Valley of the Drums

Valley of the Drums
Superfund site
The Valley of the Drums, c. 1980 (credit: EPA)
Geography
County	Bullitt County
State	Kentucky
Coordinates	38°4′55.9″N 85°43′25.0″W / 38.082194°N 85.723611°W / 38.082194; -85.723611
Valley of the Drums
Information
CERCLIS ID	KYD980500961
Responsible parties	A.L. Taylor (inferred)
Progress
Proposed	December 30, 1982
Listed	September 8, 1983
Construction completed	August 10, 1990
Deleted	May 17, 1996
List of Superfund sites

The Valley of the Drums is a 23-acre (9.3 hectare) toxic waste site near Brooks in northern Bullitt County, Kentucky, near Louisville, named after the waste-containing drums strewn across the area. After it had been collecting waste since the 1960s, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analyzed the property and creek in 1979, finding high levels of heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, and some 140 other chemical substances. It is known as one of the primary motivations for the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or Superfund Act of 1980. While the widely publicized Love Canal disaster is often credited as the reason the Superfund law was passed, Love Canal activist Lois Gibbs has said that Love Canal looked like a suburban community, while "Valley of the Drums became the visualization of the problem."^[1] Officially, cleanup began at the site in 1983 and ended in 1990, though later problems have been reported and investigated.