Book Description

"The dissertation presents a focused history of the peripatetic VOC pollution problem associated with the semiconductor industry, exposing core consequences of atomistic thinking--industrial pollution proliferation. The increased separation of individual action from its social and environmental consequences has increased the difficulty of establishing monitoring of feedback loops that need to be studied. "Next, it reviews major environmental regulations governing groundwater quality from the federal, state and local levels as a context for evaluating how effective environmental regulations have been on groundwater quality. It develops a practical modular GIS framework-based cost-comparison model to examine whether pollution prevention is cheaper than remediation (after-the-fact) action. Environmental protection costs upfront may not be so hard for management to swallow. Information regarding well location (water supply and monitoring), construction, areal geology, permeability, and depth to groundwater; land-use characteristics; and location of pollution sources were compiled into a relational spatial database."--Author's abstract