Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Toward the Development of More Effective Policy Through Understanding Failure
EPA Grant Number: R823191Title: Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Toward the Development of More Effective Policy Through Understanding Failure
Investigators: Albrecht, Stan L.
Institution: University of Florida
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: June 5, 1995 through June 4, 1998
Project Amount: $295,891
RFA: Socio-Economics (1995) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice
Objective:
The task of finding ways to effectively dispose of the waste products of human activity has become one of the most pressing and difficult challenges of this generation. This assessment is particularly applicable to the disposal of radioactive wastes, where the response of communities to the proposed siting of a radioactive waste facility in their area has been, almost without exception, antagonistic and confrontational. For this and other reasons, states have been unable to meet federal mandates to find solutions to the low-level radioactive disposal problem, either through establishing interstate compact agreements, as encouraged by the low-level radioactive waste policy act, or by "going it alone." The continued failure of such efforts has resulted in the expenditure of very large sums of money and an increasing sense that we are no closer to a workable solution than was the case almost two decades ago when the policy act was first approved by Congress.
This study was developed to increase our understanding of those forces that are most responsible for continuing low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) siting failures. A series of case studies was undertaken in areas designated at potential host sites for a low-level radioactive waste facility. Very detailed case studies were completed in three areas that had been identified either by their states or by their multi-state compacts to be sites for regional LLRW waste facilities. These include Wake County in North Carolina (the designated host site for the Southeast Compact), Ward Valley, California (designated host for the Southwest Compact), and Sierra Blanca, Texas (designated site for the proposed Texas-Maine-Vermont compact). In addition, a somewhat less comprehensive case study was included in order to better understand an already "failed" siting process (Illinois), and some additional analysis was added to previous work we have completed in Nebraska. We have also included Barnwell, South Carolina (the home of what has become, de facto, a national LLRW disposal facility), and Envirocare in Utah (a "private" solution to the waste disposal problem) in our analyses. In each of the case studies, we sought to examine the major community, project, and siting process variables that were most important to understanding siting outcomes.
Community variables that have been addressed have included demographic, economic/fiscal, infrastructure, cultural, and historical variables. Project characteristics have included facility design, employment and other local economic effects, responsible party for construction and management, timing and duration of construction, and post-closure plans and policies. Process variables examined in the study have included major technological and political factors that are operative, as well as such things as the nature of the interaction within the community and between the community and other players at the governmental agency and private developer levels.
A number of methodological approaches have been used that have included the collection of both primary and secondary data. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork has been completed at each site. This has included both traditional participant observation and the completion of semi-structured key informant interviews with one or more individuals in each of the following categories: (1) elected and appointed local community leaders; (2) industry spokespersons; (3) compact commission, local, and state siting officials; (4) representatives from agencies charged to license and regulate the facilities; (5) representatives from environmental groups and other local and extra-local groups who have opposed the projects; and (6) other local informants who were particularly knowledgeable about historical or other factors of relevance to the project.
In addition to the key informant interviews with different project stakeholders, extensive files have been developed for each of the sites from secondary data sources. These include: (1) newspaper accounts of events surrounding siting efforts (all relevant news media were canvassed for the period from 1990 to 1997; some earlier materials were also compiled to help establish appropriate historical background on individual siting activities); (2) public information materials provided by industry and other pro-development groups; (3) documents on siting criteria, licensing requirements, and regulatory criteria, as these have been developed at the national level, by the regional compacts, and by the individual states; (4) information on public referenda and/or polling studies; and (5) studies conducted in the case study communities by consultants, university groups, industry groups, and others.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Impacts on Host Communities. The community literature consistently notes that proposals to site potential noxious activities in host communities are likely to result in increased levels of local conflict and dissension. Moreover, this conflict frequently leaves behind a legacy that continues to affect the community, long after the particular siting controversy has been resolved. Established relationships, patterns of responding, and ways of life are substantially disrupted, and it is virtually impossible ever to restore what has been lost. Even in those cases where there has been considerable host community support, the communities we studied reflect substantial disagreement about the desirability of the proposed facility and its potential benefits and costs for the community. Often the siting activities have turned friend against friend and neighbor against neighbor and, occasionally, the conflict has taken on an ugly, dangerous tone.
