Superfund visions can cloud judgment

It’s been more than 40 years since massive environmental contamination was discovered at Love Canal in upstate New York, and its effects are still being felt. That case led to the creation of the Superfund program, and communities ever since have been acutely conscious of keeping hazardous chemicals out of their yards and drinking water.

At the same time, the threat posed by most industrial leftovers has arguably been exaggerated. But since no one wants to live on the next Love Canal, communities go to great lengths to avoid any chance of it.

That tendency may have provided some health benefits over the years, but it also helps explain why our communities look the way they do, with sprawl preferred to urban infill — green space in the countryside doesn’t need a cleanup. There are dangers from that trend, too, including from greater driving distances and more pollution from cars.

The trick is separating true environmental hazards from the kind of background dangers unavoidable in modern life.

The issue is today coming to a head in Fairfield, the kind of town accustomed to finding itself on the right sort of lists — safest towns in America, best schools, highest quality of life. Lately, it has seen the lasting impact of environmental contamination rise on multiple fronts.

One issue involves the completion of a decadeslong cleanup at a former battery factory. The Exide site, where the Electric Storage Battery Co. opened a factory in 1951 on the Mill River, falls into the deadly serious category. The factory for years manufactured car batteries using acids and lead, leaving behind tons of contaminated material, and only now, 28 years after the factory closed, have officials declared it ready for reuse.

Despite all that, the Exide site was in some ways an ideal brownfield. Unlike countless postindustrial sites, there was never a question of ownership, no doubt who was responsible and who would have to pay for cleanup. And with a highly visible location in a welloff town, eventual redevelopment was a certainty. Plans are already in the works for a mixeduse project with easy access to downtown.

It was also the kind of contamination where the alarm was justified. Lead poisoning has been credibly linked to a massive nationwide crime wave that lasted into the early 1990s, caused by its presence in gasoline, paint and other products that caused irreparable harm to a generation of young people. Thirtyseven tons of it in the Mill River is the kind of disaster brownfield cleanups must focus on.

The other environmental issue in town is different. Two public works supervisors and a developer were arrested this summer in what police said was a scheme that allowed hazardous materials to be illegally dumped on a town fill pile in exchange for bribes.

Dozens of sites around town where material from the pile was used have been tested for contamination, with some signs of hazardous waste, including low levels of asbestos, arsenic and other contaminants. Though the state Department of Health has said there are no health risks posed by these levels, the town is planning to remediate out of “an abundance of caution.”

This is where cleanups come near to a place where they can do more harm than good.

To be clear, arsenic and asbestos are considered hazardous for a reason, and there has been lead found in small amounts, as well. There is no amount of lead in a human body that is considered safe.

But certain amounts of toxicity are almost impossible to avoid. The Northeast, especially, with its industrial past, is rife with contamination, even in towns such as Fairfield, which has a deep history of manufacturing. Dig up a yard in almost any densely packed community in Connecticut that dates back a few generations and you will without question come up with hazardous materials. The question is whether a person is likely to come into contact with those materials, and whether they are likely to cause harm. Often, the answer to both is no.

That’s not good enough for many people, who want anything even remotely harmful dug up and carted away. That might be possible in Fairfield, but it’s not practical most places, and has the effect of halting reuse on developable land, pushing new construction away from densely populated communities and into the sprawling countryside. Over the long term, the trend hurts cities and empowers suburbs.

There are risks in any level of contamination. There are also risks in many other everyday activities, but we don’t, for instance, have a nationwide 20 mph speed limit.

None of this excuses what happened in Fairfield, but it does help explain why redevelopment at former industrial sites can take decades. Nobody wants another Love Canal, and one of the results is vast acres of empty lots where there used to be factories, and another obstacle for older cities to overcome.