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Stephen Hagadorn                                                                                                                                                               March 23, 2012

GEG 319                                                                                                                                                              Environmental Write Up

                  In the map that was created for this project, there are Superfund sites located in New York State along with the population density of New York State to give an idea on where and perhaps why the sites for these Superfund sites were chosen and other areas were not.  The patterns that this map shows are not as expected.  You might expect the superfund sites to be located in low population dense places but as shown on the map that is not actually the case.  It seems that superfund sites are located not at the least population dense areas but in areas that area relatively close to bigger cities who would have  more businesses that may have need for the superfund sites themselves.  That goes for most areas in New York State except for the very population dense areas of Long Island, which has many superfund sites along with a high population density.   The majority of the superfund sites are located in the medium range of population density.  There are only a few places that have both a high population density along with a superfund site in the same area.  The most population dense place in New York State, New York City, has no superfund sites located in its population zone they are all on the outskirts of the city and that might be because there is no room for one in the city or they chose that specifically so that the city didn’t have to deal with another problem in it other than over population.

                  Analyzing the map seems to be closely tied to my immediate reaction to looking at the map itself.  The reasons for the locations of the superfund sites don’t conflict with big cities but are located close enough to the cities for businesses of whom have need of them can still reach them, but they are not in the country side so they won’t conflict with the natural look of the state in certain areas.  New York State as a whole seems to have thought carefully as a whole over the location of these controversial superfund sites.  No matter what they decide though there are going to be people against their, the States, decision over the location of the superfund sites.  They seem to have left the major nature areas alone, for the most part, like the Adirondacks and only put the sites where they could be considered the most useful for the ones who need them the most.