VIEWPOINTS
My wife and I got on a National Parks kick a few years back now. There are 63 national parks, and between us we have visited 31. We are about to embark on the 32nd, Acadia National Park.
Hiking along, I am always taken by the amazing beauty of the Americas. But like many travelers; the darker, more cynical side of my nature started to emerge over time, and noticed a trend. This came with the realization that many National Parks were created after they had already been contaminated or damaged by industry and business.
We tend to think of parks as being preservations of uncorrupted landscape. But the awful truth is that so many of our favorite spots are only declared to be parks after a lot of the damage has been done, or to protect the public from potential hazardous consequences.
I call it the “bankruptcy theory of conservation.” The way America approaches natural conservation is that it does not become a priority until we have sucked every dollar we can out of the region.
Then we see conservation and protection of the land as vital because tourism is the only way we can make any money out of the land now.
I first began to realize this during our visit to Death Valley.
Having grown up in the deserts of El Paso and Southern New Mexico, I was not expecting to be impressed by more desert. But Death Valley is truly impressive. You really should see it if you have a chance.
Nobody thought of making it a scenic destination until the Pacific Borax Company and other mining operations had taken everything of economic value out of the ground.
Borax mining began in the 1880s. This was followed by waves of mining and processing gold and other valuable minerals. They left behind contamination of such toxic levels that there are still areas of the parks the public is not allowed to visit.
These mining operations used cyanide, mercury, arsenic and lead to process ores. There are large piles of mining waste still on the site. The federal government is in the long process of cleaning up this Superfund site. Death Valley became a National Monument in 1933, but did not become a national park until 1994. Mining operations continued in the park until 2005.
Superfund Sites
Superfund is a word that only lawyers and environmental advocates are familiar with. It is short hand for a site that is so contaminated the federal government takes over to clean up. These sites came into being as a result of the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) First enacted in 1980, its purpose is to cleanup inactive hazardous waste sites and determine the liability for cleanup costs on arrangers and transporters of hazardous substances and on current and former owners of facilities where hazardous substances were disposed.
This law is sometimes called the Superfund. It gives the President authority to designate sites to clean up which are known as Superfund Sites.
Superfund Sites and National Parks
You already know about Death Valley. While there is no definitive list of National Parks that conatin Superfund sites within their park boundaries, besides Death Valley there are a few that stand out.
Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio)
When acquired NPS acquired this property in the 1980s, it knew the site contained an old unregulated scrap yard. Only later did it realize it had been used as a toxic waste dump. The Krejci Dump Site, was considered one of the most toxic superfund sites in the entire National Park system. Its clean up was complete in 2020 and cost $50 Million.
Yosemite National Park (California)
Yosemite National Park is home to the El Capitan Former Waste Disposal Remediation Superfund site. The site was used for waste disposal from 1905 to 1933.
According to the National Park Service, the types of debris likely originated from the hotels and camps active in the Yosemite Valley at the time. Waste debris includes domestic trash, glass, ceramics, automotive machinery and related wastes, paint cans, 55-gallon drums, and a layer of burned material likely resulting from regular on-site burning.”
Neighbors of Superfund Sites
While not all National Parks contain Superfund sites within the park boundaries, they are often right next to them. Here are a few examples.
Indiana Dunes National Park (Indiana)
Efforts to protect what the dunes on the southern shore of Lake Michigan began in the late 1880s, but were soon eclipsed by the rapid industrialization of the region. U.S. Steel bulldozed much of dunes in 1905 to build its Gary Works Mill. Ball Brothers, and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company and other industrial giants joined in.
An industrial complex dominated the shoreline from Chicago through Gary and north along the eastern shoreline.
The area was first protected by a state park and later received a National Lakeshore in 1966. It did not become a National Park until 2019
Although not superfund site, it is impacted by the Town of Pines Groundwater Plume Superfund Site which cost close to $12 Million to clean up. The park also suffers continually from industrial contamination from local steel mills as does much of the southern coast of Lake Michigan.
