VirtualGlobetrotting: Pollution

VirtualGlobetrotting Live View

Disposal site for nuclear submarine reactors
kjfitz (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kjfitz.
Read more...
Area 200 / Trench 94.
The burial ground contains 138 trenches running north and south. Sixty one of the trenches are 370 meters (960 feet) long, thirty one of the trenches are 293 meters long, and the remaining trenches vary. Trench 94 contains defueled US Navy submarine reactor compartments. The burial ground is marked and radiologically posted.
Waste Description: Trench 94 is oriented in an east-west direction. The reactor compartments are composed of various types of steel and approximately 392 tons of lead shielding.
Hull sections containing defueled reactor compartments of decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines are put in disposal trenches. In 1986, the Patrick Henry's hull section was the first one placed in Trench 94.
Once full, the trench will be filled with dirt and buried. The compartments are expected to retain their integrity for more than 600 years.
Use of the thick steel submarine hull as a disposal provides extra isolation between the environment and the low-level waste and hazardous lead that remain after the spent nuclear fuel has been removed.

City of Chernobyl
DonMartini (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: DonMartini.
Read more...
The Chernobyl accident occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (originally named after Vladimir Lenin) in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). It is regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power, producing (due to a lack of a full containment building) a plume of radioactive debris that drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, UK, and eastern USA. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of roughly 200,000 people. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

BOMARC Missle Site - 46th ADMS
photog (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: photog.
Read more...
Site map.
The Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center (BOMARC) site occupies approximately 218 acres within the Range and Impact Area of the U.S. Army's Fort Dix Installation. The site was operated by and continues to fall under the jurisdiction of McGuire Air Force Base (McGuire AFB), which is located 11 miles west of the BOMARC site. McGuire AFB was authorized to use the land for construction of an anti-aircraft missile facility in 1958. Rows of missile shelters were constructed during the late 1950s and early 1960s to house BOMARC's nuclear warhead-equipped missiles. Key operations at BOMARC included missile fueling and defueling, missile maintenance, and power production operations. The BOMARC site is a secure site surrounded by locked chain fences, and signs are posted along the perimeter of the site prohibiting trespassing. The site is no longer used and no definitive plans for future use of the site have been announced.
On June 7, 1960, a non-nuclear explosion and fire occurred in BOMARC Missile Shelter 204. The fire burned uncontrolled for about 30 minutes. The force of the explosion destroyed the missile, its plutonium-containing warhead, and portions of the shelter roof; flames rose to 20 feet and black smoke blanketed the area. Fire fighting crews responded to contain the fire from the explosion. Following the accident, monitoring and decontamination activities were initiated. Response teams washed and spray-painted the shelter in an attempt to immobilize the contamination. The missile wreckage and the launcher from Shelter 204 were apparently removed and disposed of off site. The pit inside the shelter was filled with soil excavated from the rear of the shelter and the pit was subsequently sealed with concrete. To further immobilize the radiologic contamination outside the shelter, reinforced concrete was poured over the asphalt apron in front of Shelter 204 and 2 inches of asphalt also were placed along the bottom of the drainage ditch that leads from the shelter. A 6-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire was installed around the site to restrict access (OHM 1998). The facility was deactivated in 1972 and all missiles were removed from the shelters. The BOMARC site remains within the domain of the Air Force (USAF 1992).

Love Canal Site
mikeb9991 (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: mikeb9991.
President Carter declared a state of emergency at Love Canal on May 21, 1980 and the EPA agreed to evacuate all Love Canal families temporarily until permanent relocation funds could be secured.

Lockheed Rocket Test Site
kjfitz (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kjfitz.
Former rocket test facility, operated by Lockheed. Clean-up of the site was delayed due to a potential threat to the federally protected Stephens kangaroo rat. It remains a vast, closed-off area, with a few test stands and industrial areas, unmanned and abandoned.
A second portion of the site can be found further south along Highland Springs Road.

Remains of Raritan Arsenal
kjfitz (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kjfitz.
The U.S. Army used the arsenal from 1917 to 1963 as a site for ammunition storage and renovation.

Alang Shipbreaking Yard
Ozzy (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Ozzy.
The shipyards at Alang recycle approximately half of all ships salvaged around the world.
See Bing image search on Alang:

Atlas uranium mine site tailing ponds
nic (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: nic.

Entrance to Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project
The purpose of the Yucca Mountain project is to determine if Yucca Mountain is a suitable site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste storage. The present prime contractor for the project is Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC (a consortium of government contractors Bechtel Corporation and Science Applications International Corporation). The consortium employs 1,300 people on the project. The main tunnel of the Exploratory Studies Facility is U-shaped 5 miles (8 km) long and 25 feet (8 m) wide. There are also several cathedral-like alcoves that branch from the main tunnel. It is in these alcoves that most of the scientific experiments are conducted. The galleries (smaller tunnels perpendicular to the main tunnel) where waste will be stored have not been constructed.
The proposed repository zone will cover 1150 acres (4.7 km²), be 1000 feet (300 m) below the surface of the mountain and 1000 feet (300 m) above the water table. The waste will be encased in a multilayer stainless steel and nickel alloy package covered by titanium drip shields that function also as rock shields.
By early 2002, 7 billion US dollars had been spent on the project which has made Yucca Mountain the most studied piece of geology in the world. Total cost is expected be between 50 and 100 billion dollars. The cost of the facility is being paid for by the public using nuclear generated electricity and the federal government for disposal of defense nuclear waste.

