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Despite widespread indifference, some progress in waste management is beginning to emerge. Both California and Louisiana, among the leaders in policing efforts, now have "toxic-material task forces." Under the direction of the state police, the Louisiana unit has full jurisdiction over transportation of hazardous goods in the state, and frequently stops careless truckers of dangerous materials to hand out fines. A toxic-waste "strike force," serving the county of Los Angeles for the past two years, boasts that it has sent twelve high-ranking officials from various companies to prison for illegally dumping hazardous waste. The message, says Barry Groveman, special assistant to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, "is that hazardous-waste dumping is a violent crime against the community."
There is a limit, of course, to how much can be done to detoxify contaminated landfill or to turn a freshly percolating mass of lethal chemicals into the equivalent of whole-wheat flour. That limit is money. In the U.S. alone, the EPA estimates, it would take at least ten years to clean up the 2,200 most dangerous waste sites and require up to ten times the $1.6 billion Congress allocated for the job in 1980.
In a world where rapid economic development is critical to the survival of the poorest, painstaking environmental concerns and flawless safeguards against disaster often seem like impossible or impractical luxuries. Lurching sometimes, stumbling at others, technology and its many implications move forward. "As a society," says Michael Brown, author of Laying Waste, a study of toxic chemicals in America, "we have to accept reasonable risks in order to reap reasonable benefits." Knowing the benefits is easy. The hard part is achieving acceptable odds on the risks. -By Natalie Angler. Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington and Peter Stoler/New York, with other bureaus