This 1992 work completes Hayashi’s EPA Superfund series by turning from chemical manufacturing and nuclear weapons production to examine petroleum industry contamination—the fuel storage and distribution operations that quietly poisoned thousands of American communities during decades of minimal environmental oversight.

Jefferson Township in Ashtabula County exemplifies how rural areas absorbed toxic burdens from infrastructure serving broader economies. The petroleum facility operated during the postwar boom when Lake Erie transport and rail access made northeastern Ohio logical territory for receiving crude oil shipments and distributing refined products to regional markets. Pre-1988 regulations allowed unprotected underground storage tanks that inevitably corroded, leaking petroleum into soil and groundwater.

The facility’s dual naming—Laskin/Poplar—hints at corporate ownership changes that complicate environmental accountability. When petroleum companies merge, restructure, or declare bankruptcy, cleanup responsibility typically falls to EPA Superfund rather than corporate successors with assets to fund remediation. This pattern repeated across hundreds of petroleum sites nationwide where short-term profits flowed to corporations while long-term contamination costs fell to communities and federal programs.

Petroleum contamination operates differently than chemical manufacturing waste. Leaking underground tanks release products that sink through soil into groundwater. Benzene, toluene, and other volatile organic compounds create invisible vapor clouds seeping into basements. Contamination spreads diffusely through aquifers rather than concentrating in discrete waste lagoons, complicating cleanup and creating decades-long pump-and-treat remediation requirements.

Hayashi employed experimental three-dimensional photography, adding literal depth perception that serves conceptual purposes: petroleum contamination operates in invisible layers beneath seemingly normal surface landscapes. The enhanced dimensionality visualizes what groundwater chemistry tests reveal—contamination saturating subsurface strata, floating product atop water tables, dissolved plumes migrating through underground aquifers. The 3D format makes visible what normally remains hidden until vapor intrusion or contaminated drinking water wells force recognition.