7 Biggest Environmental Disasters -- Where Are They Now?

This post first appeared on EcoSalon.

When the peace of a community is shattered by man-made disaster – an oil spill, a toxic gas leak, a nuclear meltdown – a scar is left that may fade with passing decades but will never fully heal. While some may be able to clean up and return to a sense of normalcy, others stand fenced-off and unchanged like a silent memorial. Located around the globe, these seven catastrophic environmental disasters have had a profound effect upon the earth and local residents that continues today, as many as 50 years later.

Love Canal Community Contamination

In the late 1950s, the little neighborhood of Love Canal, New York seemed idyllic. Located just miles from the picturesque Niagara Falls, the land was purchased by the city from Hooker Chemical Company for a dollar. It was worth much less. The residents of the neighborhood’s 100 newly constructed homes had no idea that they were living atop one big hazardous chemical dumping ground.

But the consequences of building homes and a school where over 21,000 tons of toxic waste lurked just beneath the surface became all too clear by the 1970s with shockingly high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and nervous disorders. Resident Lois Gibbs led a campaign to uncover the cause, and a federal health emergency was declared, demolishing houses and relocating more than 800 families.

As a result of the tragedy, the Superfund Act was passed by Congress to hold polluters responsible for severe environmental damage. In 2004, Love Canal was finally declared clean, though most of the neighborhood remains abandoned – even though hundreds of similar toxic Superfund sites still sit waiting for their turn.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Meltdown

March 28, 1979 marked the beginning of a three-day series of “mechanical, electrical and human failures” that produced a catastrophic meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania.

Though the radiation released wasn’t significant enough to cause a public health crisis, the accident brought a general lack of oversight and emergency response planning in the nuclear power industry to light and led to a huge spike in local opposition to the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Cleanup and decontamination of the Three Mile Island accident site cost $975 million and wasn’t completed until 1993. Today, Three Mile Island is still in operation, though the generating station involved in the meltdown is no longer used. A radiation leak was investigated in November 2009, but federal officials say there was no threat to public safety.

Minamata Mercury Poisoning

It’s not common knowledge amongst Westerners, but the Minamata mercury incident in Japan was severe enough to get a disease named after it. A chemical company called Chisso Corporation disposed of thousands of tons of industrial wastewater containing methyl mercury in the town of Minamata from 1908 to 1968, which poisoned the local population through consumption of contaminated seafood.

What’s now known as Minamata Disease was discovered in 1956, when clusters of victims in fishing hamlets along the bay came forward with strange symptoms. Severe cases of the disease led to paralysis, insanity, coma and death within weeks of symptoms first appearing. Similar effects were seen in local animals like cats and birds.

Over 2,265 victims have been officially certified by the Japanese government – 1,784 of whom have died – but over 17,000 people have applied for certification. Chisso Corporation, which stopped using mercury in 1969, has spent $86 million compensating over 10,000 victims and was ordered to clean up the contamination in 2004.