Polluted Ghost Towns Caused by Environmental Disasters

Conservatives may hate the EPA, but it was created for one very good reason and that is that pollution and environmental disasters can not only destroy the planet, but everyone living on it. This All That is Interesting article shows just how dangerous pollution can be by featuring five different ghost towns that have been destroyed by environmental disasters. For example, Centralia, Pennsylvania, a small town that has been burning since the coal mines below the city caught fire in 1962:

While exact causes of the fire remain disputed, analysts agree that a 1962 fire tore through the town’s abandoned coal mines and has not yet stopped. Residents became aware of the fire decades later, and in 1984 Congress allocated more than $40 million to relocate Centralia residents — many of whom did not see the risk that the fires posed.

Then-governor Bob Casey condemned all Centralia estates in 1992, but backlash from Centralia citizens kept Centralia’s zip code alive until 2002.

So check out the full story of Centralia as well as four other cities destroyed by environmental disasters over on All That is Interesting.


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Forgive me for over simplifying. I know Nixon created the EPA and many conservative individuals still support it, but our conservative Congress is doing everything they can to undermine it and many of their conservative constituents are going along with that.

It's great to hear from conservatives who aren't just following the party lines though and it is comments like yours that help remind everyone that greedy anti-environmentalists are the problem, not conservatives as a whole. You're right that we need to unify on issues not labels. Thanks for your comment.
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"Conservatives may hate the EPA" um, no. You should do some reading. The EPA was created by Richard Nixon. Some Conservatives may hate the EPA but most do not and this kind of bigoted story just helps divide the nation... us vs. them. I wish the writers of Neatoroma would stick to fun stories and keep their bigotry to themselves.
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ikeya, I don't really have a problem with nuclear energy though I see why it is controversial, I know it can provide clean and safe energy overall. It was the other places that interested me.

medieval though, your argument against the EPA is that when they tried to help clean a heavily polluted waterway that has been polluted for almost a century, they made a mistake -in part because the people in the town would rather have the area heavily polluted than lose some tourist dollars so they rejected funds that would have let the EPA clean the area properly. They made one mistake and therefore they might as well not exist to clean up all the pollution businesses and individuals largely caused on purpose or at least through ignorance? And moreover, in the four sentences I wrote (only one of which even mentions the EPA) I should have been sure to write about this one mistake they made? Tell you what, why don't you go start your own site where you can talk about how the big, bad EPA polluted one water way in the almost 50 years they've been around.
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