Hazardous Waste Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hazardous Waste - Essay Example The site initially belonged to Hooker Chemical who later sold it to Niagara Falls School Board for $ 1 in 1953. Hooker Chemicals were using the site for burying toxic waste. By the time of selling the site, Hooker Chemicals had buried 22,000 tons of toxic waste that they revealed in the sales agreement. However, construction projects and rainstorms on the site released the waste causing an environmental disaster. As a result, the inhabitants overflowed in to the waste. This characterized the infamous Love Canal case (Stoss and Fabian 1). The Ivory Coast case took place in 2006 at the capital city of Ivory coast, port of Abidjan. A tanker ship chattered by Trafigura oil and commodity shipping company disposed a 500 tone waste mixture of fuel, caustic soda, and hydrogen sulfide in the city. A local Ivorian contractor dumped the mixture around the city. Although Trafigura denied transportation and knowledge of improper disposal of any toxic waste, the gas emissions from the hazardous waste claimed 17 lives and injured many. As a result, the oil company paid $ 198 Million for cleanup to the Ivorian government in exchange of liability of prosecution (Amnesty International 1). In the Love Canal case, the government and Hooker Chemical were at fault. All these parties were aware of the eminent danger posed by the buried waste chemical yet they did nothing to avert the crisis. The US government had to relocate 800 affected families and indemnify them for their homes. The Occidental Petroleum paid fines worth $129 million for the Love Canal case. In the Ivory Coast case, the Trafigura Oil Shipping Company, the local Ivorian contractors were at fault for improper disposal of hazardous waste. Trafigura Oil Company paid $ 198 Million to the Ivorian government for clean up though it denied liability for dumping. The local Ivorian contractor got a 20 years jail sentence for improper disposal. The Comprehensive