2008/06/08 00:12 This may not be of interest to many, but I though it was pretty rad. Editorial
By Dayton Daily News
Thursday, May 29, 2008
It's probably not on your calendar, but this summer marks 20 years
since Dayton passed a groundbreaking environmental law that's attracted
national and international attention.
During the two decades, critics have occasionally tried, but always
failed, to discredit the core of the restrictions. That's a testament
to both the need for them and the effort that went into balancing
property owners' rights with public health.
The genesis for the law goes back 23 years ago to June 1985 when The
Los Angeles Times came to Dayton and wrote a scathing front-page story
on how the city was fouling its aquifer — threatening the water supply
for almost 900,000 people. The story was as alarming as it was
embarrassing.
The explanation was that, in 1976, the City of Dayton consciously and,
at least in retrospect, recklessly made the decision to put an
industrial park — Concourse 70/75 — on top of one of its two
wellfields. Some of the tenants had no business having their chemicals
so near a wellfield, and not all of them were taking care to see that
their degreasers and solvents weren't leaking or being poured on the
ground.
Two years later, in 1987, things got worse.
A Sherwin-Williams warehouse, stocked with thousands of gallons of
paint, went up in flames. Firefighters had to let the paint burn for a
week, and the fire could be seen for miles. Dousing the blaze — with
the structure so close to the wellfield — would have created a stream
of contamination flowing straight for the wellfield, possibly
destroying its use forever.
The fire was handled well, but, even so, the cleanup still cost between
$10 million and $12 million. Imagine if mistakes had been made.
That event was the last straw. Dayton had to stop letting just any
company — no matter how many jobs were at stake — locate so close to
such an environmentally sensitive area.
In August 1988, Dayton passed its wellfield protection ordinance. The
rules restrict development on and near the wellfields; it created a
ranking system that requires businesses to report their hazardous
materials; it limited future businesses from exceeding that inventory
of risk.
A loan fund was created to help businesses switch to new processes and
products that reduced the threat to the aquifer. And a surcharge was
put on ratepayers.
The aquifer doesn't recognize governmental boundaries, so other
communities had to adopt the same rules if Dayton's restrictions were
going to have meaning. It took two more years for Mad River Twp.,
Harrison Twp., Vandalia, Riverside and Huber Heights to pass similar
legislation. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base also needed to agree to
abide by the restrictions, which it ultimately did. Today, 6,280 acres
are covered by the wellfield protection plan.
A lot of elected officials have come and gone over 20 years, and the
new ones weren't around to see the Sherwin-Williams fire or to have to
take questions about what they were going to do to prevent the region's
drinking water from being trashed.
The Dayton region has one of the country's largest sources of pure
drinking water, not because we're smart, but because of a geological
accident. Today, 90 million gallons of drinking water can be pulled out
of the aquifer every day and nature doesn't even notice. There are
other communities, states and even countries, that would kill for such
a resource.
The Dayton region got lucky when the glaciers receded and left a
natural barrier on top of a remarkable resource, and it got lucky again
when it was able to recover from the mistake of failing to recognize
what it's sitting on. For 20 years now, the community has stayed smart.