Malta Test Station
The Malta Test Station is a 165 acre industrial R&D site surounded by a wooded buffer zone in suburban Saratoga, established in 1945 by the U.S. Government for rocket engine and fuel testing, explosives testing, and atomic energy research. It has been used over the years by government agencies including the Department of Defense, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and was operated by General Electric until 1984. During the early period especially, exotic rocket fuels and ordnance were experimented with, however due to security concerns, many of the records from this period have been destroyed. In 1984, NYSERDA sold approximately 81 acres of the Test Station, including most of the 33 original buildings, test areas, rocket gantries, and other facilities to the WrightMalta Corporation, a campany spun-out of GE. Environmental clean-up measures have found widespread contamination at the site, including potential radiation (Exxon Nuclear worked with GE on some of the projects at the site).

LG&E's Trimble County Coal-fired Generation Plant Showing 5-mile Emission Plume
AlbinoFlea (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: AlbinoFlea.
From http://www.lgeenergy.com/lge/lge_plant_info.asp:
Began commercial operation in December 1990, with a net generating capacity of 495 MW. Current generating capacity of 514 MW.
Burns up to 200 tons per hour of coal which is transported in 1,500-ton barges.

Radioactive dump site
AlejoHausner (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: AlejoHausner.
Cactus crater on Runit island, part of the Enewetok atoll, in the Marshall Islands. Radioactive debris from many nuclear bomb tests was dumped into this crater, which was capped with 18-inch-thick concrete panels in 1982. Soil from many of the contaminated islands was scraped off. The original inhabitants of the atoll were allowed to return in 1980, despite radioactive elements like Cesium 137 in the ecosystem.

Yuba Goldfields
The Yuba Goldfields is a valley of 10,000 acres (40 km²) on both sides of the Yuba River in Yuba County, California, located northeast of Marysville. The goldfields are noted for their otherworldly appearance, filled with oddly shaped gravel mountains, ravines, streams and turquoise-colored pools of water. From the air, the goldfields are said to resemble intestines.
Wild turkeys, deer, ducks, Beavers, herons, bald eagles, Northern river otters and even mountain lions now call the goldfields home.
They were created during the California Gold Rush. Mining companies in the Sierra Nevada foothills blasted gravel hillsides with high-pressure jets of water—a process called hydraulic mining. Rivers and streams carried the flood of sediment—called slickens—down to the Sacramento Valley.
In 1893, the California Debris Commission began to dredge the Yuba near Marysville to mitigate the environmental damage, and piled the gravel along the river's banks, creating the irregular hills seen today.

Pollution in Tijuana
nic (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: nic.

Horseshoe Road Superfund Site
This is a heavily contaminated abandoned industrial site on the Raritan River, a toxic chemical processing site, vacated because of heavy contamination and illegall dumping practices. It consists of several crumbling buildings, the remains of chemical incinerators, acid vats, toxic storage tanks, ammonia dumps, and a number of other chemical dumping areas. As early as 1939, the 15 acre site has seen toxic material processing, primarily as recovery center engaged in extracting chemicals and minerals from industrial waste material. For example, scrap circuit boards were mined for precious metals by dipping them into sodium cyanide baths, and the recovered metal was then smelted into ingots. Companies that have operated at the site include Atlantic Resources, Atlantic Development, the International Recycling Company, Brodun Chemical, and Clover Chemical. Operations were suspended in the 1980's, and the site was listed on the Superfund list of the EPA. Dumping areas on site contain "tar-like piles," and ooze "unknown gelatinous substances," according to a governement report. The report continues: "Employee documentation...revealed that Atlantic Resources workers were directed to : (1) dump drums of unknown materials into the Raritan River; (2) dump drums of potassium cyanide, nitric, muriatic, and hydrochloric acid, and 30% hydrogen peroxide into the wooded area behind Horseshoe Road; and (3) strip gold and silver with nitric acid at night so that area residents and enforcement agencies would not be alerted by the toxic "ruby red fumes" that are emitted by the process."

Texaco refinery (closed)
robsv (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: robsv.
This is the site of a former Texaco refinery, which operated from 1923 until 1982. It is now a Superfund site. Immediately to the east is a Sinclair refinery.

Pollution on Ticino River
Effi (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Effi.