Channel Islands National Park (California)
Channel Islands became a National Park in 1980. While the park itself is not a Superfund site, the surrounding waters of the Pacific coast are.
The Montrose Chemical Corporation manufactured the infamous DDT nearby from 1947 to 1982. The plant site itself is a Superfund Site in California. But the area near the Channel Islands and Catalina Island was used as a dump for barrels of DDT and other chemical waste sludge. It also is a Superfund site.
Joshua Tree National Park (California)
Joshua Tree itself is not on the superfund list, but it has been a high priority for the park service. The park holds 120 abandoned mines. Twenty-one are abandoned mill sites where gold was processed and contain hazardous waste. NPS has been working on cleaning up these sites and making them safe.
Just to the North of the park is the Twenty Nine Palms Marine Corps Ground Combat Center which is a superfund site. The contamination at that site is to clean up hazardous materials and waste from military operations and lead contamination.
Badlands National Park (North Dakota)
Located adjacent to the park is the Badlands Bombing Range Superfund Site located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was used as a bombing range during World War II. In 1968 much of the land was returned to the Lakota Nation or became part of Badlands National Park. Badlands became a National Park in 1978.
Shenandoah National Park (Virginia)
When we think of Shenandoah we think of the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But the park neighbors the 440 acres Avtex Fiber Superfund site in Port Royal Virginia. It had a long history of industrial pollution, including release of PCBs and asbestos polluting the Shenandoah River and thus the National Park which sits down stream. In this case, the park came first, created in 1936. The plant opened in 1940 and was closed in 1986.
Texas National Parks
None of Texas National Parks contain superfund sites within park boundaries, but, like many others across the nation, that does not mean they were pristine lands set aside before we sought to exploit them for profit.
Big Bend National Park
Big Bend National Park suffered from overgrazing, and contamination from mining activity, that altered the desert landscape before it became a National Park in 1944. In fact, protection of the desert from overgrazing was a primary reason the park was created.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Overgrazing and overuse of the land was also one of the reasons people had been working to preserve the Guadalupe Mountains as a National Park as far back as the 1920s. It did not become a national park until 1972. Like Big Bend, evidence of the ranching, overuse and overgrazing of the land, and its scars on the environment can still be seen in the park.
Beyond National Parks
I wish I had time to discuss all the National Parks, Monuments, Historic Sites and Forests that are impacted by industrial waste, overuse and pollution. I have not even mentioned the air pollution, haze and air quality problem that is present in almost all of our National Parks.
The National Parks Conservation Association released a report in 2024 that concluded 97% of National Parks suffer from air pollution.
If you have ever hiked the South Rim at Big Bend and couldn’t see the Rio Grande or Mexico because of the haze coming up from Houston, San Antonio and the Gulf Coast, you know what I am talking about.
The problem goes far beyond national parks.
The University of Michigan released a study in Scientific Reports this year that looked at the 151,366 public parks in the United States, compared to their proximity to facilities listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory and Superfund sites.
More than half of U.S. Parks (52%) are within two miles of an industrial facility that handles toxic chemicals.
2,700 are located close to Superfund sites. 2,422 parks actually overlap with Superfund Sites. Only five states, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota and Wyoming had no parks that overlap with a Superfund site. Colorado topped this list with over 430,000 square miles of parks overlapping with a Superfund Site.
The researchers created an interactive map you can use to see what environmental contamination and risks are close to your favorite park. You can view the map here.
What Do We Do About This?
We cannot change the past. Our ancestors made the choices they made about the environment. In the 21st Century we have different priorities and face different environmental challenges. This information is not meant to scare people away from our public parks. But it should inform our decisions and choices about which parks we use and how we enjoy them.
It also should inform decisions about balancing the rights of private property owners with the importance of public lands and spaces in the future. This is especially true as our children are left to deal with a warming climate and the environmental changes that come with it.
A Note On Sources: All information for this piece was sourced from National Park Service histories and articles, along with local histories from newspapers.
