Disposal of Environmentally Damaging Fluids

Since 1971, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has implemented and enforced federal environmental laws. The United States Congress passed comprehensive environmental legislation that regulated virtually every potential environmental impact resulting from manufacturing or other commercial activities (Cheney). The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1971, established standards for all geological, air, noise, utility, light, traffic, and aesthetic areas of environmental impact (Dagodag, 1991, xi). Covered in the geological standards area is the disposal of potentially hazardous fluids. The provisions of these federal laws establish minimum national requirements and compliance standards to which state and local governments must comply.

Most federal environmental acts allow the EPA to delegate primary responsibility for implementation and enforcement of NEPA statutes to state agencies that have legal authority under state law to implement environmental regulatory programs that are at least as stringent as the comparable federal programs (Cheney). In New Hampshire, this state agency is the Department of Environmental Services.

State and Federal Regulation of Hazardous Fluids

Disposal of ordinary toxic fluids such as wastewater or street runoff are usually dealt with via a sewer collection system served by a publicly owned treatment works (POTW). Groundwater discharge permits are issued by

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ted into the stratosphere could unleash a complicated chain reaction that would continually destroy ozone for decades. A year later, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland at the University of California at Irvine became intrigued with the peculiar properties of trichlorofluromethane and dichlorodifluoromethane (CFMs), then used in the United States as both a refrigerant (freon) and as a propellant for commercial products (Van Norstrand's, 1984, 2127). Molina and Rowland's research showed that, unlike most other gases, CFMs were not chemically destroyed or quickly altered in the lower atmosphere. CFMs slowly migrated up to the stratosphere where they remained intact for decades (Van Norstrand's, 1984, 2127). The two researchers concluded that CFCs are eventually broken down by radiation, thereby releasing large quantities of chlorine (Mathews, 1991, 114). Thus released, chlorine atoms could serve as a catalyst in a complex series of reactions, part of the net effect being the conversion of ozone into oxygen (Van Norstrand's, 1984, 2127). An abridged version of the series of steps involved in converting ozone to oxygen follows: Cl+ O3 > ClO + O2; ClO + O > Cl + O2 . The implication was that the CFMs in freon might cause significa
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1286
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)