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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.
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