Copper smelting provides an ideal venue in which to explore the conflict between environmental remediation and industrial-site historic documentation and preservation. Copper smelters were key technological components in the communication and electrification revolutions, but they have also been responsible for some of the largest and most expensive Superfund clean-ups since the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act was passed in 1980. After exploring the environmental and technological histories of copper smelting in the United States for historical context, this project funded by the Science, Technology, & Society Program uses a comparative study of several historic copper smelting sites to shed light on the conflict between environmental remediation and historic preservation. This conflict generally results in conflicting treatment recommendations and the loss of key elements of the nation's industrial heritage.
This project's intellectual merit derives from its focus on comparative heritage and environmental policy implementation issues at multiple sites for the operation of an industrial process that has produced both historic value and contamination. While previous scholars have studied the general economic, mining, social, and environmental aspects of the copper industry's history, very few have placed their studies in the context of the destruction of significant elements of the nation's industrial heritage (in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966) or conflict with environmental regulation. This project seeks to understand the complex relationships between heritage interests and environmental regulation and the factors that influence the outcome when the two collide.
The project's broader impacts are significant. First, the project is interdisciplinary in that it studies how the results of not one, but multiple disciplines interact when conflict occurs between Federal mandates in the areas of heritage preservation and environmental remediation. Understanding this conflict has broad implications for future environmental remediation projects at significant industrial heritage sites. Second, the project bridges the gap between academic studies and professional practice in the public realm. Essentially, it seeks to use the academic study of the history of technology and environmental policy/history, as a foundation for understanding and analyzing how two key areas of public concern -- heritage preservation and environmental remediation -- have come into conflict and been addressed in multiple locations and, perhaps, how the conflict between heritage and the environment could be better addressed in the future.