Cocaine Plant
skyeye (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: skyeye.
The Stepan Company plant is the only legal importer of coca leaves
in the USA. The extracted cocaine is used for pharmaceutical purposes, while the cocaine-free leaves are sold to The Coca Cola Company for flavoring beverages.
The northwest corner of the property, between the railroad and highway, is the Maywood Superfund Site, where thorium and rare earth elements had been extracted before 1956.

21st Century Texas Ranch Land
AKpilotEMT (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: AKpilotEMT.
Suburban Sprawl. Beautiful, huh? Pack 'em in like sardines, their ain't no cattle here anymore. Hopefully even vegetarians would be sad at this site.

Oil leaking ship
DonMartini (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: DonMartini.
This ship is apparently losing oil or maybe some kind of fuel. You can see smaller ships trying to drag the leaking ship out of the harbour.

Amos Fly Ash Pond
AlbinoFlea (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: AlbinoFlea.
Resting area for Coal Combustion Products (CCP) from the nearby AEP John E. Amos Coal Plant. Waters here are contaminated with Mercury and Selenium.

Dickerson Power Station
AlbinoFlea (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: AlbinoFlea.
This coal-burning plant, operated by Mirant, sits next to the Potomac river and generates 853MW. It has been named one of the 50 dirtiest power plants in the nation by the Environmental Integrity Project.
See also: www.mirant.com.

New West Hollow Impoundment
Holding 609.67 million gallons of water.

Giant toxic gas bubbles
Plastic membranes used to collect methane leaking from the landfill. Odor control.

Nuclear waste being discharged into the ocean
1983 was the year of the "Beach Discharge Incident" in which high radioactive discharges resulted in the closure of a beach. BNFL received a fine of £10,000 for this discharge. 1983 was also the year in which Yorkshire Television produced a documentary "Windscale: The Nuclear Laundry", which claimed that the low levels of radioactivity that are associated with waste streams from nuclear plants such as Sellafield did pose a non-negligible risk.
In its early days, Sellafield discharged low-level radioactive waste into the sea, using a flocculation process to remove radioactivity from liquid effluent before discharged. Metals dissolved in acidic effluents produced a metal hydroxide flocculent precipitate following the addition of ammonium hydroxide. The suspension was then transferred to settling tanks where the precipitate would settle out, and the remaining clarified liquor, or supernate, would be discharged to the sea. In 1994 the Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant (EARP) was opened. In EARP the effectiveness of the process is enhanced by the addition of reagents to remove the remaining soluble radioactive species. EARP has recently (2004) been enhanced to further reduce the quantities of Tc-99 released to the environment.

Hundreds of bomb craters at Yucca Flat, NV
emilykind_ (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: emilykind_.
Yucca Flat was the site of more than 1,000 nuclear tests starting in 1951 and ending in 1992, following the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. What remains is a huge swath of radioactive, bomb-scarred land.

Cornell-Dubilier Superfund site
tuttleberry (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: tuttleberry.
As of the 2000's, the South Plainfield Superfund site, former location of Cornell-Dubilier Electronics from 1931 to 1962, was considered one of the 3 most toxic sites in New Jersey.
During the time Cornell-Dubilier was operating at the site, the company tested and dumped transformer oils and also transformers, both of which contained PCB's, among other chemicals, including TCE.
1985: NJ Dept of Env. Protection discovers black, unnatural soil at site.
1986: Site inspection reveals PCB's in soil.
1994-1996: PCB's and other chemicals are determined to have contaminated water, sediment, and soil outside the site.
1997: Cleanup finally begins. Site is paved over. EPA cleans homes near site and treats soil near site. Many businesses near the site are relocated.
2000+: ongoing operations to clean up site continue.

Illegal Junk Yard
jbottero (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: jbottero.

Playground on a nuclear waste dump
MacArthur Field... is often packed with hundreds of young soccer players. Errant balls often fly off the field and into a ravine that borders both the field and the dog park, and which is surrounded by a chain-link fence. And down in that ravine is evidence that this idyllic playland may have a poisonous heart.
Players and curious kids access the ravine through an unsecured gate on the VA field, ignoring the faded paper warning signs. The ones that say: “THIS IS A CLOSED SITE.” What those signs don’t say is that this ravine is the barely covered core of a radioactive waste dump, which stretches underneath parts of the dog park and borders the athletic field. From 1952 to 1968, UCLA and the West L.A. Veterans Administration, now called the Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, used the land adjacent to and under the park to bury radioactive biomedical research waste.

Mokattam - city of garbage
It's a suburb of Cairo, called Garbage City. A community of mainly Coptic Christians were allowed to collect and dispose of Cairo's waste by feeding it to their pigs.

Bayou Corne sinkhole
The Bayou Corne sinkhole was created from a collapsed underground salt dome cavern operated by Texas Brine Co. The sinkhole was discovered on August 3, 2012 and 350 nearby residents were advised to evacuate. Scientists have stated that the evacuation order could last for years. Most of the affected residents have received $875 per week from Texas Brine Co.
The sinkhole is at least 750 feet deep and covers approximately 15 acres.

