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HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 135 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. site in its territory. Such is the case with the siting of high-level radioactive waste repositories in which states are accorded a right to disapprove but such disapproval must be sustained by majority vote of one of the houses of Congress. For siting of repositories for hazardous nonradioactive waste, about 25 states employ some form of preemption to site facilities (Morell, 1984, p. 560). The key assumptions of site selection through imposition by central authority are as follows: ⢠Local concern over risk can be abated through an unbiased, technically oriented siting process using established means of public hearings and information dissemination. ⢠Higher authorities responsible for siting and the protection of public health possess sufficient credibility to command eventual local tolerance of the siting decision. ⢠Committed opponents will not succeed in producing lower government use of institutional means to resist the siting decision. Although special cases may exist in which these assumptions hold, they certainly are not valid generally. The public perception of risk evokes substantial fear of sites, and this cannot be allayed by institutions that command little trust. In the absence of special efforts to achieve fairness, the chosen site almost invariably views itself as victimized. A higher authority's use of preemptive actions to overcome the opposition usually succeeds in escalating the intensity of the opposition and broadening its scope. For these reasons, as Morell (1984, p. 560) points out, the power of central authority tends to be illusory. It is not surprising, then, that this approach (along with others) has failed to solve the problems of siting waste facilities. Approach 3: Bartered Consent The reaction to the evident problems with site imposition by central authority has produced a swing of the pendulum to a strategy of local acceptance for sites through intergovernmental bartering. The central problems of siting, in this view, are the geographical dissociation of benefits and harms and the inability of the host area to share in the siting decision. This conception of the siting problem leads readily to a clear solutionâprovide compensation to the residents of a prospective host site and give them the means to bargain for the appropriate amount. Elsewhere in this volume, Howard Kunreuther provides a thoughtful review of a number of alternatives for compensation and incentive systems. Compensation and incentives serve four purposes:
HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 136 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. 1. They change local motivation to oppose the facility ''by reducing the costs each neighbor expects to suffer should the facility be built'' (O'Hare et al., 1983, p. 70). 2. They help to redress equity. 3. They increase efficiency of facility planning because all costs and benefits are better accounted for (O'Hare et al., 1983, p. 70). 4. They promote "negotiation, as opposed to confrontation, in the resolution of siting decisions" (O'Hare et al., 1983, p. 74). This notion of bartering for local acceptance of a facility site is at the heart of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which provides a substantial role for the states in repository siting through the ambiguous process of "consultation and cooperation" (as changed from "consultation and concurrence"), the right to disapprove a site (which must be sustained by a house of Congress), and an impact-mitigation fund that has no specified limit. Congressional staff members involved in drafting the legislation indicate a clear sense in Congress that a large carrot (the mitigation fund), with the threat of a stick (presidential selection of the site) in the background, would ultimately win over a prospective host state. In the case of hazardous nonradioactive waste, eight states have enacted compensation plans coupled with state preemption, whereas four others (Colorado, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) have coupled compensation with shared authority, the classic bartering approach. The case of Massachusetts is particularly interesting because it was closely informed by the conceptual work of O'Hare, Bacow, and Sanderson (1983). The Massachusetts approach has a number of key ingredients: it gives the primary siting roles to the developer and the host community, requires a negotiated or arbitrated settlement between the two, includes impact mitigation and compensation to the host community as key features of the siting agreement, limits the basis on which the community can exclude the facility, and submits impasses between developer and host community to an arbitrator (Bacow and Milkey, 1983, pp. 4â 5). Bartered consent as an approach to siting of hazardous waste facilities rests upon four key assumptions: 1. The underlying problem that drives local opposition is the geographical dissociation of benefits and risks. 2. Voluntary consent is achievable through incentives and through direct bilateral negotiations that define the terms of community acceptance. 3. The long-term impacts of the facility can be defined with sufficient precision to formulate an appropriate compensation package before siting. 4. The developer and state regulatory bodies can command sufficient
