The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
It has been a distressing couple of weeks in environmental news.
Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency once again proved that neither “environmental” nor “protection” is part of its mission by killing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. According to the EPA’s own projections, the replacement policy will annually lead to 1,400 additional premature deaths and 48,000 additional cases of asthma because of increased air pollution.
And Canada reapproved a Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which will increase oil tanker traffic in the waters between Washington and British Columbia. Gov. Jay Inslee called the plan “alarming and deeply disturbing.”
And Greenland saw an estimated 2 billion tons of ice melt in one day — enough to fill the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to a height eight times that of the Washington Monument.
But, hey, as long as we’re propping up a dying coal industry and as long as we are boosting oil industry profits, those are small prices to pay. Right?
So, as we lament the desecration of the planet, it is understandable that we search for any silver lining. For any bit of hope. For any example of common sense and progress when it comes to environmental issues.
And we find a little bit of solace in a story out of Tacoma, where the city is preparing to unveil Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park. The 40-acre project is a remarkable story of reclamation that will serve as a reminder of our indifference toward the environment.
The park is on the site of a former Asarco copper smelter on Tacoma’s waterfront. Not only was it a smelter, but the company would simply dump kettles of industrial waste, still glowing, into Puget Sound. The smelter shut down three decades ago, but it left behind a peninsula of waste material tainted with lead and arsenic.
This, apparently, is when America was great.
Now, after years of cleanup and working to cover the area with protective underlayment and 400,000 cubic yards of dirt, the city has created a park. Tacoma Weekly reports that one park commissioner said: “Dune Peninsula is so serene, so beautiful, and so fun that being there feels like an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life.” Plus, there are a series of slides down a 60-foot slope. Who doesn’t like slides?
All of which points out how urban areas throughout the country have evolved. How cities have reclaimed waterfronts for public use. How we finally recognized that creating things such as slag peninsulas probably are not healthy for the people or the environment.
In Tacoma, they have turned a Superfund site into a park.
In Seattle a couple years ago, they opened a park on the site of a former gasification plant, providing stunning views of Lake Union and the city’s skyline.
And in Vancouver, of course, there is the waterfront development on the site of a former paper mill. As The Columbian reported last year about the opening of a park and pier as part of the project, “The last time the public could set foot there was 113 years ago.”
Which kind of summarizes the entire issue. For about a century, Americans thought nothing of despoiling the environment for economic gain. It helped create the strongest economy in the world, but it also brought us the 1966 New York City Smog (look up the pictures) and the Love Canal disaster and the lead contamination of Picher, Okla., which is now a ghost town.
It also brought us the asbestos contamination of Libby, Mont., and the coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn., and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which was created as much by poor farming practices as by circumstance.
In other words, America in a lot of ways wasn’t all that great in the past. There are countless examples in which ignoring environmental concerns had disastrous consequences, and there are numerous reasons to lament a rollback of the Clean Power Plan and other recent developments.
But at least there is a cool new park in Tacoma.
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