The Ralph Canal Incident half a century ago is the most unforgettable memory in American environmental history, and it is also one of the most famous pollution incidents of hazardous waste landfills in the world. This painful lesson directly prompted the US government to enact laws, set up a "super fund", and spared no expense to treat the "toxic land" left over from history.
Ralph Canal is located in New York, USA, near the famous Niagara Falls. It was originally designed to connect the two major water systems, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and at the same time provide hydropower for local industries. However, due to financial problems, only 1.6 km was dug. This canal was bought by Hook Company in the United States on 1942 and used as a landfill. During the period from 1942 to 1953, more than 2 1000 tons of industrial waste was buried in the canal.
1953, Hook Company sold the buried Ralph Canal to the board of Niagara Falls School for 1 USD. Soon, the board of directors decided to build a primary school there, and the surrounding area was developed into a residential area. However, with the passage of time, the chemical waste buried underground began to erode the sealed container and penetrate into the soil.
By the end of 1970s, after years of rain erosion, waste had infiltrated into the yards and basements of local residents. Abnormal phenomena followed: high abortion rate, frequent birth defects, mental illness and even cancer in some workers, and even toxins were detected in breast milk of nursing mothers. After media reports, the environmental protection department of New York State intervened in the investigation and found 82 kinds of compounds in local soil, among which 1 1 was carcinogenic.
An article by the National Environmental Protection Agency at that time wrote: "The Ralph Canal incident is one of the most terrible environmental disasters in American history, but it is not the most disturbing. To make matters worse, this is not an isolated incident. It may happen again, anywhere in this country, unless we act quickly. " Faced with public doubts and media exposure, Jimmy Carter, then president of the United States, declared the Ralph Canal a federal environmental emergency twice in 1978 and 1980, and about 950 families were moved to other places. However, it was not until 2004 that the pollutant cleaning work of Rafe Canal was completed, which took 24 years and cost more than 400 million dollars.
Under the strong pressure of public opinion, the United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Law on Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability on 1980, and approved the establishment of a fund for the management and restoration of contaminated sites, that is, a "super fund", so this law is also called the "super fund law". The fund is financed by taxes on domestic petroleum production and imported petroleum products, taxes on chemical raw materials, environmental taxes, regular allocations, maintenance and management fees recovered from those responsible for pollution, etc.
The Superfund Law is implemented by the US State Environmental Protection Agency, which defines four types of responsible subjects, including owners, operators, carriers and waste producers, to be responsible for cleaning up and repairing "brown land" (that is, polluted old industrial land). If the responsible person cannot be found or cannot be repaired, the "super fund" will allocate funds to pay the relevant expenses, but can recover from the responsible person afterwards.
The National Environmental Protection Agency of the United States has evaluated the "brown areas" all over the country, and places that may cause great harm to human health and the environment have been included in the "national priority list". As of April this year, there are 1328 "brown zones" on the list, and another 39 1 "brown zones" have been deleted from the list, which means that they have been cleaned up and repaired. Since the establishment of the "Super Fund", about 70% of the cost of cleaning up and restoring "brown land" in the United States has been paid by the responsible person, and the restoration time of each piece is generally between 10 and 20 years.
It is worth mentioning that the Superfund Law stipulates the traceability of pollution and joint legal liability. The so-called traceability means that no matter whether the pollution behavior is legal or not, the polluter should be responsible for its pollution behavior; Joint action is that when there are two or more potential responsible parties, any of them may be required to take full responsibility for the whole cleaning and maintenance work.