"By matching agency decision data to detailed census information using geographic information systems (GIS) technology, the authors show that most hazardous waste sites do not pose sufficient risk to merit the most stringent cleanup options. Those sites that do pose considerable risk to exposed populations often receive inadequate attention, because government decisions to target cleanups are based more on political factors than on actual risks. The authors propose policy reforms that could significantly reduce cleanup costs without sacrificing the protection of human health."--BOOK JACKET.
This volume explores the processes by which hazardous waste policies are formulated and implemented. A collection of papers by distinguished scholars in the field, this is the first treatment of the subject to address both the international and the domestic policy arenas. Also the most current discussion of the topic available, the book includes several articles which deal with the landmark 1984 amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. An important adjunct to courses in environmental politics, public policy, and intergovernmental relations, this book sheds new light on the complex political process by which hazardous waste politics are developed, enacted into law, enforced, and reassessed.
This volume analyzes the politics of hazardous waste siting and explores promising new strategies for siting facilities. Existing approaches to waste siting facilities have almost entirely failed, across all industrialized countries, largely because of community or NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) opposition. This volume examines a new strategy, voluntary choice siting--a process requiring mutual decisions negotiated between facility developers and the host communities. This bottom-up approach preserves democratic rights, recognizes the importance of public perceptions, and addresses issues of equity. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of experts probes recent examples of waste facilities siting in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan. Both the successes and the failures presented offer practical insights into the siting process. The book includes an introductory review of the literature on facility siting and the NIMBY phenomenon as well as instructive essays on the use of voluntary processes in facilities siting. This book will be of value to policymakers, industry, and environmental groups, as well as to those working in environmental studies and engineering, political science, public health, geography, planning, and business economics.
In the popular politics of hazardous waste, Andrew Szasz finds an answer, a scenario for taking the most pressing environmental issues out of the academy and the boardroom and turning them into everyone's business. This work reconstructs the growth of a powerful movement around the question of toxic waste. Szasz follows the issue as it moves from the world of "official" policy-making, onto television and into popular consciousness, and then into neighbourhoods, spurring on the formation of thousands of local, community-based groups. He shows how, in less than a decade, a rich infrastructure of more permanent social organizations emerged from this movement, expanding its focus to include issues like municipal waste, military toxics, and pesticides. Szasz identifies the force that pushed environmental policy away from the traditional approach - pollution removal - toward the superior logic of pollution prevention. He discusses the conflicting official responses to the movement's evolution, revealing that, despite initial resistance, law-makers eventually sought to appease popular discontent by strengthening toxic waste laws. In its success, Szasz suggests, this movement may even prove to be the vehicle for reinvigorating progressive politics.
Assuming no previous knowledge, this second edition provides comprehensive coverage for a first course in hazardous waste management for civil, environmental engineers, and managers. The update includes material on the new USEPA revisions to the Solid and Hazardous Waste Regulations and the new e-Manifest Rule. It is written primarily for generators of hazardous waste with a primary emphasis on source reduction, waste minimization, reuse, and recycling before waste disposal. Numerous case studies from the field and clarification of regulations simplify this complex topic. The book provides guidance on how to determine the proper category of hazardous waste generators, with separate and distinct sets of requirements for the three different categories of generators, and gives basic supplemental guidance for transporters, storage, and disposal facilities. It covers proper completion of hazardous waste manifests and reports. The book explains record keeping, personnel training, and other requirements necessary to be in full compliance on inspections. A companion CD with regulatory forms, data is included. FEATURES: • Provides numerous, field case studies and clarification of new regulations to simplify this complex topic • Includes material on the new USEPA revisions to the Solid and Hazardous Waste Regulations and the new e-Manifest Rule • Covers all the major government regulations from inception to current practice • Explains record keeping, personnel training, and requirements necessary for full compliance on inspections • Includes companion CD with regulatory forms, data Selected Topics: Introductory history and overview of hazardous waste management laws, rules and regulations; a practical guide to complying with the regulations, including the identification of hazardous wastes; proper management of these wastes on-site; preparing generator annual reports, manifests, personnel safety training; hazardous waste management training for staff; proper record-keeping for future regulatory inspections.
