Air Pollution and Remedial Waste Sites

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• The information and data this map focuses on deals with remediation sites, solid waste management facilities, and air monitoring centers across New York State. The map demonstrates the relationships between these three environmental features. The highly concentrated levels of population tend to have these sites and facilities clusters around them. It is obvious when examining areas such as Long Island, New York City, downstate, Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse that there is a correlation. Remediation sites are noted by the purple map markers and represent areas where toxic waste was formerly dumped into the surrounding environment. The green markers show current solid waste sites, and finally the multicolored red markers show air monitoring sites. The air monitoring sites are color coded. The darkest red demonstrates a ten solid waste facilities in that one specific area while the lightest color red marker shows as low as one facility in an area. The remediation sites and solid waste sites tend to be situated close in distance and share similar types of locations. Air monitoring facilities are also tied into these sites but in much lower quantities. There are an elevated number of facilities also on areas close towaterways. The Long Island Sound, Atlantic Ocean, Hudson River, Erie Canal, Finger Lakes, Genesee River, and the water surrounding Buffalo all show an elevated amount of these sites.
• It is not coincidental that remediation sites, solid waste facilities, and air monitoring facilities are all situated in similar patterns and locations. High population means larger amounts of waste and more facilities that are dumping chemicals. In a time before health consequences were unknown companies had few regulation on the materials they dumped into the environment. Remediation sites are the reminisce of these facilities. Today solid waste facilities follow the same location pattern. The remediation sites particularly made up by old iron, steel, and other mills that are not longer in use today as well as factories. They also include anything from previously closed gas plants of Buffalo to the former factory sites in Plattsburgh. Solid waste facilities are classified as anything from municipal waste, chemical and metal collection areas to private recycling and disposal companies. These companies may have been demanded after the increase in need for proper waste clearing practiced arose. Waste facilities today comprise of construction and demolition processing, landfills, regulated medical waste, and transfer facilities ,just to name a few types of sites. Transfer facilities are sites where municipal waste is dumped, compacted, and then transferred to a final waste area such as a landfill or composting site. Air monitoring comes into play in helping the government regulate air pollution levels around the state. Since these waste sites are harboring dangerous chemicals and materials it is evident that monitoring systems would be in place to regulate. It isevident from this map that the need for (toxic) dumps is and was exceedingly necessary along with air monitoring stations to help protect the public. 
• The information gathered on Remediation Sites in New York State came from the Department of Environmental Conservation. The points on the map are sites that were once classified as former inactive hazardous waste sites along with other dumping sites. Each point includes site name, classification, location, owner, description, wastes dumped and environmental and health problems associated with them. The Solid Waste Facilities are also located and mapped by the DEC website. They include almost 1000 different sites state wide that include local and private owned areas. The last is the Air monitoring sites which show data from the Division of Air Resources, DEC, and Bureau of Air Quality Surveillance. There are over 80 sites state wide that measure pollutants in the air that can be hazardous to health the most important being ozone, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide.