This was a student project by Moyan Chen for Forbes Lipscihtz and Paula Meijerink's course LARCH 4970 in Spring 2018.
In 2018, the administrator of EPA, Scott Pruitt was being condemned with a broken ethical compass and therefore has no business leading the nation’s top environmental regulator. While it is not the first time United States’ Environmental Protection Agency got into trouble. Dating back to 1980s the residents in a neighborhood named Love Canal were suffered from the leaking of chemical waste from the community. They experienced the darkest moment in their lives as the families were suffered from irreversible damages of their and their children’ bodies such as miscarriages, crib deaths, urinary disease and nervous breakdown. While the incident directly gave the birth of Superfund Act, which provides funding and authorization for the EPA to clean up critically polluted sites and hold the responsible parties accountable. Efforts had been made since the birth of the Act. While like most laws and regulations, Superfund Act to some extent, seems to be the pan in a flash. Many proposed Superfund sites today haven’t been taken into action and many brownfield are left over for a long period of time. This particular memorial, is therefore not only designed to invoke the feelings and senses during the activism, disclosing the buried unspoken truth above the ground, but also proposed to cast doubts on the nonfeasance of some current EPA officials. The leaking boxes will be assembled by weatherproof steel with names of the contributors and families in the event engraved at the eye level, whenever during precipitation or irrigation, muddy water would wash through the holes and slowly seep to the bottom and left over disgusting scars at the facade. The sediments and flowing water then gradually invade into the scratches of the concrete ground, where ruderal plants contagiously grow, and giving promise for the newborn. This looks like a fair vista. Yet, only the officials in this EPA building will be blinded by the beautiful cherry blossom. They assert a clean future for the United States while inevitably ignore the essence. It seems to be a despairing future. The memorial is hence a space providing external beauty whereas leaking successional transformations, and that’s where different thoughts and opinions collide. If look at the meaning behind in a switched position, having this ironical memorial in front of the headquarter of EPA building in D.C., the capital of United States, is the manifesto for change, which means current officials will spare no effort and being really confident about providing Americans, their citizens a new life with clean air, land and water.
