Water Pollution

POLLUTING THE WATER in the United States is an environmental crime. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitors and regulates approximately 80 chemicals in finished drinking water as stipulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. When analyzed samples contain the specified chemicals above a preset maximum contamination level, then the water is considered unsafe.

Corporations are chronic offenders in this category of white-collar crime. Some of the biggest corporate offenders of such environmental crimes include, General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, Ford, DuPont, the U.S. government, and Union Carbide. Estimates are that corporations illegally dump about 8 million tons of toxic wastes into rivers and coastal waters annually.

As just one example from the industrial polluters list, during the 1950s, General Electric's two manufacturing plants in New York, one at Fort Edward and the other at Hudson Falls made electrical capacitators for electricity plants. A capacitator saves electric companies' money by producing more electricity with less power or amps. However, these capacitators only work because of the use of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Monsanto developed PCBs in 1929, and in 1970 Monsanto warned GE to keep PCBs from entering the environment. PCBs are listed as a persistent organic pollutant that does not break down over time. A variety of research also shows that PCBs are carcinogenic, cause birth defects, miscarriages, and cloracne (a severe skin disease that covers the body with pustules and darkens the skin), impairs vision, leads to impotence, fever, and diarrhea.

Both GE plants began dumping the castings used to make the capacitators, covered with PCBs, into the Hudson River. The Hudson at the time provided drinking water, commercial fishing, and recreational fishing to the local population. It is estimated that over 500,000 pounds of PCBs were dumped into the river. GE also had a policy to sell or give away PCB contaminated dirt, including selling it as fertilizer. One such place is the Dewey Loeffel Landfill in Nassau, New York, where GE dumped more than 46,000 tons of PCBs, other heavy metals, and toxic wastes in the 1950s and 1960s. This is more than twice the amount dumped at the Love Canal, New York, catastrophe in 1984 in what is referred to as the worst industrial accident on record. The Dewey site continues to be classified as a significant health risk by the state of New York.

Pollution of the Hudson continued until 1975 when the Clean Water Act began to be enforced. Subsequently, the federal government ordered the company to begin to reduce the amount of PCBs released into the Hudson. In 1976, the U.S. Congress outlawed PCB manufacture, sale, and distribution (except in “totally enclosed systems”). Finally, GE agreed to pay $3 million to clean up the Hudson and to discontinue use of PCB by the year 1977. Since that time, GE has managed to get 77 of its plant sites on the EPA Superfund list, areas that must be cleaned up as the result of severe pollution. Superfund sites are contaminated areas requiring cleanup by the company that did the polluting whether or not the pollution was legal at the time. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act created such sites in 1980.

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