Pollution in Your Neighborhood

This week I went to EPA's official website (http://www.epa.org/) to find the nearest superfund site in my area (South Florida).

According to EPA's website, "Superfund is the federal government's program to clean up the nation's uncontrolled hazardous waste sites."

I decided to use the enviromapper to find the nearest superfund site. However, I had to type it in the search bar on the website to find a map that barely works. After giving up searching for something in my area, I noticed that there was a list of superfund sites that split the country into regions. Florida is listed in Region 4. I clicked the link and found that they only had two sites....one in Raleigh, North Carolina and the other in Jacksonville, Florida. Here is the description for Jacksonville:

"Jax Ash Cleanup, Jacksonville, FloridaEPA Region 4 successfully negotiated a complex Consent Decree with the City of Jacksonville for the cleanup of the Jacksonville Ash/Brown’s Dump Superfund Sites in 2007. This settlement entails approximately $100 million in Remedial Design/Remedial Action, one of the largest settlements in the history of Region 4, and will address more than 1.6 million cubic yards of contaminated soil located in four neighborhoods in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. The remedy will provide for the removal or isolation of contaminated soil and address concerns about both public health and property values for thousands of residents in low-income environmental justice neighborhoods."

Wondering if I could be wrong (not sure how since that was on the website), I googled in "List of Florida superfund sites". My Florida's website came up, and included Florida's DEP - Department of Environmental Protection. On that website it also included a "Quick Look" summary of Florida National Priority List Sites, which I think it's basically the same thing as superfund sites. This list is amazing...it has every site in the state, whether it is active or delisted. The easiest way to find one where you live is by finding your county first and then check the city. Broward county has at least 7 sites and 3 of them are delisted. The closest one to my area is Pembroke Park, which is active. There is a link to a document that has a description to that site which I found very interesting.

Click on the links to find out more information on each website.