Mount Trashmore
Mount Trashmore Park, also known simply as Mount Trashmore, is a city park located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Mount Trashmore is an example of landfill reuse as its creation consisted of the conversion of an abandoned landfill into a park. The park spans 165 acres (0.67 km²) with hills over 60 feet (18 m) high, over 800 feet (240 m) long. Facilities include four large and 11 small picnic shelters, playground areas, a basketball court, four volleyball areas, parking, vending machines and restrooms. Mount Trashmore Park also has multiple walking trails; a Perimeter Trail that measures 1.95 miles (3.14 km), a Lake Trail that measures 1.45 miles (2.33 km), and a Mountain Trail that measures 1.30 miles (2.09 km). The Lake Trail and the Hill Trail may be combined for a trail measuring 2.75 miles (4.43 km). The park also features two lakes where fishing is permitted. Since its opening in the 1970s, it ranks as the most popular park in Virginia Beach, with attendance of over one million visitors a year.
Mount Trashmore Skate Park is located in the northeast corner of the park, where numerous professional skateboarders have made appearances, including Tony Hawk. The 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m²) skate park features an extensive street course including an above-ground, seven-foot deep bowl. The park also has a competition-sized vert ramp over 13 feet (4.0 m) tall and 40 feet (12 m) wide. On 16 August 2006, a fire damaged a significant portion of the skate park. The skate park was completely rebuilt as of March 2007.

Possibly the world's largest sewage dump.
bonjbrown (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: bonjbrown.
For almost 10 years the City of New York sent its sewage to the impoverished Sierra Blanca, Texas to be spread across the land. Much of the sewage was improperly treated. Read more about this on the website below.

Pollution near Indonesia
Kooothor (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Kooothor.
Poor little Earth...

Giant tent over a radioactive cleanup site
(This article was written in 2001 and stated the cleanup would last two years. It looks like it is still going on. At one time, it was one of the most heavily polluted bases in the nation. Cleanup started in the 1980s. As of 2005, it is still ongoing and expected to take at least another decade.)
Five stories high, two football fields long and wider than the state Capitol, the bright white polyester shell will encompass a long-abandoned grave of radioactive waste from a still-secret Cold War mission. The mammoth tent will be a compelling symbol of how big the business of environmental cleanup in the region has become.
The big top will be up for as long as it takes moon-suited workers to unearth, evaluate and ship off an estimated 1,000 corroding steel drums of waste from the 30-foot deep landfill on the west side of the decommissioned Watt Avenue base.
The job probably will take two years, according URS Corp., a global engineering company performing the $38 million cleanup for the McClellan Air Force Base Conversion Agency.
Unlike other toxic burial grounds on the 2,800-acre installation, this two-acre site is largely a mystery to environmental investigators. That's because it contains debris and chemical solutions from a top-secret analytical laboratory that operated nearly 50 years on the base without disclosing the full nature of its work or the substances involved.
"If these drums are crushed and opened, we don't know what will be released," said Ray Lidstrom, URS project manager.
Former lab workers, said Roxanne Yonn, a URS spokeswoman who interviewed several of the technicians, told cleanup officials only that they might uncover any amount of radioactive samples, solutions and tainted lab equipment at various degrees of potency.
Yonn said cleanup crews aren't taking any chances. "We're treating the whole site as radioactive," she said.
The dig will be much like an archaeological excavation. Front-loaders and excavators will gingerly remove dirt in 30-square-foot grids, one foot at a time, to avoid striking and damaging buried drums. Any barrels spotted will be removed carefully with hand shovels, and their contents will be analyzed and inventoried by a laboratory on site.
The $2 million shell of PVC polyester fabric and aluminium frames, which takes three weeks to erect, is designed to keep out wind and rain.
Workers will wear full containment suits equipped with oxygen tanks to avoid potential lethal inhalation of radioactive elements. Air in and around the shell will be monitored for contamination.
Nearly three-quarters of the project's $38 million cost goes toward the transportation and disposal of the waste, officials said. The unearthed soil and drums will be shipped to landfills in Andrews, Texas; Clive, Utah; Barnwell, S.C.; and the federal Department of Energy's Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
The estimated time and cost of the cleanup mushroomed after URS crews made an unexpected discovery in an exploratory dig of the landfill last August.
Workers found a container of glass laboratory bottles labelled "Pu," for plutonium. Highly poisonous and radioactive, the metallic element is produced in nuclear reactors and is the primary fuel in nuclear weapons.
"Everything was placed on hold," Yonn said.
Air Force officials knew from earlier surveillance that the site contained low-level radioactive waste, presumably from the radium in paint once used to illuminate cockpit gauges and gun sights.
Plutonium, however, came as a complete surprise, Air Force spokesman Lt. Robert Firman said after the discovery.
Firman said the base had no records of the element's use at the military installation, where the chief mission was aircraft maintenance.
The McClellan Central Laboratory, however, had a different mission. That operation was staffed with nuclear scientists and technicians who are still sworn to secrecy about whom they worked for and their chief duties.
The plutonium find, which was locally televised, prompted some former lab workers to inform cleanup officials that the radioactive material probably came from their operation.
"When I first saw that picture (of the bottles), I chuckled, thinking, 'Gee, I wonder whether my fingerprints are still on them,' " said Mike Chinnock of Citrus Heights, a nuclear chemistry technician at the lab from 1966 to 1970.
Chinnock and other lab workers agreed to share certain details with Air Force officials in charge of the cleanup
after getting clearance from unspecified national defense authorities.
"Some workers won't talk at all," Yonn said. Those who did talk divulged enough to convince cleanup officials that the old landfill could contain material much more radioactive than previously thought.
"It made everybody pause," she said."

