• The Valley of the Drums in Kentucky was a disaster where hazardous substances were leaching into a nearby creek due to deteriorating conditions of hazardous waste drums.

Considerable publicity was also devoted to other sites such as the Valley of the Drums. Again, while this disaster made headlines in the 1970s, the problem began over a decade earlier.

The environmental disaster took place in a rural setting just outside of Louisville, Kentucky on a 23-acre parcel of land that had become a toxic dumping ground sometime in the early 1960s. It was first discovered in 1966 when some of the drums caught fire, and it took over a week for firefighters to put out the blaze that spewed toxic fumes.

About 13 of the landowner’s 23-acres were used to dump hazardous waste drums. In fact, there were over 17,000 drums littering the surface of the land. The landowner continued to use the land as a dumping site, and by 1975 as a Kentucky environmental agency was conducting investigations, it discovered hazardous substances were leaching into a nearby creek due to deteriorating conditions of the drums.

The agency subsequently took legal actions against the landowner and finally ordered the landowner to cease operations in 1977. The landowner died later that year.

Once investigations and cleanup began, over 100,000 drums were discovered on the property. Many of the drums were in poor condition and leaking into the soil and the waters of Wilson Creek, a tributary to the Ohio River.

Around 140 different chemical compounds were found on the land, and it took years to clean up the site later known as the “Valley of the Drums.”