Based strictly on economic needs, we would have predicted that there would be more unanimous support for the proposed projects in several of our study communities, if only because the LLRW facility could result in substantial positive economic benefits that would follow from increased employment opportunities, increased local business, or impact mitigation packages provided by the state, the regional compact, or the project contractor. There were important differences from project site to project site. Community leaders in Needles, California (the community nearest the Ward Valley site) exhibited much more opposition than the formal leadership structure in the other communities studied. This seems to be driven by at least two important factors: (1) the site of the facility is over 30 miles from the community, so direct economic benefits are less identifiable; and (2) unlike Sierra Blanca, for example, no compensation for the local community has yet been worked out, either with the company that would build the facility (US Ecology), or by the State of California. In this case, then, few benefits from hosting the facility have been identified. Sierra Blanca, on the other hand, can point to tangible benefits already in place (with others to follow if the project is licensed and constructed).
In each of our study communities, there have been open expressions of both support and opposition. Both sides to the controversy are armed with arguments having some basis in fact. Both sides reject the "facts" advanced by their counterparts. Proponents claim there is a safe procedure for radioactive waste disposal, while opponents point to a failure that characterizes previous disposal efforts. While some community residents see only benefits, others see threats to health and safety, increase community stigmatization, and the destruction of longstanding ways of life. While some express great faith in the credibility and benevolence of local, state, and federal government officials and project developers, others express strong feelings of distrust and a sense of violation.
While there are a number of sources for this intra-community conflict, the most difficult ones are developing around the issues of equity and fairness. In fact, in some instances, there has been an amplification of existing divisions in the community along racial, ethnic, and/or class lines, divisions that may not seem so evident in the important tasks of daily living, but which become magnified when a controversial issue appears. Given that local proponents are pushing the prospect of economic development, some residents argue that a radioactive waste facility will only increase divisiveness along social class lines based on the fact that not everyone will benefit equally a perceived case of the rich getting richer and the poor, at best, getting no better off.
The role of outside groups is also important to our understanding of what is happening in the community. While there has been some involvement of outside groups in all cases of LLRW facility siting, the level of involvement varies greatly from site to site. In Ward Valley and Sierra Blanca, these outside groups provide financial help, organizational skills, and moral support. In Ward Valley, major state, national, and international environmental organizations are readily identifiable. In Sierra Blanca, this effort is somewhat less organized and more poorly financed, but in both cases, these groups play an important role in what is happening.
Social Constructionism and Siting Failures. Our analysis has clearly demonstrated the value of a social constructionist perspective in understanding what is happening with efforts to site LLRW facilities. Opponents and proponents of the various proposed projects continue to develop and reinforce competing project "realities," and use these to influence policy-makers and the larger public. These different versions of the "truth" are becoming more and more divergent and the rhetoric that supports them is becoming increasingly strident. All parties have engaged in myth-making and in the use of cultural symbols and values to advance their case. The different interpretation of events, circumstances, and data, and the growing solidification of alternative truths, along with their institutionalization in moral communities, is making facility- siting efforts increasingly difficult. In this context, it is difficult to find players who are more interested in finding real solutions than in marketing their particular socially constructed version of reality.
Because the nuclear waste problem has "interpretative flexibility," different groups can create and market their definitions of reality based on a wide variety of stated or hidden agendas. Opponents and proponents can produce and reproduce their different versions of reality by drawing upon both "objective" scientific-technical reports as well as more emotionally-charged and highly subjective "data." In siting undesirable industries and land uses such as LLRW facilities, this leaves little or no opportunity for compromise because the other side=s arguments, by definition, are not credible. The outcome is a classic zero-sum game win/win solutions become elusive, and traditional strategies for conflict resolution have little promise of success in a fight between incompatible "high principles."
