I have very mixed feelings about the article on the Passaic River cleanup. On one hand, I can appricate the EPA's efforts to restore the Passaic River of pollution for recreation and other notable reasons. On the other hand, I can't help but agree with the critiques of Jeff Tittel, the president of the NJ Sierra Club. In the article, he states the EPA was doing the bare minimum to clean the pollution and they doesn't even punish the companies responsible for polluting the river. I agree with his ideas. I feel in order to solve a problem you need to get to the root of the problem(i.e. the companies that caused the problem). The EPA should at least go off with a warning that they need to clean their mess if this happens again.
Another problem I find with this article is what they are cleaning. In the picture shown to the right, they are only cleaning part of the river. Rivers do have currents and the pollution can travel all throughout the river. I feel if the EPA truly want to clean the river, they need to they should clean the whole river (or at least where the pollution starts, which the article never states).
Besides this, I can still understand the EPA's need to clean this river for the good of the community. For more information on the subject, click here.
Besides this, I can still understand the EPA's need to clean this river for the good of the community. For more information on the subject, click here.
Very nice comments, links and visual - this is a well put together response to the WP article. I agree that fully cleaning the river should be the end goal. As bad as we envision the Passaic now, many of the polluting processes that created its current state are now illegal. I wonder if cleaning up the lower 8 miles successfully would lead to additional funding and support for cleaning up the entire river. If the river was something far more desirable, perhaps there would also be additional political support for stricter regulation against water pollution.
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