#AMNESIA THE SMALL HORSE ZIP#

Solvents used by former businesses had drizzled into drinking water wells. That seemed appropriate because Rockford is the site of a longstanding Superfund site. I was recently invited to Rockford, Illinois, to speak about toxic chemicals. There are 1,305 of them, and they are named for the вЂњsuperвЂќ fund of money put together by Congress in 1980 to clean them up, a trust that went bankrupt five years ago.) (Superfund sites are the nationвЂ™s worst toxic-waste sites. In fact, IвЂ™ve had to start explaining the word вЂњSuperfund,вЂќ as it doesnвЂ™t seem to ring any real bells for a lot of people - including people in communities where Superfund sites are present. The location of those homes on former orchards (where arsenical pesticides were used) or near old toxic-dump sites (where drums of solvents were buried) - these matters seem blurrier and blurrier to the folks in my audiences. Public awareness is specific to chemicals in consumer products - which are produced elsewhere (increasingly China) and brought into our homes. But there is decreasing knowledge about the actual environment itself. And they know a lot more about hazardous materials. The first is that people increasingly believe that their health is affected by hazardous materials in the environment. Birds flew in and out of slumping holes in the roofs.ДURING THESE TEN YEARS of running and speaking, IвЂ™ve noticed two opposing trends. The other was entirely filled with bicycles. One of the buildings was entirely filled with chairs. Within it, three derelict buildings flanked a derelict tennis court, its green surface shattered by sprouting trees. Once, in Livonia, Michigan, while running beside glass office complexes with glabrous names like Techtron and VisTaTech, I veered off toward a small scrim of woods. Even when IвЂ™m completely confounded - I cannot tell you how groundwater flows beneath the Mall of America - I discover something amazing. Sometimes the names of streets - Creamery Road - provide clues. I notice the aluminum smelterвЂ™s proximity to the floodplain. I notice the decrepit apple tree that means this subdivision was once an orchard. When I run, I can feel the slope of the land under my feet and figure out how water flows here. And then, once I get there, I run.Д«oth rituals are ways of paying attention. I study the location of the dumps, the routine chemical emissions, the accident reports, the off-site transfers, the permitted releases.

#AMNESIA THE SMALL HORSE ZIP#

One, I look up the Toxics Release Inventory for my host-communityвЂ™s zip code. Ever since, IвЂ™ve received invitations to speak about the topic. Ten years ago, I published a book called Living Downstream that was about, among other things, hazardous materials. They probably figured that the continentвЂ™s hazardous-materials managers might appreciate the chance to get an early start on holiday shopping. I donвЂ™t believe its organizers intended to make an ironic statement with their choice of venue.

When I returned to my room in the Ramada Inn - which required crossing fourteen lanes of traffic - it was almost time for my keynote address at the twenty-first annual North American Hazardous Materials Management Conference. The wind that pours through the loading docks of the Mall of America is fearsome. From the depths of the parking garages, a few car alarms pulsed, some near, some far, like foghorns. I began this run early in the morning and, during my circuit, saw one other human being: a man with a cigarette standing against the largest expanse of brick wall I had ever seen. The two hours includes circumnavigating the mallвЂ™s 520 stores along with its 20,000 parking spaces, which are mostly contained within orbital rings of monumentally sized parking garages. I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT THAT IT takes two hours to jog around the periphery of the Mall of America, the nationвЂ™s largest indoor shopping center in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Amnesia the small horse