What was the worst environmental disaster in the United States?
What was the worst environmental disaster in the United States? Many accidents and events have done serious environmental damage in the United States, but have you ever wondered which was the worst? Answer: If you guessed the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the 2008 coal ash spill in Tennessee or the Love Canal toxic dump disaster that came to light in the 1970s, you’re decades too late in every case. Scientists and historians generally agree that the Dust Bowl—created by the drought, erosion and dust storms, or “black blizzards,” of the so-called Dirty Thirties—was the worst and most prolonged environmental disaster in American history. The dust storms started at about the same time that the Great Depression really started to grip the country, and continued to sweep across the Southern Plains—western Kansas, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, and the panhandle regions of Texas and Oklahoma—until the late 1930s. In some areas, the storms didn’t relent until 1940. Decades later, the land is
