Toxic Ghost Towns 2: More Cities of Toxicity

The Poisoner's Almanac

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Hey Poison Friends! I know we have covered some toxic ghost towns before but there are just too many out there not to bring the subject back up! If you haven't seen the last Toxic Ghost Towns episode, definitely check it out! This time around I chose to discuss a place close to home in South Carolina. "Becca, I though y'all lived in Georgia!" We do, but right next to the Savannah river which connects us to South Carolina. So this is close to us as well. There was once a town called Ellenton, until the 1950s when the government decided it was the perfect place for a new nuclear site. The Savannah River Site was first created to produce materials for nuclear weapons and during its planning, the entire town of Ellenton as well as other nearby communities were forced out with a bit of compensation for their property as determined by the government. New Ellenton was created, where some of the residents would resettle, but they would never forget their old town and how it was basically taken from them, Ellenton has its own dirty history, steeped in racist politics and violence, however, and I could not help but dig into that before discussing the toxic materials left behind when SRS switched roles from nuclear weapons products to research and environmental concerns.

We also discuss what was supposed to be a wealthy resort town funded by a newspaper, Times Beach, Missouri. The timing was off during this development nearign the Great Depression, and the town was mainly one of rural and low income housing. It didn't help matters that the location itself was a flood plain. These were not the reasons for the town being evacuated, however and the story of how it became toxic is also one to be learned from.

Lastly we travel to Mailuu-Suu in Kyrgyzstan, where multiple uranium and heavy metals dump sites were left. Between the early 1940s-late 1960s, the soviet union mined uranium in mines there using forced labor for much of the time. Once it became less economical, they just left the poorly constructed tailings dams and uranium rock piles sitting there in the open. This area in particular sits on the hillside above the village Mailuu-Suu (currently populated with about 25,000 people). Since this time mutliple earthquakes, landslides, and heavy rainfall even have caused dams to fail and uranium to fall into the river below, contaminating the water, fish, crops, and ultimately the people living there. Illness and cancer rates have increased significantly here and education about avoiding the worst contaminated areas and clean-up of the site is slow going. I mentioned many sites, because along the entire country there are about 92 radioactive mining waste sites in total.

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