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Fear And Loathing In The Siting Of Hazardous And Radioactive Waste Facilities: A Comprehensive Approach To A Misperceived Crisis, Michael B. Gerrard
Fear And Loathing In The Siting Of Hazardous And Radioactive Waste Facilities: A Comprehensive Approach To A Misperceived Crisis, Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
Few laws have failed so completely as the federal and state statutes designed to create new facilities for the disposal of hazardous and radioactive waste. Despite scores of siting attempts and the expenditure of several billion dollars since the mid-1970s, only one radioactive waste disposal facility, only one hazardous waste landfill (in the aptly named Last Chance, Colorado), and merely a handful of hazardous waste treatment and incineration units are operating on new sites in the United States today.
In 1981, a leading member of Congress, relying on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicted that by 1985 …
The Victims Of Nimby, Michael B. Gerrard
The Victims Of Nimby, Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
It is a syndrome, a pejorative, and an acronym of our times: NIMBY, or Not In My Back Yard. It has a political arm, NIMTOO (Not In My Term Of Office), an object of attack, LULUs (Locally Undesired Land Uses), and an extreme form, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone). Acronyms aside, however, the question remains as to whether or not NIMBY has victims. Is anyone hurt by NIMBY?
Many leading voices in the environmental justice movement believe that minority communities are victims of NIMBY. For example, Professor Robert D. Bullard has written that "[t]he cumulative effect of not-in-my-backyard …
The Role Of Existing Environmental Laws In The Environmental Justice Movement, Michael B. Gerrard
The Role Of Existing Environmental Laws In The Environmental Justice Movement, Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
I will focus on what can and cannot be done under the existing statutory and regulatory structures and the common law to protect minority communities from environmental hazards. I will highlight some of the current holes in the legal system to suggest areas where statutory reform might be useful. Fights against these facilities break down between future unbuilt facilities, on the one hand, and existing facilities on the other hand.
A broad array of statutes regulates future facilities, such as landfills, incinerators, interstate highways, and polluting factories. Some of these laws are aimed at providing information and requiring the decision …