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Also...

> Eventually, in hundreds or thousands of years we will have to remediate that land.

Over that time scale the land automatically remediates itself. There's a hill in Rome made of a big pile of Roman garbage. The hill is more useful than the pots were.




In the 60s there was a junk yard that some developer put a bunch of houses on top of near my house. Decades later nearly everyone that lived there developed cancer.


On that time scale, we can just build elsewhere instead. It's a complete non-issue once we know about the risks.


Boston as well, iirc. And parts of Chicago (a city that was built ontop of an actual swamp)


Related; In mid 19th century, Entire neighborhoods of Chicago were lifted up on jackscrews to raise the street above the swamp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago


We were able to lift entire neighbourhoods in the 19th century but now we can't even build houses...


Coastal commission's head would explode if we tried to lift a neighborhood.


We can still build them now. It's a question of whether we're allowed.


I think that’s exactly what OP meant


Yep! I love my city for a lot of reasons but stuff like this are some of my favorite bits of Chicagoland trivia.




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