Bernadette Patrick moved away from her home in Endicott, New York, saying this about the town: "It was very neighborly and well kept, with lots of kids and families. Then all of a sudden it seemed like they put a skull and crossbones on all the doors. It was like a scene from a science fiction movie."[4]

The science fiction part is the large, white metal boxes attached to Endicott homes. With tubes burrowing down in the earth and shooting up high into the air, they're wired to pump air from below and jet it above. The idea is to disperse toxic vapors rising up through the ground. The vapor's source is industrial solvents poured down drains and dripped out of leaky pipes at the local IBM factory over the course of its seventy-five-year history.

Those seventy-five years have otherwise been good ones. IBM money and jobs drove the small town forward. As Wanda Hudak put it, "The IBM plant paid for a lot of college educations and cottages at Perch Pond."[5]The good feelings ended when a company IBM hired started showing up at people's homes to test the air and offer to install the mechanical ventilation systems.

1. IBM is paying millions for cleanup efforts. They're installing air cleaners on homes and pumping contaminated groundwater to the surface for safe disposal. An IBM spokesman said this about the toxic pollution, "None of it was done intentionally, but we still are sticking around to take care of it. We feel obligated legally, ethically. We are not going anywhere."

A. Make the ethical case that those who contaminated the environmentIBMshould pay all the cleanup costs.

B. Make the case that those who benefit from a clean environmentthe locals who work at the company and those who don'tshould pay for the cleanup.

2. When the extent of the environmental pollution became clear, it was also evident that the cleanup would be tremendously expensive. In general terms.

How could a cost-benefit analysis be mounted to decide between going forward with the environmental cleanup or closing the factory, shuttering the town, and moving on?