Despite numerous small success stories, the big picture of America’s toxics programs is one of overall failure. Superfund has failed to Clean up America’s worst dump sites; policies to regulate generation of new hazardous waste have foundered; standards have been set for only eight of several hundred air toxics; transportation spills and industrial
where Jeremy Richardson, Albert Weale and Hugh Ward were excellent hosts at the Department of Government and Thomas Christiansen a very good roommate. Having included the UK as a country where decision processes were far less participatory (and thus ‘worse’ in my own view) than those in the Netherlands, I started doing my first interviews there, which were mainly intended to identify suitable case studies for research. But then I read a highly critical review of a book that had a similar topic as my study. The critique was that cases of hazardous waste siting cannot adequately be studied without understanding their national context. This made me decide to devote some attention to the legal context of hazardous waste siting in the three countries of interest (which is of course only a part of the national context) and its development through the years. The study of the UK system of environmental regulation and land use planning was not a simple issue, and I was warned various times (for instance by Andrew Blowers at the Open University) that the legislation was highly complex and easily misinterpreted. I felt personally touched by such warnings and decided that I should perhaps approach the UK system a bit less as an evil empire and maybe be a bit more ‘objective’ in my appraisals.
The pendulum of environmental policy swings from one extreme to the other, depending on which camp is in power and who has the ear of the media. Underkill is followed by overkill. Concern breeds action; disillusion breeds reaction. The Environmental Pendulum provides a thoughtful and evenhanded assessment of this conflict. Tens of thousands of sites across the country are contaminated with toxic chemicals. Environmentalists warn us that this legacy of carelessness is seriously affecting both human health and the ecological balance of nature. They point out that even improved industrial practices will not eliminate future chemical releases to the environment. Their demand for regulatory control has received wide public support and led to the passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980. Now, after twenty years, the value of the Superfund program is being challenged by corporate America, which argues that excessive cleanup costs have the potential to bankrupt the nation. R. Allan Freeze outlines the difficulties associated with the management of hazardous waste and offers a balanced account of the controversy over the role of environmental contamination in human health. Freeze clarifies what matters and what doesn't with respect to chemical contaminants in the environment, arguing that environmental policies should be based on an accurate appraisal of the risks associated with these toxins. He concludes the book with a brilliant summation of the good news and the bad news of environmental pollution, describing what can and can't be done to bring the situation under control. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 2000. The pendulum of environmental policy swings from one extreme to the other, depending on which camp is in power and who has the ear of the media. Underkill is followed by overkill. Concern breeds action; disillusion breeds reaction. The Environmental Pe
Second edition With a new foreword by Lynton Keith Caldwell In Managing the Environmental Crisis William R. Mangun and Daniel H. Henning provide a balanced and comprehensive guide to the management of complex environmental and natural resource policy issues. Taking into account new developments, trends, and issues that have arisen in recent years, the authors begin with the recognition, often overlooked, that it is not the environment that needs to be managed but human action relating to the environment. The authors review issues associated with a range of environmental policy concerns, including energy considerations, renewable and non renewable resource management, pollution control, wilderness management, and urban and regional policy. The history of these issues, recent actions pertaining to their management, difficulties associated with their continued presence, and the consequences of a failure to address these concerns are explored. Though focused on specific political issues, Mangun and Henning direct their attention to two large-scale trends--globalization and the political polarization of the environmental movement. At the level of the decision-making process, the incorporation of values--specifically addressed from multicultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives--is also discussed. International in scope, the book provides descriptions of the roles of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the formulations and implementation of national and global environmental policy. This thoroughly revised second edition discusses various successes in the arenas of environmental cooperation and management strategy while pointing to the new challenges that have emerged in the last decade.
