleaned up many lakebeds, river bottoms, and streams by attacking the polluters such as the surrounding industries, chemical plants, and old deteriorating mines and allowing them to pay the bulk of the clean-up bill. The article calls this practice the “polluter pays” plan. Some of the sites, however, were unable to be cleaned because the company who had polluted them had gone bankrupt or abandoned them. These leftover sites were cleaned up using funds from a tax on all oil and chemical industries and a tax on large corporations. These taxes funded Superfund’s abandoned sites until 1995 when Congress failed to renew the tax after it’s expiration (Knickerbocker, p. 9-11). This failure to renew the tax on industry has lead to an even larger portion of the program’s burdens on the taxpayers. The amount that Superfund received from taxpayers increased from 18% to 53% after the tax on industries and chemical manufacturers expired (Knickerbocker p. 12). This increase in taxpayer money rather than money from industry and big corporations has fostered a steady decrease in the number of sites that Superfund can help to clean annually.
This decrease in funding for Superfund may very well have an impact very close to home for some. Syracuse is home to one of the most polluted lakes in the world and has in the past received funds from Superfund delegated to cleaning the toxic waste that has been dumped into the bottom of the lake by local industry. An article in The Conservationist in 1994 states that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave 2.7 million dollars towards the clean-up of Onondaga lake using Superfund funds. This was a great leap forward towards not only cleaning Onondaga lake, but towards building on the opportunities that a clean lake could offer. Onondaga Lake was once home to “a thriving resort industry based on recreational swimming, boating and fishing.” (Swinn, p.5) but now the people who live in proximity to the lake must live with what the industries have left for them. Swimming in the lake today is prohibited, but if enough money and time is put into cleaning the lake, beaches and resorts could bring in a lot of revenue for the city and it’s local businesses, giving the local economy a boost (Swinn p.5). This, however, would become increasingly difficult if Superfund is forced to give up it’s policy of “polluter pays” and must resort to making the taxpayer foot most of the bill.
Onondaga Lake, like many cities during the late 19th century, followed a path of industrialization. This time period saw these industries dumping untreated sewage into the lake and other industrial wastes into the lake and greatly lowering it’s water quality. The lake’s primary use following World War II was to house the waste produced by Syracuse’s ever growing industrial western shore. Important steps have been taken in the fight to clean Onondaga Lake. Many organizations, such as the Onondaga Lake Partnership, are geared toward providing a clean lake that the local community can enjoy. The partnership’s website has many tools that allow citizens to monitor the lake’s progress and even has set a list of goals that should be met and a deadline for meeting them. These goals include reducing mercury levels, reducing ammonia and phosphorus loading, and bacterial discharge into the lake (OLP). Slowly the lake’s water quality has improved allowing the catch-and-release fishing to be welcomed back to the lake attracting many boaters that had stayed away from the lake before due to it’s toxic properties (OLP). With continued steady improvements the lake will someday return to it’s pre-industrial state.
Onondaga Lake has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I frequently run on the road that runs along the shoreline and my family holds a reunion at Onondaga Lake Park annually. The park is a wonderful place to spend a summer’s day with your family, exercise your stress away, or simply sit on one of the park’s many benches and read. What exists today, however, only scratches the surface of what the Onondaga Lake and the surrounding region could be. I visited the lake recently on a Friday afternoon. It was a sunny Friday afternoon with a temperature in the mid eighties. The day seemed like a perfect day to spend at the lake swimming, boating, or enjoy the weekend. I looked at the lake, however, and found almost no boats present. I glanced along the shoreline and noticed that something was missing from the scenery. Swimming in Onondaga Lake has been banned for some time and both the citizens of Syracuse and the city itself are losing out because of the lakes pollution levels. If the lake were clean enough to allow swimming, families and others would be able to come to Syracuse to spend their weekends and nice summer days, rather than traveling to other lakes such as Lake Ontario and Oneida Lake to the North, as my family had to throughout my youth. While the people would enjoy a nice day on the lake the city would enjoy the business that resorts and beaches would bring to the area. There is no doubt that the lake would have been a big part of my childhood had I been able to swim and if fishing on Onondaga Lake was thought to be as safe is it is on other lakes.
The lake, however, can’t reach the goals set out by the Onondaga Lake Partnership or provide locals with a good place to spend a day without federal funding. The Superfund program is a necessity in the restoration of Onondaga Lake. Goals aren’t necessary unless there is the will, or in this case the funds, available to reach them. The lake has improved over the past few decades but there is still much more that can be done and must be done for the health and future of the people of Syracuse. It is time for the government to step up and not only do what is right for the environment but also what is right for the people of Syracuse today and the people of Syracuse for a long time to come