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Acres of Toxic Chemicals and Rusting Cars Becomes National Park After Amazing Transformation https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/acres-of-toxic-chemical-barrels-and-rusting-cars-becomes-national-park/

Acres of Toxic Chemicals and Rusting Cars Becomes National Park After Amazing Transformation

When President Gerald Ford signed a bill creating Cuyahoga National Recreation Area in Ohio in 1974, the boundaries of the site deliberately included a well-known local garbage dump, assuming it could be easily cleaned.

When the National Park Service (NPS) discovered it was a nearly-unmanageable chemical wasteland where even the water and soil were flammable, a decades-long cleanup effort converted it, at the polluters’ expense no less, into a vibrant marsh ecosystem with some of the highest biodiversity in the region.

Where once thousands of rusted barrels oozed out congealed industrial slime, and a soup of pesticides, arsenic, paint, and heavy metals ran along the ground among discarded tires, now lies tranquil forested ponds full of fish, insects, and amphibians. Black-eyed Susans, New England asters, swamp milkweed, and foxglove, visited by birds, bees, and butterflies all grow along the borders of this now thriving ecosystem so clean that NPS staff remark you could eat the very dirt.

“This was a toxic wasteland only a few decades ago. To find this diversity of species there today is remarkable,” said Ecologist for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Chris Davis.