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant
kkeps (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kkeps.
Listed as a Superfund site on 7/22/1987.

Route 66 State Park
darkhorse219 (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: darkhorse219.
The town of Times Beach was disincorporated, evacuated and bulldozed in the mid 1980's, after it was discovered that much of the towns roadways and parks were constructed with contaminated dirt. The contamination came from a pesticide plant, owned by Syntex Agribusiness, Inc., which sprinkled the area with dioxins as well as several other toxic chemicals. An incinerator was constructed and the toxic material was burned, along with material shipped in from 26 other contaminated sites in the country. The incineration took several years, and 265,000 tons of soil and debris was burned by the time the incineration stopped in 1997.
The site is now Route 66 State Park.

Big Pile of Something in East St. Louis
jbottero (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: jbottero.
It's East St. Louis, so who knows... I'm guessing it's residue from East St. Louis's industrial past.

Pile chimney at Windscale nuclear accident site
Following the decision taken in January 1947 for the UK to have an independent nuclear deterent, Sellafield was chosen as the location of the plutonium production plant with the initial fuel load into the Windscale Piles commencing July 1950. By July of 1952 the separation plant was being used to separate plutonium and uranium from spent fuel.
Unlike the early US reactors at Hanford, which consisted of a graphite core cooled by water, the Windscale Piles consisted of a graphite core cooled by air. Each pile contained almost 2000 tonnes of graphite, and measured over 24 feet high by 50 feet in diameter. Fuel for the reactor consisted of rods of uranium metal, approximately 1 foot long by one inch in diameter, and clad in Aluminium.
The piles were shut down following a fire in Pile 1 on 10 October 1957 which destroyed the core and released an estimated 750 terabecquerels (TBq) (20,000 curies) of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131, which is taken up in the body by the thyroid. Consequently milk and other produce from the surrounding farming areas had to be destroyed. Following the fire Pile 1 was unservicable, and Pile 2, although undamaged by the fire, was shut down as a precaution.
In the 1990s, the UKAEA started to implement plans to decommission, disassemble and clean up, both piles; the decommissioning is now partially complete.

10 million automobile tires
Millions of tires are sitting in the middle of the Sonoran Desert National Monument.
Between 3 million and 10 million of them are stacked in vast piles, lined up in rows more than 10 feet high.
The mounds of discarded rubber - believed to be the largest stockpile in the Southwest.

Reynolds Metals Superfund site
The Reynolds facility is a primary aluminum reduction plant where alumina from bauxite is reduced to aluminum.
The plant was completed in 1941 for the United States government war-time operations. Reynolds first leased the plant from the government in June 1946, and purchased it in June 1949. Currently, Reynolds owns the 80.25-acre plant area and approximately 500 surrounding acres. The aluminum reduction plant has been shut down since November 1991 for economic reasons. Currently, there are approximately 100 workers for maintenance, security, administration, and casting ingots from molten aluminum transported to the plant from the Reynolds reduction plant in Longview, Washington.
Large quantities of wastes were produced at the Reynolds plant during the production of aluminum. Twenty-one separate waste streams were identified by Reynolds in response to an EPA information request letter. Major hazardous substances of concern include polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), aluminum and other metals associated with bauxite, cyanide, fluoride, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from electrical equipment.

Ducktown desert
A sulfuric acid and copper producing district, in rural southeastern Tennessee, where around 30,000 acres of natural vegetation was completely denuded off the rolling hills by the toxic sulfur dioxide fumes generated by the industry. As a result, around five feet of surface soil was lost to erosion, and the area became, as described by the geographer Grady Clay, "a fantastic expanse of raw red-and-orange terrain consisting largely of ruts, ravines, washes, and exposed subsoils". The area, industrialized since the late 1800's, has been undergoing revegitation since the 1970's, though a 500 acre exemplary plot of "desert" remains as part of the display at the Ducktown Museum. We drove through there when I was a child and even as unaware of environmental issues as a child is I remember thinking that something had gone seriously awry.

Oil spill near Qatar in the Persian Gulf
Veritas (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Veritas.

