There was a time when manufacturers and cleaning services thought nothing of dumping liquid waste down the drain, so to speak. Of course, now we experience the results of a haphazard way of life. In Wall Township, White Swan Cleaners, which dumped millions of gallons of cleaning fluid, contaminated a swath of land two miles long and one mile wide of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
The cleaners closed in 1991; the area was declared a superfund site in 2004. Now, almost 20 years later, the current property owner, which did not contribute to the pollution pay $6.5 million. EPA will fund $29 million. What took so long?
People started smelling VOC vapors and found their drinking water had a strange taste. The drinking water is now monitored, but the real issue is why companies that pollute aren’t forced to pay the costs. This is only one site of many where people just dumped without thinking. Thinking ahead, we must take greater care in what we dump and how.
Prayer for the Day
Not understanding how to treasure your creation, Origin of life,
We want to tame it and reign it in to fit our limited view,
But you call us to broaden our vision, and accept your infinity
Fixing the damage we have often done to the earth.
Let not the silt of our limitations confine our understanding
But let the flow of the river wash us clean.
In the name of the One who opens the rivers of our minds,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
This plastic cup with the broken handle, green enough to almost disappear in the grass along the roadside, has come all the way from its origins in oil, and so it may be the last gesture of some dinosaur or hold the breath of some ancient fern… If I leave it, perhaps some mouse or insect will make it its home...Or I could just take it home to use as a planter for the flowerless cactus…
- Richard Jackson, from the prose poem The Voices
My hope is that plastic pollution stays on the agenda, that It remains a priority for the environment and that we continue to push forward.
- Chelsea Rochman, University of Toronto Department of Ecology
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…
Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?
From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the hoarfrost?
Job 38: 28-29