Disposal of Industrial and Domestic Wastes Land and Sea Alternatives (1984) / Chapter Skim
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1. REPORT OF THE PANEL ON SLUDGE MANAGEMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY
1. REPORT OF THE PANEL ON SLUDGE MANAGEMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY
Pages 8-38
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From page 8... ...
Fye, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Edward D Goldberg, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Philip S
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From page 9... ...
Other local governments have run into storms of citizen outrage that have thwarted well-intentioned plans to develop sludge disposal projects. In 1978, with the help of federal construction grants, Nassau County, New York, sought to solve its growing sludge disposal problem by building a community composting facility according to nationally tested methods.
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From page 10... ...
. Scientific evidence, economics, or regulatory constraints or combinations of the three have also been the stimuli for process changes such as the following: -- Recovery of chrome from tannery wastewater treatment facilities, -- Recycling of ferric chloride in sewage treatment for titanium dioxide extraction processes, -- Recycling of bark waste and gas by-products in the pulp and sugar cane industries for use as a fuel, -- Use of anaerobic digestion to produce methane from e organic residues.
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From page 11... ...
the public administration system in which waste management decisions are made, including the administrative regulations that interpret the laws, the people that make the decisions, and the public reaction to these decisions; (3) economic forces in the financial marketplace that affect the capacity of a producer of waste to raise capital or to generate operating revenues; and (4)
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From page 12... ...
State laws on regulating wastes are often modeled on federal waste regulations. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, for instance, established for the first time nationally uniform water-quality standards and pollution-control requirements.
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From page 13... ...
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 and other environmental laws add yet another dimension to this set of problems, since they include sanctions with criminal penalties attached. This can and often does result in an adversarial relationship between operating and enforcement agencies.
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From page 14... ...
The former would be preferable, since legislation revision would leave open the possibility of creating a whole new -- and equally unbalanced -- set of laws owing to the nature of the legislative process and the need to serve pluralistic interests. A third approach would be to enact a new federal statute that would require waste disposal decision making to be conducted that would give equal consideration to all media, allowing for the full use of (in an evenhanded manner)
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From page 15... ...
In addition to dealing with uncertainties resulting from insufficient data, decision makers must also address uncertainties with regard to time needed to evaluate environmental impacts. It took scientists about 10 years, for example, to ascertain that methyl mercury was the toxin in the Minimata Bay epidemic in Japan.
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From page 18... ...
It therefore appears that municipalities will develop sophisticated and innovative methods of raising private capital more easily if EPA simultaneously cuts back construction grants and firmly enforces standards and if accelerated depreciation provisions of the new federal tax laws are allowed to remain in effect. Municipalities can use these laws to facilitate private sector building of facilities and then lease or purchase the facility according to certain legal conditions.
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From page 22... ...
1.3.2.1 Weighting Public opinion may cause local and federal decision makers to weight cumulative concerns differently. The local point of view, for example, may be that a sludge disposal method should produce no potential groundwater contamination.
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From page 25... ...
The secondary effects of a given option -- the signals that are sent to those affected by its selection -- are often overlooked. A decision to require chemical neutralization of one waste stream, for example, might signal to corporate planners and others that similar action is likely to be taken with respect to similar wastes in the future.
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From page 30... ...
First, if equity is an objective of public policy, decision makers may reject the option that minimizes total cost on the grounds that it imposes additional costs on already disadvantaged groups; that is, it leads to an inequitable distribution of costs. If equity matters to decision makers, then the data and models used to estimate benefits and costs must allow the assignment of benefits or costs to specific groups identified by characteristics that concern the decision makers, for example, income level, race, or political affiliation.
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From page 32... ...
Models and methods also exist for estimating the value of groundwater, commercial fisheries, and other resources. If these resources were to be destroyed or impaired by pollution from waste disposal activities, these models and methods could be the basis for imputing the indirect costs of disposal.
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From page 34... ...
Over the past decade, conflict has been characteristic of the process for formulating ocean dumping policy both at the national level, where general dumping policies are set, and at the local and regional levels, where sitespecific choices are made. An unfortunate consequence of policymaking in an adversarial atmosphere is that it can result in outcomes that leave one or more parties to the decision worse off while the general welfare has not been improved.6 Such would be the case, for example, if sludge dumping activities in the New York Bight were to be moved to a more distant site at a greater cost to municipalities without a corresponding improvement in the quality of the nearshore marine environment.
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From page 36... ...
A policy of appropriately compensating losers associated with waste disposal alternatives could avoid the impasses brought on by the ~not-in-my-backyard"
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From page 38... ...
Raiffa, eds., Conflicting Objectives in Decisions, Wiley, New York, 1977. Chapter 12 discusses the application of a number of decision analytic methods in a coastal zone planning context.
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