The Problem of "Other Agendas". Our analysis also suggests that a significant contributor to current patterns of policy failure is that many of the parties assigned responsibility to resolve the LLRW problem are allowing "other agendas" to get in the way of the larger public interest. Part of our analysis details how the major players in the low-level radioactive waste siting process, federal and state politicians, the low-level waste bureaucracy, and the environmental community are all effectively undermining the process through their efforts to play out their larger group agendas on the local waste facility siting stage.
In our detailed case studies, we provide numerous examples of how these particularistic interests are blocking the achievement of larger national goals. To the extent that this is happening, two important consequences follow: First, because group interests become more important than the larger national interest, the probability of reaching policy gridlock is increased a pattern that now clearly characterizes the current siting process. In this context, substantial amounts of money will continue to be expended on activities that, in an ultimate sense, will contribute little to solving the radioactive waste problem. Second, because the more universalistic, long-term goal of addressing the LLRW problem becomes secondary to particularistic and short-term social, economic, and political interests, there is an increasing probability that even such important responsibilities as protecting public health and safety might be compromised. Unfortunately, our analysis reveals that, at least to some degree, this is now happening in the area of LLRW disposal.
Conclusions:
Our project results highlight a number of important issues that must be considered by those who have primary responsibility for developing and implementing policy for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. Despite federal legislation establishing requirements for the development of facilities for the permanent storage/disposal of such materials, efforts to site such facilities have been uniformly unsuccessful, despite the expenditure of very large sums of money. Even in those instances where it appears that most of the technological and engineering problems can be addressed, new facilities have been effectively blocked or delayed, largely because of local and extra-local public opposition. The result is that federal mandates, as well as a variety of interstate compact agreements, continue not to be met because host site after host site continues to be rejected. Among other things, our project findings highlight the importance of the human dimension of this rejection.
While we included a number of sociodemographic variables in our analysis that are typically important to understanding public response to locally controversial facilities, these proved to be less important in our analysis than were variables that relate directly to the radioactive nature of the materials to be stored. For example, perceived health and safety risks, concerns about environmental contamination, levels of trust toward those who assume responsibility for waste management activities, and expectations about area economic effects were more strongly related to attitudes toward the proposed LLRW facility in our study communities. Collectively, these variables are of much greater importance in differentiating between facility opponents and supporters than are any of the measures of respondents= socio demographic characteristics or attitudes about things like local community quality of life. This is hardly surprising because such variables address more directly the socially constructed interpretations that area residents link to the proposed facilities. This suggests that public response to things like LLRW facility siting, at least in situations similar to those studied here, can be understood by examining a relatively modest number of predictor variables. To the extent that this is the case, highly predictive models can be constructed to assist in the study of public response to proposals for the siting of any of a range of hazardous waste disposal facilities.
From a policy perspective, our study findings highlight a number of major issues. First, the economic problems faced by rural communities and their residents often are reflected in a more positive response to a hazardous facility than would be the case in areas that are less economically deprived. Either economic advantages for the community or personal employment opportunities for the individual play a role in affecting response. This is one reason for the continued effort to place such activities in rural areas. However, such siting practices raise a major equity issue. Is it really fair to continue to subject disadvantaged areas and economically desperate populations to higher risks from hazardous activities because their condition causes them to be more willing to assume such risks? In the case of siting LLRW facilities, these questions of equity and environmental justice are clearly central. The Sierra Blanca project would be placed in one of the most economically deprived counties in Texas, and in an area where approximately 60 percent of the population are Hispanic. The Ward Valley project in California is proposed for an area that has experienced substantial economic downturn for several decades, and is the general home of several Native American groups. Tooele County in Utah is also basically rural in nature, and is the home of the Goshute Indian Tribe. At minimum, in each of these cases, it seems necessary to take additional steps to insure that residents of such areas are fully informed about the nature of potential costs and benefits of the proposed facilities, are engaged in the decision process, and are adequately compensated for incurring potentially increased environmental, health, and safety risks.