Weldon Spring toxic cleanup containment cell
A disposal facility, or cell, is under construction in the area formerly occupied by the chemical plant production buildings. The cell will provide long-term containment and management of the waste materials. It will cover about 45 acres in an area that has been tested to confirm its geological suitability for this use. At its apex the cell will be approximately 75 feet high, and it will contain approximately 1.48 million cubic yards of contaminated material.
The cell will consist of four primary systems: the base liner with leachate collection and removal systems, the contaminated wastes, the clean-fill dike, and the cover systems.

Oil Slick at Pearl Harbor
voldude123 (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: voldude123.
This oil spill is probably from oil leaking from a ship or an aircraft at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The USS Arizona leaks about a quart of oil a day, and a large environmental disaster in the future is feared. As the hull weakens from the pressure and the corrosive nature of salt water, a major realease of oil from the ship could cause the deaths of thousands of marine life, and threaten the extremely endangered population of Hawaiian Monk Seals. The US Navy is researching non-intrusive ways to remove the oil.

Twin Cities Ordnance Plant
Located near Minneapolis, MN it was another of the first wave ordnance plants, and was operated by Federal Cartridge Co. Twin Cities operated from 1941 to 1945, from 1951 to 1957, and again from 1966 to 1975. One of the largest volume producers, Twin Cities made caliber 30, caliber 45, caliber 50, caliber 50 spotter-tracer, 7.62mm and 5.56mm ammunition.

Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail and Museum
It's a seven-story high tomb of radioactive waste. The mountainous site covers 45 acres and stores 1.5 million cubic yards of material. And it's there for you to explore.
The federal government says radiation levels are low enough for people to visit the mountain of nuclear weapons waste it has built and covered in St. Charles County. A building with explanatory exhibits was opened Aug 5, 2002.

Supertanker Torrey Canyon oil spill lake
Dania (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Dania.
The Torrey Canyon was a supertanker capable of carrying a cargo of 120,000 tons of crude oil, which was shipwrecked off the western coast of Cornwall, England in March 1967, causing an environmental disaster. At that time, the tanker was the largest vessel ever to be wrecked.
Much of the oil hit the coasts of the island Guernsey.
Some of the oil from the ship was dumped in a quarry on the Chouet headland, on Guernsey in the Channel Islands, and is still there today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrey_Canyon_oil_spill

Cheju Island
Kooothor (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Kooothor.
Jeju Island is a volcanic island, dominated by Halla-san (Halla Mountain): a volcano 1950 metres high and the highest mountain in South Korea

Red Mud Dam
"Red mud" - bauxite refinery residues associated with the Boyne Smelter aluminum processing plant just to the NE.

Puente Hills Landfill
jbottero (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: jbottero.
Puente Hills Landfill is the largest landfill in the United States, rising 500 feet high and covering 700 acres. Though the landfill closed to new garbage in 2013, it produces 30,000 cubic feet per minute of landfill gas which is funneled to the Puente Hills Gas-to-Energy Facility, generating more than 40 megawatts of electricity per day.

Ordot Landfill
romulusnr (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: romulusnr.
Ordot Landfill was a Japanese WWII supply depot, and then a US Navy landfill. The landfill's overflowing stock of toxic chemicals made it a Superfund hazardous cleanup site.

Zelazny Most
Hinkkanen (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Hinkkanen.
The Zelazny Most is depository of wastes from copper-ore processing. It iis the largest mineral waste repository in Europe. The construction of Żelazny Most began in 1974 and it was in full operation three years later.

Shpack Landfill
Shpack Landfill is a hazardous and radioactive "superfund" waste site in Norton, Massachusetts. Between 1946 and 1965 it accepted all types of waste including low-level radioactive industrial wastes consisting of uranium and radium from the Attleboro-based Metals & Controls Inc. who manufactured radium tipped, luminous, aircraft switches and circuit breakers. The company experienced a number of mergers, passing through the hands of Texas Instruments, and is now known as Sensata.

Former uranium ore open-cast mining
mstoess (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: mstoess.
1946 - 1990 the WISMUT company, a german-soviet venture, prospected for uranium ore needed in the soviet nuclear industry at several sites in Thuringia and Saxony. The miners took high health risks. Approx. 5.000 - 15.000 men died of miners lung diseases and radiation induced cancers in the latter years. Surface devastations and rock heaps remain unresolved problems to this day.

Reef Coral Mine
mgterp (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: mgterp.
This fan shaped man-made formation is a reef coral mining operation. This is off the mangrove area off the Ohwa coast on Pohnpei. The coral is mined to supply infill for road-beds and other construction projects. There are alternative natural resources, like rock. Fishing is on the decline off these reefs in the Pohnpei atol and this fragile fishing eco-system is in jeopardy.

