Ghost towns, submerged areas, and polluted paradisias dot America’s landscape. Here are some of America’s most tragic and shocking sites.
Ghost Towns
Centralia, Pennsylvania:Centralia was established in the mid-19th Century on top of a rich seam o high-energy anthracite, and prospered for more than a century. In the 1950s, enormous amounts of waste had been produced by strip mining. In 1962, the town approved the setting of a controlled fire to reduce its municipal landfill.
Did someone say Controlled? As many had feared, the fire spread quickly to the coal seams. For the next 30 years, all attempts to put out the fire, whether they were local, state, or federal, failed. It caused extensive damage to homes and roads in Centralia, as well as parts of Byrnesville. Heavy rains caused occasional geysers.
Sixty-years later, the fires remain alive in those underground seams. Federal buyouts, de-listing the town zip code and melting streets drove all but a few residents from the dead town.
Picher, OklahomaPicher was founded in 1913 by a prospector who discovered huge amounts of lead and zinc. It became a mining boom city. Picher’s population peaked at 14,000 in the 1920s. It has been declining steadily since, with only a small rebound during World War II.
A 1994 survey revealed that 34% of Pichers’ children were affected by lead poisoning. This steady decline led to a mass exit. Picher didn’t need another straw. However, in 2008, a tornado ravaged 100 homes and killed seven. A year later, the state of Oklahoma officially disintegrated the town.
Ellenton, SC:Ellenton was 43 years old when I visited it in 1993. It was the largest of five towns that were evicted in order to create the Savannah River Site. This site is one of many secret facilities built to win World War II. Within six months of the eviction notices being served, every Ellenton family home, storefront, and church was left vacant, making Ellenton a ghost-town for Uncle Sam.
Our Energy Department tour guide led us down dark streets with crumbling sidewalks that lead to foundations that were bare and overgrown. Although the Savannah River Site had some of the worst radiological and chemical contaminations in U.S. history in certain areas, the only threat to the desolate streets in Ellenton would be the 350-pound feral animals that roam the area. Ellenton also has a West Coast counterpart: Hanford, a ranching community in Washington’s High Desert that disappeared in the 1940s to make Hanford Works, was crucial for U.S. nuclear weapons production from Hiroshima until the end of the Cold Wars.
Today, the three small cities serving Hanford site are flourishing with federal cleanup funds of at least $4 billion annually through the 2060s.
Rongelap, Marshall IslandsThe U.S. launched another nuclear test in the Marshalls on March 1, 1954. It was a mid-Pacific cluster of coral atolls and islands. Castle Bravo, the test codenamed, produced a blast that was two-and-a-half times more powerful than expected. It hurled radioactive debris and dust across large parts of the Marshalls.
Rongelap was particularly hard hit. Radiation sickness was a concern immediately. However, thyroid cancer had spread to entire generations by the 1970s. The U.S. declined to move the 300+ inhabitants of the islands to a safer place.
The Greenpeace ship finally arrived in 1985 Rainbow Warrior Moved the Rongalapese from its original home to a new, radiation-free location more than 100 miles away. (Full disclosure
Happily ever after? Not when you are on an atoll just above sea level. The sea level is increasing. So keep watching.
Underwater
Shishmaref Newtok, Alaska:Shishmaref residents are located on a gravel island off the coast. They have known for years that a move towards the mainland was inevitable. Coastal erosion is the primary cause. It is the shorebased ice which used to protect the village against the worst effects of storms that has been causing coastal erosion. This ice is gone for most of the year.
Newtok, located several hundred miles to its south, is facing another climate threat. The melting permafrost threatens Newtok’s very ground.
Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana:You can see the dire situation of the few remaining homes in this coastal Louisiana community if you add land subsidence to the list.
Paradise polluted
Hudson Riverbed:The Hudson River is an artistic gem, with its beautiful Adirondack stream, stunning Hudson Highlands and Palisades, and the glittering skyscrapers of Manhattan. Surroundings are good. However, the river’s bottom is carcinogenic. It stretches for 150 miles. For a quarter-century, two General Electric factories dumped polychlorinated biphenyls upstream. They poison river wildlife’s tissues and line the river bottom. GE’s wrongs cannot be righted by litigation or the best available cleanup techniques.
It would be difficult to expand this list beyond the dozens of American cities currently facing the replacement or removal of lead water service lines in their older neighborhoods. Add this to the seemingly endless number of troubling headlines and you’ve got a job.
Peter Dykstra, our weekend editor and columnist, can be reached via [email protected] @pdykstra.
His views are not necessarily those of Environmental Health News or The Daily Climate.
Banner photo credit: imagesystem/flickr
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