Hazardous Waste Siting and Democratic Choice


Book Description

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.




Siting Noxious Facilities


Book Description

Siting Noxious Facilities explains and illustrates processes and criteria used to site noxious manufacturing and waste management facilities. It proposes a framework that integrates economic location analysis and risk analysis, emphasizing the reduction of uncertainty. This book begins by defining noxious facilities and considers the important role of manufacturing in the world economy, before going on to describe the historical practices used in locating these facilities for much of the twentieth century. It then shifts focus to analyze the complex set of considerations in the twenty-first century that mean that any facility that produces annoying smells and sounds, is unsightly and emits hazardous substances has had the bar of acceptability markedly raised for economic, environmental, social and political acceptability. Drawing on case study examples that highlight pollution prevention, choosing locations at major plants (CLAMP), negotiations, and surrendering control of an activity, Greenberg presents a hybrid framework that advocates the amalgamation of industrial location processes with human health and environmental-oriented risk analysis. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of location economics, environmental science, risk analysis and land-use planning. It will also be of great relevance to decision-makers and their major advisers who must make choices about siting noxious facilities.