Second, the legacy of distrust is clearly evident in our study findings. Many local residents perceive important health and safety risks associated with the placement of a low-level radioactive facility in their area, and such perceptions clearly affect their attitudes toward the project. Such concerns are exacerbated by the history of previous failures on the part of governmental agencies and private contractors to deal effectively with radioactive waste disposal and with the public=s substantial distrust of those who have been assigned responsibility for such activities. To address this problem of distrust will require sustained efforts on the part of all involved. Those efforts may even require the development of new institutional arrangements that instill greater confidence among citizens about the need for and the safety of proposed low-level radioactive waste facilities. At the least, they will require much greater attention to the role of public participation in facility siting and to social trade-offs, economic incentives, and more open communication in the decision process.
While our results indicate some level of local support for the proposed projects, the critical mass of local and extra-local opposition is strong enough to mount the kind of activity that has successfully halted similar projects in the past public protest, litigation, the rallying of political opposition, and so on. It is anticipated that public protest and episodes of rancorous conflict will continue to be the norm, at least until issues of equity and trust, of health and safety, and of the distribution of costs and benefits are more completely addressed and resolved. Although some policy makers will continue to pursue a technological fix to the problem of low-level radioactive waste facility siting, our study results suggest that political and social issues are more paramount and must be addressed if strategies that will more effectively address the disposal problem are to be developed.
The pattern of repeated failures of efforts to site a LLRW facility makes it clear that the disposal of radioactive wastes has become one of the most controversial and difficult policy issues of our time. What seemed like a more promising, rational, and fair approach that of making states responsible for their own wastes, but encouraging collaborative solutions through regional compacts has largely degenerated into a very costly exercise that more and more assumes an appearance of futility. Through a series of political and technological miscalculations, every proposed site for a LLRW facility has either been rejected or, if it is in the >running,= faces continuing controversy and delay. Powerful public opposition, prompted by strong antagonism toward the nuclear industry, broadly based fears of radioactive materials, distrust of nuclear decision-makers, and concerns about environmental equity and justice, have helped create what can only be described as a state of policy gridlock.
Journal Articles on this Report : 6 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 13 publications | 6 publications in selected types | All 6 journal articles |
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Albrecht SL, Amey RG, Amir S. The siting of radioactive waste facilities: what are the effects on communities? Rural Sociology 1996;61(4):649-673. |
R823191 (Final) |
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Albrecht S, Amey R. Losing sight of where we are going: "other agendas" and policy failure in low-level radioactive waste facility siting. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 1998;25(1):65-92. |
R823191 (Final) |
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Albrecht SL, Amey RG. Myth-making, moral communities, and policy failure in solving the radioactive waste problem. Society and Natural Resources 1999;12(8):741-761. |
R823191 (Final) |
Exit |
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Amey RG, Albrecht SL, Amir SA. Low-Level radioactive waste: policy failure, regional failure? Regional Studies 1997;31(6):620-630. |
R823191 (Final) |
Exit |
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Albrecht SL, Krannich RS. Opportunity/threat responses to nuclear waste disposal facilities. Rural Sociology 1995;60(3):435-453. |
R823191 (Final) |
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Luloff AE, Albrecht SL, Bourke L. NIMBY and the hazardous and toxic waste siting dilemma: the need for concept clarification. Society and Natural Resources 1998;11(1):81-89. |
R823191 (Final) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
RFA, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Scientific Discipline, Chemistry, decision-making, Social Science, Economics & Decision Making, demographic, facility siting, social psychology, community involvement, hazardous waste siting, decision analysis, environmental equity, political jurisdictions, socioeconomics, environmental policy, community-based, interviews, legal and policy choices, interstate compact agreements, social sciencesProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.