Atlantic Wood Industries in Portsmouth, VA
Source: EPA
In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to provide Federal funding to clean up the most-polluted sites in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a computerized inventory of potential hazardous substance release sites, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS).
Ideally, contaminated sites ("brownfields," in constrast to undeveloped "greenfields" sites) will be cleaned up. After remediation, sites will become available for other uses. For example, the Jordan Bridge is being rebuilt across the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River, through the Atlantic Wood Industries site contaminated with creosote, pentachlorophenol, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins and metals. Once the contamination is isolated, the remainder of the site will again become available for industrial use.
Not all sites qualify for Federal funding. The "Superfund" is used to clean up sites on the National Priorities List (NPL), when "potentially responsible parties" can not be forced to cover all the cleanup costs.
EPA's map of Superfund sites in Virginia provides one guide to seeing the concentration of manufacturing in Virginia in the middle on the 20th Century. Notice the small amount of hazardous waste generated in the southwest part of the state, reflecting the limited number of factories located there in the days before pollution controls.
Coal mining exposes sulfur that can cause acid mine runoff... but typically Virginia mines do not involve heavy metals that are toxic enough to attract EPA's attention. What other patterns can you see? Do urban areas have more sites than rural areas?