OK Tedi Mine
KRL (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: KRL.
Open pit Copper and Gold.
Past environmental damage discussed in attached link:
http://www.atimes.com/oceania/AH13Ah01.html
Evidence visible just to south of mine; pink sediments visible in river drainage.

ecological disaster
oczeq (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: oczeq.
The effect of heavy industry in Upper Silesia. "Kłodnica" river falls into "Dzierżno duże" lake

Toxic cleanup using bioventing and sparging
At former Mather Air Force Base.
Air sparging is an in situ technology in which air is injected through a contaminated aquifer. Injected air traverses horizontally and vertically in channels through the soil column, creating an underground stripper that removes contaminants by volatilization. This injected air helps to flush (bubble) the contaminants up into the unsaturated zone where a vapor extraction system is usually implemented in conjunction with air sparging to remove the generated vapor phase contamination. This technology is designed to operate at high flow rates to maintain increased contact between ground water and soil and strip more ground water by sparging. [amiadini.com]
Bioventing is an in situ remediation technology that uses indigenous microorganisms to biodegrade organic constituents adsorbed to soils in the unsaturated zone. Soils in the capillary fringe and the saturated zone are not affected. In bioventing, the activity of the indigenous bacteria is enhanced by inducing air (or oxygen) flow into the unsaturated zone (using extraction or injection wells) and, if necessary, by adding nutrients.
When extraction wells are used for bioventing, the process is similar to soil vapor extraction (SVE). However, while SVE removes constituents primarily through volatilization, bioventing systems promote biodegradation of constituents and minimize volatilization (generally by using lower air flow rates than for SVE). In practice, some degree of volatilization and biodegradation occurs when either SVE or bioventing is used. [EPA]

Limestone mine in Piechcin
piotr_k (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: piotr_k.
Kopalnia "Kujawy" (Kuyavia Mine) in Piechcin, the largest limestone mine in Poland.

Gruinard Island
Gruinard Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Ghruinneard) is a small, oval-shaped Scottish island approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) long by 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) wide, located in Gruinard Bay, about halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. The island was made dangerous for all mammals by experiments with the anthrax bacterium, until it was decontaminated in the late 20th century.

Closed landfill ("dump") ownd by LRI

Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility
The Umatilla Chemical Depot is one of eight Army installations in the U.S. that currently store chemical weapons. The chemical weapons stored at the depot consist of various munitions and ton containers, containing GB or VX nerve agents or HD blister agent. The Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is designed for the sole purpose of destroying the chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. The facility was completed in 2001.

Two sinking fishing boats and an oil slick

Niederaussem Power Station
bubaonline (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: bubaonline.
The power plant's capacity
of 3,900 megawatt (MW) is distributed across
nine units, the largest and most modern being
the lignite-fired power station with optimized
plant engineering (BoA). With its efficiency
of 43.2 %, it has chalked up a new all-time
high for power generation from lignite.
(Source
Niederaussem Power Station is No. 10 of Europe's Dirty 30 (worst climate polluting) power stations.

New River Terminus
The New River has been called the most polluted river in the country by a number of environmental organizations. It flows out of Mexicali, Mexico, laden with that city's sewage, then is charged with agricultural chemicals and wastes, as it becomes the primary drainage channel for the intensively industrialized agriculture of the Imperial Valley. The channelized terminus of the river is at the south end of the Salton Sea.

Oil spill at West Cote Blanche Bay (WCBB) Oil and Gas Field
dbb4000 (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: dbb4000.
Looks like an oil spill.

Recently dumped, still glowing blast furnace slag
Found by Felippo in the GE Forums.
View this in GE or change the z value down to z=21 to really get a good look at this.
See the discussion and pictures in the link above too.

EPA to buy Kansas town
"The Wichita Eagle reports that Congress has approved funds to relocate the population of the southeast Kansas town of Treece, which is plagued with lead, zinc and other chemical contamination left by a century of mining. Estimates say it will cost about $3 million to $3.5 million to buy out the town, which is surrounded by huge piles of mining waste called 'chat' and dotted with uncapped shafts and cave-ins filled with brackish, polluted water. 'It's been a long, dusty, chat-covered road, but for the citizens of Treece, finally, help will be on the way,' said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas who has been pushing for a buyout of Treece for two years. The population of Treece has dwindled to about 100 people, almost all of whom want to move but say they can't because the pollution and an ongoing EPA cleanup project makes it impossible to sell a house. The EPA has already bought out the neighboring town of Picher, Oklahoma, stripping Treece of quick access to jobs, shopping, recreation and services, including fire protection and cable TV. Both cities were once prosperous mining communities but the ore ran out and the mines were abandoned by the early 1970s. Of 16 children tested for lead levels in Treece, two had levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood and one had a level of more than 10, the threshold for lead poisoning."

It's not a sewage lagoon, it's a feature
charlene (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: charlene.
At least with the prevailing west wind, these homeowners are usually upwind from this lovely amenity.

Tuba City former uranium mill
robsv (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: robsv.
A uranium mill was built on this site in 1955 by Rare Metals Corporation of America. It provided uranium to the US government until its closure in 1966. The site was found to be contaminated, and was remediated as part of the UMTRA (Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act) program. The site covers 145 acres, and the former location of the mill and tailings pile is covered by a huge mound of clay soil, granular material, and rock.

