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L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

latimes.com

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Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#21

Post by faitswulff »

1propionyl wrote: post #17
faitswulff wrote: post #9

> “We found actual photos of the workers at 2 in the morning dumping — not only dumping barrels off of the barges in the middle of the Santa Monica Basin,” he said, “but before they would dump the barrels, they would take a big ax or hatchet to them, and cut them open on purpose so they would sink.” Incredible.

See? This is why we don't need environmental regulations. The market will regulate itself if externalities are properly priced in! (Just pay no mind to how those externalities might be systematically priced and how penalties might be retroactively enforced. If you do you're a freedom-hating socialist!)

> A pilot experiment more than a decade ago to bury the DDT [at the Palos Verdes superfund site] under a thick cap of clean sand showed mixed results. Then sampling in 2009 suggested that most of the DDT had mysteriously vanished — prompting a burst of headlines and more internal paralysis. The longtime project manager unexpectedly retired, and many of the scientists who had dedicated decades of their careers to the chemical have also either retired or moved on.

The fact that DDT outlasted the scientists' careers is another strike (among many) against untrammeled libertarian free market thinking.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#22

Post by sokoloff »

meed2000 wrote: post #15
sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?

Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?

No, I do not. If my grandfather left my father $X, my father left me $Y, at the very most the maximum would have to be the lesser of $X and $Y, decremented by the full cost of answering the lawsuit.

This is problematic from a variety of practical angles, though, not just mathematical ones. It seems like something the forensic accounting lobby would salivate over.

Should I be forced to defend a lawsuit because my great^6 grandfather owned slaves? (As far as I know, none did.) That’s more abhorrent than legally dumping chemicals that today’s common sense says should have been done differently.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#23

Post by 1propionyl »

faitswulff wrote: post #21
1propionyl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See? This is why we don't need environmental regulations. The market will regulate itself if externalities are properly priced in! (Just pay no mind to how those externalities might be systematically priced and how penalties might be retroactively enforced. If you do you're a freedom-hating socialist!)

> A pilot experiment more than a decade ago to bury the DDT [at the Palos Verdes superfund site] under a thick cap of clean sand showed mixed results. Then sampling in 2009 suggested that most of the DDT had mysteriously vanished — prompting a burst of headlines and more internal paralysis. The longtime project manager unexpectedly retired, and many of the scientists who had dedicated decades of their careers to the…

Ah, so the front fell off. In that case the DDT was just transported outside of the environment. There's nothing there, except water, and fish, and birds.

(In case it isn't clear to anyone, this is heavy sarcasm and a reference to a well known satirical skit.)

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#24

Post by wombatmobile »

I came to this story after several days immersed in reading the ancient history of peoples who migrated east across the Pacific 5,000 years ago to form the island nations that are dotted over thousands of square miles of ocean to the west of California.

What strikes me as strange is that Californians, or Americans, don't see themselves as one nation of people with one overriding interest - to keep their ecosystem pure and habitable so their people can thrive and prosper.

I know that's naive. In America individuals are free to pursue any activity that is permitted by law. Prosperity is measured in dollars, and breaches of the law require a lot of dollars to be exposed and rectified. The national purpose works differently to other countries, particularly smaller nations in which the people are more in contact with nature every day.

Still, I can't help but wonder whether most Americans would be happier if things worked differently, and catastrophes like the DDT dump were able to be rectified in a unified national effort. I'm not sure why that doesn't happen, or what makes it so unlikely.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#25

Post by darkcha0s »

meed2000 wrote: post #15
sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?

Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?

Yes let us just start collective punishment, because we have such a justice boner. Jesus christ, sometimes HN has some wild opinions.

Just to be absolutely clear -- it's not reasonable, and what you're suggesting is literally how North Korea handles crime.

"Oh but you know here it's different" -- you're setting a precedent which, if allowed, would mean your family members could face jail time for crimes YOU commit.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#26

Post by jameshart »

LittlePeter wrote: post #18

I was waiting for the DDT acronym to be explained, but no. IMHO no matter how obvious an acronym may be, it should be explained, something like "DDT (D... D... T...) is highly dangerous". Apparently: "Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochlorine." edit: added explanation

It’s in paragraph 12, about 1/7 of the way in, after the scene setting opening bit about the barrels.

> The world today wrestles with microplastics, bisphenol A (BPA), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other toxics so unnatural they don’t seem to ever go away. But DDT — the all-but-indestructible compound dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which first stunned and jolted the public into environmental action — persists as an unsolved and largely forgotten problem.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#27

Post by gattilorenz »

LittlePeter wrote: post #18

I was waiting for the DDT acronym to be explained, but no. IMHO no matter how obvious an acronym may be, it should be explained, something like "DDT (D... D... T...) is highly dangerous". Apparently: "Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochlorine." edit: added explanation

To be honest, DDT is like "IBM". It might mean "International Business Machines", but many people wouldn't immediately recognize it unless the acronym is used (while the opposite is true: if you know what the acronym stands for, you usually know the acronym as well).

And I'm sure Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane wouldn't add much for most people that read a newspaper :)

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#28

Post by CJefferson »

darkcha0s wrote: post #25
meed2000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?

Yes let us just start collective punishment, because we have such a justice boner. Jesus christ, sometimes HN has some wild opinions. Just to be absolutely clear -- it's not reasonable, and what you're suggesting is literally how North Korea handles crime. "Oh but you know here it's different" -- you're setting a precedent which, if allowed, would mean your family members could face jail time for crimes YOU commit.

No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion), someone shouldn't get to inherit millions of dollars just because their grandfather committed some terrible crime -- inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#29

Post by pjc50 »

iBotPeaches wrote: post #4

Well that was a sad article to read on a Monday morning. If this is what we've just scratched the surface on - I'm nervous to what we don't know in terms of ocean dumping.

Greenpeace did a lot of work in the 80s and 90s against the dumping of nuclear waste, including direct action against the ships doing the dumping. This led to the London Dumping Convention.

More recently, see e.g. Trafigura https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10735255 (and what they've tried to hide with libel lawsuits)

The WW2 stuff is bad but seems now to be inert, although occasionally someone finds a phosphorous shell on a beach in Scotland. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/a-dangerous-guide-to-bea...

More seriously, there is the SS Richard Montgomery, not dumped but sank during the war, carrying a thousand tons of explosives ... right next to London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

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