Once upon a time, decades ago, before many an environmental regulation was promulgated, a consulting geologist was contracted to evaluate a site for development as a low-level radioactive waste facility. The geologist summarized the regional and site-specific geology and hydrology. In his report, based on what he'd researched and observed, he discussed potential consequences depending on how the facility would be operated. If waste containers were emplaced in a manner that maintained their integrity and the trenches were covered when not actively in use, the geologist surmised the site had a high probability of functioning safely and effectively. In that case, the possibility of leachate accumulating within the trenches, resulting in perched water tens of feet higher in elevation than the regional groundwater level, would be minimized. Unfortunately, the tale of that waste site is fictional. The non-fictional waste site's story has the same opening chapter, but the operational constraints outlined by the geologist were not followed. The site received and co-disposed low-level radioactive wastes and those that would later be classified as hazardous wastes in a total of 52 trenches. Waste containers haphazardly filled the trenches, were breached as they settled, and precipitation collected. Indeed, the warnings in the geologist's report were correct. Leachate formed in the trenches resulting in numerous contaminants, from tritium (which migrated at the same rate as water itself) to complex organic compounds (which underwent retardation, but still impacted the surrounding environment), flowing from the site in a newly-created shallow, perched water zone, years later daylighting on the hillsides and in the creeks down gradient of the site. This waste site's last chapter was written in a Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study when it was listed as a Superfund site. We'll talk about how more sites can have happy endings, when the story the geology tells is heeded.