EcoReport - June 21, 2012

A combination of Bloomington, Indiana's long history with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, the irresponsible disposal methods of the past, and a limestone-rich landscape has seen three local sites forever altered. The passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 set up a benchmark for sites deemed so hazardous to the environment and people around them that the federal government needed to get involved with clean-up. It also enabled the Envionmental Protection Agency (EPA) to order those responsible for damages to do the clean-up or, at least, reimburse the government for doing it. These sites were called Superfunds. There are three in Bloomington, all of which stem from Westinghouse Electric Corporation disposing of electrical capacitors insulated with PCBs into backyard dump sites from 1958 until the mid-70s. Today, the company is owned by CBS Corporation and it has worked with the EPA, the State of Indiana, City of Bloomington, and Monroe County to ease these sites' threat to humans and wildlife as much as possible, even as it is recognized much of the land will never be used again. Today, WFHB correspondent Cleveland Dietz speaks with EPA Remedial Project Manager Tom Alcamo who details superfunds and the government's criteria for selecting them and explains what the EPA and CBS Corporation are doing at these sites now and in the future, for our feature story.

EcoReport is a weekly program providing independent media coverage of environmental and ecological issues with a focus on local, state and regional people, issues, and events in order to foster open discussion of human relationships with nature and the Earth and to encourage you to take personal responsibility for the world in which we live.  Each program features timely eco-related headline news, a feature interview or event recording, and a calendar of events of interest to the environmentally conscious.