Case for a Gritty National Landmark

Re “Dump Made a Landmark, but Will It Pass Sniff Test?” Aug. 28: A trashy national landmark? Absolutely! I wholeheartedly agree with and commend professor Martin Melosi for his nomination of the Fresno landfill as a national landmark. From a historical perspective, trash, effluent and the ways societies have dealt with them have had a major impact on environmental and human health. For centuries, trash has been the nemesis of many great nations, the trash-rich U.S. especially. Because of its age, content and problems of air and ground water contamination, the Fresno site makes for a good monument to the evolution of trash disposal and learned remediation techniques. A treasure-trove of trash disposal awareness has been gleaned from this mess, and a sense of triumph over trash exists. Indeed, “trash to treasure!”

Landfills are finally being treated as a rich repository of reclaimable resources such as metal, aluminum, glass, wood, paper, plastic, methane gas, etc., and not a proper or safe place for disposal of toxic substances.

A nation that is learning from its “trashy” bad habits certainly deserves a fitting monument to this accomplishment, and while we’re at it, how about adding an interpretive trash disposal and recycling information center at the Fresno site to celebrate and demonstrate a movement toward national environmental and resource civility?

Patrick C. Murphy

San Gabriel

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I would urge Interior Secretary Gale Norton to add the Fresno dump to the list of national monuments. After all, it is a perfect metaphor for this administration’s environmental policy--a polluted site that took $38 million to clean up after years of leaching its noxious contents into the surrounding area.

Barbara Collins

S tudio City

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How fitting that President Bush should appoint as his secretary of Interior a person so indifferent to--or ignorant of--the environment that Norton designates Fresno’s Superfund toxic waste site as a national historic landmark, even for a day.

Mary E. Bobco

Palos Verdes Estates