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Another WW-I Chemical Site In Washington, DC
WrongSizeGlass writes "The AP is reporting that the US Army Corps of Engineers has uncovered what appears to be the fourth major disposal area for World War I-era munitions and chemical weapons in the nation's capital. Digging was suspended at a construction site after 'workers pulled smoking glassware from the pit — preliminary tests show the glassware was contaminated with the toxic chemical arsenic trichloride. ... Workers also discovered a jar about three-quarters full of a dark liquid that turned out to be the chemical agent mustard.' Someone needs to remind our government of the meaning of NIMBY."
We seem intent enough upon killing ourselves. Outside help need not apply!
Toxic chemicals leaching into the groundwater would go a long way towards explaining some of the things that go on in DC.
They're one of the very few things stopping "respectable businesses" (of any kind) from dumping such stuff wherever it's possible.
One that hath name thou can not otter
they have a sterling track record in dealing with waste disposal, and they always have your well-being as their paramount concern
</sarcasm>
nobody in the healthcare debate believes government will handle healthcare super-efficiently and without bureaucracy or waste. it will simply be BETTER than what we had beforehand. at least the government has a mandate to take care of YOU rather than some shareholders
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Aye-aye, Captain! The time travel vessel is being readied in the launch bay, and your message will be delivered to those 1914 morons in just a few minutes!
Brilliant advice, Sir!
"They've created a hazardous waste site in the neighborhood," Wells said.
Actually, the neighborhood was created in the hazardous waste site.
further from TFA: the leftover munitions and chemicals were buried behind the school in what was then rural farmland
The article makes it sound like the chems found their way there after the housing development. How much of this is the army's fault... and how much of it is the housing developers fault? Surely they did a little research on the history of the land before they tried to start a housing development there? Probably not, or maybe that's why they got the land so cheap? I know someone personally that had a very close call with some land he almost bought, (got stuck with) that he found out just in time used to be where line transformers were rebuilt. (can you say "ground and buildings saturated with PCBs?) When you buy something like that, it doesn't become exclusively your problem, but you now share a portion of the responsibility for its cleanup once it's deemed necessary.
Basically, if there's a toxic problem and you own it and you don't clean it up or get it cleaned up, you're on the hook for it even years down the road after it's changed hands several times. Of course, the more hands its passed through before someone forces the cleanup, the more diluted your share of the blame becomes. Unfortunately, for this reason, it's on their best interest to NOT clean it up, and to do everything they can to hide the problem, for as long as possible.
Someone's probably doing some research right now trying to figure out how well this chemical disposal was documented, who if anyone was negligent for not factoring it in or disclosing it, and who all is now on the list of people that will be footing the cleanup bill.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I think you are confusing the First World War with the Second World War. There were no Nazis involved in the first war (I really shouldn't have to explain this). Allied propaganda aside, the Germans were no better or worse than the allied powers.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I'd like to know, from a historical perspective, how this was just "misplaced" so close to the capital, even during war time. Unlike Europe, this is not an area where a war occurred - and the article states it was one of only a few "major" dumping sites. Classified or not, I would imagine this is something that the US Government took rather meticulous records of, even back in WWI - and something that a reasonable number of scientists, military officers, and technicians knew about. Was there some significant loss of records over the decades relating to these programs?
This was 95 years ago. The chemical sites were there first; the backyards came later.
Citation Needed.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens."
-- Adam Smith
You want to appeal to authority? Fine. I'll see your Adam Smith quote and raise you another. Here's what he has to say about the corporations you'd rather see in charge of things:
"[T]he greater part of [general shareholders] seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business of the company; and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail among them, give themselves no trouble about it, but receive contentedly such halfyearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make to them. This total exemption front trouble and front risk, beyond a limited sum, encourages many people to become adventurers in [corporations], who would, upon no account, hazard their fortunes in any private [partnership]. ... The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private [partnership] frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, pp. 506 (some archaic terms substituted with modern ones.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm a patriotic military vet, a stickler for honoring the sacrifices of our troops from all wars... I just got back from a ceremony honoring WW II veterans in fact.
And I've come to completely agree with you about WW I. The more I look at it, the harder it is to see the Germans as particularly evil. They didn't start the war, that's for sure. And Britain and France didn't have a moral advantage over them in any way. The whole thing was one big great powers pissing match, and Woodrow Wilson should have kept his promise to keep the US out of it. Further, and it pains me to say this, but the allied powers are directly responsible for the rise of Hitler. The brutal conditions imposed on Germany after the war made his rise possible. And you can be sure that leaders of the US in WW II knew that as well, which is why they took a completely different approach to Germany after victory. Instead of making them wallow in suffering, rebuild the country to democratic standards and market prosperity. Because the communists were waiting for their opportunity of we did not.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Yes, and [what would become] Germany and France had been invading each other back and forth, with some British support on the Continent thrown in, since the middle of the 19th century with no major bloodshed or escalation. Small wars over border areas were so common they were pretty much considered a rite of passage and an opportunity for adventure and national pride. People on both sides _looked forward_ to another chance to swipe some territory from rivals, and had no idea that technology and tactics would render WWI into something very different from the "glorious wars" their fathers and grandfathers told stories about.
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson