El Monte is a community in Los Angeles California at the address of 4400 Temple City Blvd. This location housed a furniture store that many residents claimed was polluted. The EPA and the city of Los Angeles said the area had been cleaned up but lawyers for the Asian residents (which lived near the location) claimed the site still had pollution from former manufacturing businesses such as solvents within the soil. The ethical problem was that even though the site was being cleaned up to the standards of EPA it was not possible for the site to be restored enough to grow cannabis there. However, the city of Los Angeles approved at least four cannabis business licenses to grow cannabis at the site. This caused lawsuits to be filed by city residents against the city of Los Angeles. The lawyer for the Asian citizens of Los Angels and I quote “don’t believe officials are operating above board. They lied to everybody.” The lawyer Liu said “state Department of Toxic Substances Control records suggest this property and those immediately around it have not been cleaned. She says the property should be shuttered.” The property has not been under the authority of the Regional Water Quality Control Board since 2010 according to Gamaliel Ortiz, spokesman for the Department of Toxic Substances Control. This location is a Superfund site of about eleven square miles (Lindahl, 2019). The problem with Superfund site cleanups is that they do not always get all of the toxins. Marijuana is a phytoremediation source, making it possible for the remaining toxins to enter and be contained within the growing/selling of this plant. This is a case of money being put ahead of dangerous marijuana growth in Southern California (Caputo, A., Lerner, S., 2021).
The Deepwater Horizon accident of 2010 created the worst drilling oil spill ever within marine record keeping. Four million barrels of oil sifted into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil drilling rig exploded and sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico killing eleven workers. Over eighty-seven days four million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico before being capped on July 15, 2010. The environmental cleanup that took place in the Gulf of Mexico included a one billion dollar payout from BP Exploration & Production. This went above and beyond any marine or other cleanup, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ever been a part of when it takes into account marine life and oil spills. This EPA remediation project demonstrated environmental consciousness beyond just recognizing the impacts on humankind. It took into account birds and fish within the Gulf of Mexico beyond human impacts into the world of foul and fish. BP Exploration & Production was hit with a $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty and up to $8.8 billion in natural resource damages (EPA, n.d.). This was the beginning of serious climate change actions on the part of President Obama's Administration to root out causes of carbon dioxide parts per million enforcing across America in the carbon-based drilling industry (Welch, 2015).
References:
Lindahl, C. (January 9, 2019). Future home of El Monte pot business is contaminated but being cleaned up.
Caputo, A., Lerner, S. (January 13, 2021).
EPA. (n.d.). Deepwater Horizon – BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.
Deepwater Horizon – BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill | US EPA
Welch, C. (April 23, 2015). Exclusive: Obama Tells Us What's to Come on Climate, Drought.
Exclusive: Obama Tells Us What's to Come on Climate, Drought (nationalgeographic.com)