=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #238
—June 19, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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THE REGULATORY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
The partnership between government and the waste “management”
industry continues to flourish. Industry produced 345 million
tons of legally-hazardous waste in 1990 [1] and government takes
the position that government has an obligation to provide waste
disposal service for all those toxins. This means government has
got to find citizens who are willing to accept massive amounts of
poisons dumped or burned in their backyards. Willing citizens are
harder and harder to find, so government agents now employ
special methods of persuasion to try to convince skeptics that
waste disposal is “safe,” meaning that the “risks” are
“acceptable.” Simply holding public hearings (which they
glorified with the title “public participation” in the ’80s)
didn’t do the trick, so an artful technique called “risk
assessment” was developed. The explicit aim of risk assessment is
to convince people that some number of citizens must be killed
each year to maintain a national lifestyle based on necessities
like Saran Wrap, throw-away cameras and lawns without dandelions.
When persuasion fails, government simply tries to bully people
into accepting waste disposal facilities. For example, the people
of Jacksonville, Arkansas, have voted on three occasions not to
allow government and industry to erect an incinerator in the
middle of a residential area in their town for the purpose of
burning highly-toxic chemical warfare wastes–but the
regulatory-industrial complex has evidently decided that it needs
to set a precedent burning such wastes in human communities, so
EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) is pressing ahead
despite welljustified fears and opposition by local people.[2]
With municipal solid waste (MSW), the story is the same.
Americans produced an estimated 170 million tons of MSW in
1990,[3] much of it toxic and dangerous though not legally
“hazardous.” Increasingly, citizens are opposing landfills and
incinerators in favor of recycling and waste reduction. But
government takes the position that government has an obligation
to provide waste disposal facilities. Why?
The waste “management” industry is one that can be readily
monopolized by the people who own landfills and incinerators; the
owners of such facilities can simply refuse to accept wastes from
competitive haulers. Thus competition can be readily eliminated
and waste “management” firms can charge higher and higher prices
for their services. In contrast, recycling, and waste reduction
are not easily monopolized by a few large firms. Any enterprising
citizen can get into the recycling business and, by developing a
better mousetrap, can grab a share of the market.
The federal government has formed an unspoken but obvious
alliance with the giant waste haulers-those who own the most
landfills and all of the incinerators. Many of the corporate
officers in these firms used to be government officials
themselves–they wrote the regulations that created the modern
waste “management” industry. Many of today’s top government
officials–the ones who make policy–can look forward to
highly-paid jobs with waste “management” firms when they retire
from government service. This phenomenon is now so common that it
has been given a special name–the “revolving door.” The waste
“management” firms also make generous contributions to election
campaigns, so one hand washes the other. It is therefore not
surprising that government has decided it has an obligation to
provide waste disposal locations–landfills and
incinerators–whether local citizens want them or not. The
alternative–waste reduction–is inconvenient for the producers
of waste and financial death for the waste “management” industry.
Perhaps most importantly, industry aggressively opposes any
serious efforts by government to force waste reduction because
this represents government intrusion into manufacturing
processes. For 200 years American industry has guarded its right
to make all manufacturing decisions, regardless of the
consequences for the rest of society. Few politicians are willing
to risk the wrath of powerful industrial leaders, so government
shies away from policies that would force waste reduction and,
instead, forms alliances with industry to find sites for more
dumps and incinerators.
Given the kinds of waste disposal technologies that are available
today (landfills, injection wells, and incinerators), only a fool
would willingly accept a waste disposal facility in his or her
backyard. Even risk assessment enthusiasts admit that the closer
you are to such a facility the greater the chance that you will
be among the unlucky souls selected at random to die in the name
of progress. There are a few communities where political
leadership is in such short supply that elected officials (often
with a little help from their friends in the waste disposal
industry) are embracing proposals for new dumps and incinerators.
However, even in these communities, many people know in their
bones waste disposal is always dirty and dangerous, and they are
fighting it.
Traditionally, waste disposal has been dirty. However, during the
last 50 years, with the rise of the American chemical industry
and the development of a modern lifestyle based on thousands of
toxic compounds, waste disposal has become not only dirty but
also truly dangerous.
The traditional place to put waste dumps and incinerators was “on
the other side of the tracks”–in the part of town where
African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and poor whites
lived. This pattern has now been thoroughly documented in a new
book by Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie–a study of “the
imposition of all types of toxins on black communities through
the siting of garbage dumps, hazardous-waste landfills,
incinerators, smelter operations, paper mills, chemical plants,
and a host of other polluting industries.”[4]
As African-American and Hispanic communities have organized
themselves to oppose the regulatory-industrial complex, the
grass-roots movement for environmental justice has become
broader, deeper, more diverse, and much more powerful. It has
become difficult for industry and its acolytes in government to
find any communities willing to sacrifice their quality of life
and the lives of their citizens just so Dow and DuPont can
continue making exotic substitutes for traditional materials
(glass, iron, cotton, wool, and wood). The federal government has
therefore now opened up a new front in the waste wars. Uncle Sam
is working hand-in-glove with dozens of waste companies eager to
site dumps and incinerators on land belonging to native peoples,
out in Indian Country. Details next week.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Monica P. Muniak and others, A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS OF
HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT (Cleveland Heights, Oh: Leading Edge
Reports, December, 1990), pg. 2. Available for $1950.00 from:
Leading Edge reports, 12417 Cedar Rd., Cleveland Heights, Oh
44106; phone (216) 791-5500..”
Descriptor terms: hazardous materials; risk assessment;
jacksonville; ak; epa; solid waste industry; federal; revolving
door; race; african americans; latinos; hispanics; asian
americans; bullard; citizen groups;