Corporate cleanup plans minimize cost while leaving most contamination circulating

Evidence

After decades of foot dragging, the corporation has predictably offered its own cleanup plan, which involves minimum cost and minimum benefits. Honeywell has negotiated a plan to dredge and clean the most contaminated sediments and bury them in a sealed landfill in the waste beds. That may be a good beginning, but the bulk of the contaminants lie diffused in the sediments spread over the entire lake bottom. From here they enter the food chain. The Honeywell plan is to leave those sediments in place and cover them with a four-inch layer of sand that would partially isolate them from the ecosystem. Even if isolation were technically feasible, the proposal is to cap less than half of the lake bottom, leaving the rest to circulate as usual. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1174

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth tracking the eventual Onondaga Lake cleanup outcome and whether capping versus dredging won out — a concrete environmental-racism case study for Eco-Justice.
• XREF: connects to: Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs

Broader Connections

• Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs #corroborates (0.80)