Opponents of legally enforced environmental protection seem to be under the impression that given zero guidelines or requirements, corporations will automatically and instinctively carry on in a way that avoids doing direct harm to others. If environmental legislation is patronizing and excessive, we must be able to trust the companies to do the right thing and not poison the water supply of an entire community--right?

It'd be nice if that were the case. Unfortunately, history has too many examples of companies becoming aware of the harm caused by their activities and doing nothing to stop it until legally mandated to do so. Take, for example, Ford Motor Company. One of their New Jersey factories spewed toxic waste into the nearby Ringwood State Park for 25 years. The Environmental Protection Agency eventually stopped the careless disposal, but now Ford is lobbying officials in an attempt to regain their right to pollute. 

Maybe the park makes for the cheapest, easiest place for Ford to dump their waste, but polluting it brings severe consequences for others. We're not just talking local wildlife, here--although in an ideal world destroying a natural ecosystem would be enough to make companies second-guess their own waste disposal practices. We're talking about an entire community of people who became ill from Ford's dumping. Members of the Ramapough tribe have called Ringwood State Park home for generations. When Ford began dumping toxic waste into their land, cancer rates rose. People got sick from ingesting poisons like arsenic and lead, which can still be found in the local water supply in quantities a hundred times above safety levels. Children of the tribe repeatedly got nosebleeds just from playing outside. 

The EPA isn't even interested in pushing to clean the area. Right now they're deciding whether or not to continue to prevent Ford from polluting. The land is already poisoned from 25 years of toxic waste dumping. It's not going to get better on its own, and it's certainly not going to be helped by continued pollution. Real people depend on this land and its water supply. They're not an enormous corporation with lots of money and power, so they have little influence over the fate of their home. But they do have voices--and so do we.

The Edison Wetlands Association is now petitioning the EPA to continue protecting the state park. Over 50,000 Americans have added their signatures to the petition, which also demands that Ford take extra measures to restore the land back to a healthy state. The EPA will be announcing its plan for the area in less than two weeks, so there's still time to prove that the voices of everyday Americans can be louder than the voice of a corporation that just wants to cut costs at the expense of public health and safety. It's the EPA's job to promote a model of responsibility when it comes to a corporation's relationship with the environment. If companies like Ford can't healthfully coexist with the communities around them, they don't deserve to operate their factories in this country.