JUDY FITTERY IS one of the millions of Americans whose life has been affected by the improper disposal of hazardous industrial waste. One hundred yards from her home in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, sits a tract of land once used as a town garbage dump, or landfill. For years, local industries brought their chemical wastes to this landfill and poured them into the ground. The wastes were absorbed by the earth, and have since moved the hundred yards from the landfill border into the soil beneath Fittery's home—helped in their movement by the water of rainstorms and by water flowing underground, which has drawn the chemicals through the earth.

Today, more than fifty hazardous chemical contaminants have been found in Fittery's yard. These contaminants include, among others, the cancer-causing metal arsenic, and the toxic chemical toluene, which is known to...