Issues 1. Environmental Damage Environmental damage including erosion, habitat loss and contamination.Because old dumps are locations where uncontrolled disposal took place in the past, both solid waste (including household garbage, demolition wastes, nonhazardous industrial wastes, and others) and hazardous wastes are usually present. At the Pig's Eye Dump, several types of waste that pose environmental risks are exposed and leaking or running off into the river and lake. • Heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium and mercury have known health and environmental impacts. Wastes such as lead-acidcar batteries, mercury and cadmium batteries, pigments, mercury switches, and other productscontain heavy metals Research indicates that these metals may be "endocrine disrupters" that mimic or disrupt natural processes In the body. both humans and animals are affected by heavy metals. • Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCbs) are a mixture of individual chemicals no longer produced in the United States, but still found in the environment. PCbs remain in soil or sediment a long time after they leak or spill. Many PCbs found in the environment come from old electrical transformers. • Leachate is produced when water seeps or flows through buried wastes, picking up pollutants. The best way to describe leachate would be "garbage juice". Therefore, where the Pig's Eye Dump is eroded, especially where the stream flows through it, water is in contact with garbage, creating leachate run-off. Leachate also sinks down to contaminate ground water, which can then move underground -- in this case toward the Mississippi River and Pig's Eye Lake.
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