Sparging (underground pollution removal)
In chemistry, sparging is a technique which involves bubbling a chemically inert gas, such as nitrogen, argon, or helium, through a liquid. This can be used to remove dissolved gases (e.g. oxygen) from the liquid.
Solvents used in HPLC are often sparged with helium gas.
In chemical engineering, sparging can also be a method to remove low-boiling liquids from a solution. The low-boiling liquids tend to evaporate most quickly, hence it is removed from the bulk solution more quickly than the other components. It is an alternative to distillation, and it does not require heat.
This technique is also used in environmental chemistry to extract the oil contaminants from subsoil water and the ground.

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
romulusnr (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: romulusnr.
U.S.'s major storage bunker for military nuclear waste. A project is underway to find ways to inform the next 10,000 years of humanity to keep away from it.

Smoke Outside Fallujha
pdunn (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: pdunn.
I imagine this has something to do with oil. Follow any of the roads radiating from the smoke, and you'll encounter a number of identical sites, each spouting smoke.

Firing up the boilers off Spain
Pdunn (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Pdunn.
In most the other views, the ship is at anchor. This one appears to catch her just as she's about to set sail.

Smith Ranch Uranium Production Facility Tailing Ponds

Gold King Mine - Spill
KRL (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: KRL.
The US Environmental Protection Agency's contractors were working in the historic Gold King/ Red & Bonita Mines causing a 3 million gallon spill of contaminated waste-water.
Links below have photos & maps; along with reports critical of the EPA's handling of the event.
The spill was possibly caused by the release of an ice plug.

Quarry/Landfill in Chiaiano
giove (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: giove.
Abandoned quarry now used as landfill to solve the problem of dumps of the last summer in Naples. The site is now a military zone

Aznalcollar Mine - Donana disaster site
hhgygy (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: hhgygy.

Oil Seep to Ocean
KRL (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: KRL.
Oil seepage to Ocean near Refinery.

Oil spill
At a oil transfer pier.

Giant smoke stack and plume

Louisville Gas & Electric Caught Dumping Coal Ash into Ohio River
jdubble07 (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: jdubble07.
With the use of hidden cameras and satellite imagery, Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E) has been caught dumping coal ash, a toxic byproduct of energy production including arsenic and mercury, into the Ohio River. LG&E can be fined up to $68M for dumping.

Lipari Landfill Superfund Site
kkeps (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kkeps.
The EPA ranks this as the worst toxic dump in the U.S. Listed on 9/8/1983.

Major environmental disaster site
hhgygy (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: hhgygy.
On 04.10.2010. the dam of the red sludge storage pond of the Ajka Bauxite Works broke and the sludge flooded the nearby village of Kolontár and then headed towards the neighbouring town of Devecser. So far one person has been found dead, three are missing, there are 60 injured of which 8 to 10 are serious.

Toyon Canyon Landfill
The Toyon Canyon Landfill was a controversial landfill wholly within Los Angeles' Griffith Park. Filling began in 1957 and ended in 1985. Landfill gas is collected from the waste and used for power generation.

Excessive Trash In Front Of A Vacant House
Touringfmhome (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Touringfmhome.

Coal Fly Ash Spill (December 22, 2008)
Dam Breach of wet Fly Ash from Coal Fired Power Plant covers 300 acres, several homes and into the adjacent river. Link below to more details and better resolution Landsat Image.

Pond Scum
daggerwell (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: daggerwell.

Rolling Knolls Landfill Superfund Site
kkeps (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: kkeps.

Uranium Disposal Cell
skyeye (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: skyeye.
A disposal mound for radioactive tailings, located at the site of a former uranium mill.

Black Vultures at a garbage dump in West Palm Beach
adrbr (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: adrbr.

Hinkley Pacific Gas & Electric
chixixoplix (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: chixixoplix.
The location that brought on a major lawsuit, making Erin Brokovich famous.

Oil slick

Old Tires
gamma (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: gamma.

Laurel Park Incorporated Superfund Site

Former Oil Tank Field
Tyco (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: Tyco.
What Exxon leaves behind.

Acerra waste incineration
giove (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: giove.
Opening in march 2009, but not in function

Half the world's supply of palladium
nico (VirtualGlobetrotting)
By: nico.
Serious pollution concerns, some of the pictures on Google Earth show some of the rather crude and outdated practices concerning this mine. Also most of Russia nickel is produced here.
"...Nickel ore is smelted on site at Norilsk. The smelting is directly responsible for severe pollution, generally acid rain and smog. By some estimates, 1 percent of the entire global emissions of sulfur dioxide comes from this one city. Heavy metal pollution near Norilsk is so severe that mining the surface soil is now economically feasible, as a result of acquiring high concentrations of platinum and palladium through pollution."

Columbia Ridge Landfill
Columbia Ridge Landfill receives garbage from Portland, Seattle, and other cities in the Pacific Northwest.