NYS Remediation Sites

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Description

                The map that I made is a map showing all of the waste remediation sites within New York State.  This includes town dumps, landfills and toxic waste sites where land has been contaminated in some way, for example leakage or known dumping of wastes.  I took this information and overlapped it with a population density map of New York State to show a correlation between the two.  What I found was that as the population density increased so did the number of remediation sites.  This makes sense because in these areas there are more people who create more waste and need places to dispose of that waste.  The areas that had the most amount of remediation sites were below Albany along the Hudson River down to New York City.  New York City is also heavily dotted with waste sites, so much so that you cannot even see the color of the counties unless zoomed in very close to the map.  Long Island also has a large amount of waste sites as well; however there seems to be more of a concentration of them the more westward you go.  Another area that is obvious when looking at this map is the central part of New York.  If you look there is a clear line running across central New York following the path of Interstate 90 which links cities like Utica, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.  In Northern New York there are very few clusters of remediation sites.  The majority of them in the northern portion of New York are located along the western border with Ontario.  Within each one of these waste sites information is given about what goes on at each individual site as well as some past history about the sites. 

Analysis

                The patterns seen here are what one might expect to see when looking at a map of New York.  The concentration of population density is focused mostly in the southern portion of the state around New York City and its suburbs.  This high population causes more waste to be created along with more industry being centered near these locations. Because of this there needs to be more dumps and treatment plants to make sure the environment is not polluted past the point of livability.  One interesting thing that I noticed about the map is the impact that main transportation routes have.  It is clear that along the southern portion of Interstate 87 and all the way across Interstate 90 the population and amount of remediation sites are much more concentrated.  This is due to the fact that these two areas have been main transportation routes in New York for a very long time dating back to before the interstates were there.  The Erie Canal and Hudson River both acted like interstates in their own time allowing for easy transportation of goods which began settlement in these regions a long time ago.  Now with the construction of the interstates these areas have only continued to grow in population, pollution, and waste output, creating more of a demand for remediation sites. 

                You can also find that remediation sites will be centered near large manufacturing plants.  One prime example of this is the Alcoa plant in Massena, NY.  You can see that in this area there is not a hugely dense population compared to other parts of the state however you can see a small cluster of remediation sites.  This is due to the Alcoa aluminum plant which works with numerous chemicals and needs a place to properly treat their waste products.   This can be seen across the map with many remediation sites belonging to companies rather than towns. 

                One portion of the map that is clearly not overrun by population or remediation sites is the Adirondack Park.  As you can see there are very few remediation sites located in this area because there is not a large population who are able to produce wastes at the same scale as other places in the state.  Also this is an area that has many restrictions on it which allow it to continue to be clean of a large amount of pollution. 

Data Information

                To find this data I first went to GIS clearinghouse for New York State. I then found the information on the remediation sites that I wanted.  The information was published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on May 23, 2006 in Albany, New York.  The site does not give a specific author to the data; however it states that the originator is the Division of Environmental Remediation within the NYSDEC.