Onondaga Lake

It has been called the most polluted lake in the nation. Over a 100-year period, many industries around the Syracuse area have dumped untreated wastewater, industrial contaminants, and other environmentally harmful chemicals into the water of a once beautiful lake. Onondaga Lake is a relatively small lake encompassing 4.6 square miles, which means it does not take much to ruin the ecology of the water and destroy the homes of the animals that live in and around it.

In 1884, Ernest Solvay opened a company called the Solvay Process Company, which produced soda ash, an important component in the production of glass, detergents, and paper (Lander 64). This company saw the lake as the perfect location to dump hot wastewater and untreated waste, which ultimately increased the water temperature and increased the amount of phosphorous in the lake. This was the starting point for the destruction and killing of historical Onondaga Lake.

The lake not only has to cope with industrial waste and pollution in its waters, but municipal wastewater discharges as well. “Onondaga Lake receives more of its water on a percentage basis as domestic effluent than any other lake in the United States,” says Steve Effler, the director of research for the Upstate Freshwater Institute (Lander 69). The Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant (METRO) has discharged untreated wastewater directly into the lake since the 1920’s. Metro has contributed mainly to the rise of phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the water, which in turn has made the level of rapidly growing algae, which feed on nutrients, to form on the surface. This causes the lake to have a very depleted oxygen level (Lander 69). Low oxygen level means less fish and less plankton in the water, creating a dead ecology.

Since that time many improvements have been made in bringing Onondaga back to life. The project to cover the lake’s bottom with rubber and metal caps is an example, which is expected to keep the mercury and other waste materials from seeping out to surrounding areas and to protect the lake’s organisms from unacceptable levels of contaminants (Landers 67). The Onondaga County, Department of Environmental Conservation, and Honeywell International (a company who was partly responsible for the pollution) have worked together on this project and are working to cover the overflows of waste materials from running into the lake. These upgrades and improvements of the lake’s water and the surrounding industries like Metro is projected to cost about one billion dollars (Landers 66 and 70), some paid by the Superfund program and the Honeywell International Corporation, but mostly by the citizens of the United States.

Who is to pay for the continuation of these projects? Should it be the government because of their irresponsibility to see the dangers of dumping hazardous waste, and not stopping, into bodies of water like Onondaga Lake or should it be the polluters who caused this whole mess in the first place? I think the polluters should pay a huge sum for the damage they caused, but many of the industries and companies who caused these problems are either bankrupt or out of business (Knickerbocker 2). The companies that are left and still operate today, like Honeywell Industries, should and are paying for the damages that they are responsible for causing. I think industries should have known better than to dump waste into a natural site where animals and humans alike live and play. If they were not lazy to decontaminate the waste before dumping it into the lake or if they did not dump at all then this problem would not be as a big of an issue today.

Government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency should provide more money to projects and programs like the Superfund because of the fact that we need to clean and maintain our fragile ecosystem. Without it we would be living in an industrial nightmare composed of radioactive lakes and disease-infested lands. Though the EPA has provided a good amount of money into the clean-up project of Onondaga Lake, it will all be for nothing if Congress does not renew the Superfund program. Superfund was once funded by excise taxes on the oil and chemical industries (Knickerbocker 2), but these funds are vastly depleted and may run out anytime soon. This means that the individual taxpayer has to take the job of paying. “We’ve known for a long time that the Superfund trust fund was running out, but unfortunately the president and Congress have continually failed to reinstate Superfund’s “polluter pays” fees, leaving regular taxpayers to foot the bill” (Knickerbocker 2).

The President and Congress have since 1995 continually failed to reinstate Superfund’s “polluter pay” fee, which means more money from American citizens, which also means unhappy people. I think the reason Congress and the president have not reinstated the fee is because they are either scared or they support the oil and gas industry. George W. Bush, being an oil and gas prodigy himself, has always supported oil drilling and is not about to reinstate a fee on companies that support him and his family. Our vice president was also and still is connected to the oil industry. He was the CEO of energy giant Halliburton before becoming our vice president and is also a big supporter of oil drilling. Our government is made up of a bunch of oil “junkies” and this is the main reason they are not reinstating the fee for Superfund. In my opinion, they just do not give a damn about the environment.

The best solution to this problem is for industries, government, and citizens alike to contribute to the funding of clean-ups of hazardous wastelands. Of course the polluters should pay the brunt of the costs but government and citizens can help out to fix this dilemma because it affects all of us. Citizens are partially to blame for the pollution and contamination as well as the government and industries because the citizens are the consumers of the industries products. Unfortunately, the by-product of making products like soda ash and other things creates waste and other hazardous chemicals. It is the government’s wrong doing for not stopping the various industries from dumping where they did because they are supposed to impose laws that prevent these kinds of activities from happening. With all this said, everyone is responsible for the contamination of geographical features like Onondaga Lake because of the “human waste making cycle.” Government does nothing, industries dump because of it, and consumers consume the products that created the waste in the first place.

The industries should have found an alternate way of getting rid of the waste or at least take the time to decontaminate it before dumping it. Being human, we have made many mistakes and have been too lazy, greedy (especially the government) and foolish for our own good. Of course being human means learning from our past mistakes so I’m confident in our ability to clean up our act and start treating the environment the way it should be treated. I’m not saying that the government will change its views on this subject but instead the people will start making their voices heard and make the government do what it needs to do. We need to protect our fragile ecosystem and clean up the parts that we dirtied up even if it means billions or trillions or zillions of dollars.