Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

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HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 118 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. Hazardous Waste Facility Siting: Community, Firm, and Governmental Perspectives Roger E. Kasperson With widespread urbanization and technological development, with increasing pressure upon land, and with growing concern over environmental and health protection, siting controversial facilities of all sizes and kinds has become increasingly difficult and has emerged as a national policy problem of major significance (Popper, 1983). Nowhere are the difficulties greater and the stakes higher than the perplexing issue of how and where to locate radioactive and other hazardous waste facilities. Clearly this issue, so centrally related to choice and fairness, will be one of the key emerging hazard problems over the next decade. The stakes are not insignificant. For example, the low-level radioactive waste siting program, still requiring a relatively small number of facilities nationally, has opened a Pandora's box of problems. The stake for society involves a broad spectrum of industries, hospitals, and biomedical research facilities, as well as nuclear power plants (Welch, 1985). It is already apparent that the initial deadlines set by the Low Level Radioactive Waste Act of 1980 will not be met—indeed will be badly missed—and the problems of political fragmentation and management issues to be resolved in mounting a coherent national program appear to be expanding rather than shrinking. All this has occurred during the initial stage of forming regional compacts for waste- disposal efforts—except for one state (Texas), the tough job of siting has not even begun. This paper undertakes three tasks: 1. to characterize the key problems involved in siting radioactive and other hazardous waste facilities;