Environmental Issues
For much of the 20th century a large smelting facility was operated by ASARCO on the shore of Commencement Bay near Point Defiance. The town of Ruston surrounds the former ASARCO plant. Tailing waste was dumped into the bay, eventually forming a long peninsula. Today it is a project area within the Commencement Bay Superfund site.
The Thea Foss Waterway, an arm of Commencement Bay near downtown Tacoma, was declared a Superfund site in 1983. In 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the St. Paul Waterway, once among the most contaminated parts of Commencement Bay, had been the first marine Superfund site in the nation to be cleansed of pollution.
Read more about this topic: Commencement Bay
Famous quotes containing the word issues:
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)