One externalitiy -- unpaid cost -- of cars and sprawl, is cancer

It’s been more than a dozen years since the metaphorical alarm was first sounded, and yet the residents of Fort Chipewyan still don’t know what’s killing them.
What they do know is that there are still elevated rates of cancer in the northern Alberta community. They also know that nothing's been done to address the issue, despite community leaders asking for further investigation for years.
“It’s like a silent killer. You don’t know what it is that’s out there, what’s causing you to get sick,” said Chief Allan Adam, leader of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation since 2007. Adam was in Ottawa last week campaigning, once again, to get answers for his community.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/12/17/features/downstream-oilsands-death-cancer-comes-too-often 

100,000 oil wells need clean up in Alberta, Canada

The number of wells in the province slated to be remediated is about 3,000. However, there are more than 100,000 unproductive wells that will need to be cleaned up.

"The mess continues to grow," said Mark Dorin, who has had a problem well for more than a decade on his family's land near Didsbury, a town located 80 kilometres north of Calgary. For several years, the well was leaking gas into the air. His mother, Shirley, said it impacted her health when she would be out in the yard.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5089254? 

Texas oil booms characterized by pollution and waste

processhistory : "Mirroring the industry’s lawless oil towns, for much of the twentieth century, Texas’ oil industry regulation was minimal. In the 1920s and 1930s, gushers spewed oil across the desert. In West Texas, most oil was located on top of subsurface salt domes, which once tapped, spewed salt brine water across the desert. Oil storage tanks and drilling slush pits—used to collect chemicals, mud, and other debris produced during drilling—were unlined, often leaking into surrounding ranchland. Legislators critiqued such practices as gratuitous waste of a precious resource."

Economic calculation of EROEI. Are you including health costs and cleanup? What abut permanent damage to ecology? These are the uncounted costs of autosprawl, while profits is extracted from the oil well to the cul-de-sac.

More welfare for sprawl profiteers. Costs that don't come out of their profits.

The Repository - Canton, OH: "The Canton City Health Department and property owners are using such tactics to crack down on illegal dumping and keep hundreds of tires from piling up in yards, garages and living rooms."

The system of autos and sprawl creates a mess. The clean up creates costs that do not come out of the oil, auto, and sprawl profits. That is subsidy. Autosprawlsubsidy.


photo CantonRep.com/Scott Heckel