The Novelty of Clean Air and Water

   The town of Toms River is known at a broader national level for three things.  We won the Little League World Series.  We have the unfortunate proximity to the seaside town that filmed the iconic, if not culturally regressive, Jersey Shore.  And Novartis, the chemically company formally named as Ciba-Geigy, had a dye plant in town that left a Super Fund site and a cancer cluster wake as it was forced to leave town.   (Read the book Toms River by Dan Fagin) So that would be one positive and two negative events, which is not bad given how well negative events spread.
    I recently moved back to the Jersey Shore, though a little farther north.  A commute to NYC would be just too much from exit 82.  The proximity to the ocean, the rivers and bays, and great park systems, while still just a short car or train ride to the city are all draws to the area.  The fact that we have clean drinking water, can swim in most of the waters, can see clear sunrises, breath smog free air is not a given.  The long hard work by scientists, environmentalists, and the Environmental Protection Agency help awake our collective conscience to the seemingly obvious need to live in a clean place.  Somehow now we take it for granted.
   Again, it is not a given.  Companies are in business to make money.  Period.  Thank goodness there are businesses that make everything that we can and can't imagine, but to make anything also means there are things that need to be extracted and some sort of waste at the other end.  If a company can quietly avoid the cost of its waste, thus sluffing it off on someone else, they will.  They are in the business of making money.  Obviously, a company needs to be profitable, but if it is rooted in a community they are compelled to have other concerns as well.  Publicly traded companies exist but in the vast binary ether of ones and zeros moving through lines attached to the Bloomberg Terminal.  They are focused on quarterly profits because that is the only thing important to investors, even if otherwise socially and environmentally minded.  They are just a three letter code with a hopefully increasing number next to it.  There is no root in a community.  There is no incentive to account for their waste.
   One of the key purposes of a government is to help ensure that a community is livable and therefore clean.  We now take it for granted.  Having lived in Brooklyn for many years, there is a fast growing Chinese population.  When you walk the streets of Chinatown, many many people are walking around with ventilator masks.  The masks may be a necessity on the streets of Beijing.  I suppose that if you always had to wear the mask, that going outside otherwise would feel naked.  We don't have to wear them.  That is a direct result of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the late 70s and by extension the EPA.  Having clean air and and water is a win win situation.
   Collectively holding companies accountable is, unfortunately, an expensive, arduous, and often fleeting in its individual outcomes, but it is imperative and we are better for it.  Toms River is better for it.  I can take a walk in the local woods near my house or put a canoe in the local river.  We can't take it for granted.  It takes work.