No description available.

The industrial history of the Great Lakes basin has left its mark on the landscape with more than 4,500 known hazardous waste sites on both sides of the Canada-United States border. The vast majority are closed and no longer accept wastes, but they still pose potential risks to the environment and nearby communities. For the past several years, state and provincial governments have proposed new "state-of-the-art" facilities as a way to allow industries continued access to waste disposal capacity, but with far stricter controls than most older sites have provided. Publicity of contamination incidents at existing waste sites, and also the institution of formal administrative reviews and public hearings for the location of new ones, have complicated the facility siting process considerably and led to the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome. Additionally, issues related to environmental equity and justice often arise, especially in cases where local residents are racial minorities or low-income (social equity). The problem also has a spatial dimension when one region is expected to receive wastes from, and for the benefit of, industries in other areas (spatial equity), or when a heavily industrialized community becomes slated for yet another facility (cumulative equity). Cross-boundary and local autonomy issues heighten the controversies as well. This thesis reviews ten hazardous waste siting disputes in communities on the Canada-U.S. border in terms of their environmental justice implications. In the majority of cases, opponents of new hazardous waste facilities based their concerns on spatial equity and a variety of procedural matters. Racial minority groups tended to base their arguments on cumulative equity rather than social equity. In some cases, local and regional disputes became international matters given the geographic setting along the Canada-U.S. border.

Cost-benefit analysis plays a significant role in the process of siting hazardous waste facilities throughout the United States. Controversy regarding definitively disparate, albeit unintentional, racist practices in reaching these siting decisions abounds, yet cost-benefit analysis stands incapable of commenting on normative topics. This thesis traces the developments of both cost-benefit analysis and its normative cousin utilitarianism by focusing on the impacts they have had on the contemporary environmental justice discourse and highlighting valid claims, misunderstandings, and sedimented ideas surrounding the popularity of cost-benefit analysis. This analysis ultimately leads to an alternative means of realizing environmental justice that both acknowledges the need for greater democratic interactions and attempts to work with, rather than against, the prevailing paradigm of reaching siting decisions.

This dissertation provides a feminist restorative model of environmental justice that addresses the injustices found within UNICOR’s e-waste recycling operations. A feminist restorative environmental justice challenges the presupposition that grassroots efforts, law and policy, medical and scientific research, and theoretical pursuits (alone or in conjunction) are sufficient to address the emotional and relational harm of environmental injustices. To eliminate environmental harms, this model uses collaborative dialogue for interested parties to prevent environmental harm. To encourage participation, a feminist restorative model accepts many forms of knowledge and truth as ‘legitimate’ and offers an opportunity for women to share how their personal experiences of love, violence, and caring differ from men and other women and connect to larger social practices. This method of environmental justice offers opportunities for repair, reparation and reintegration that can transform perspectives on criminality, dangerous practices and structures in the PIC, and all persons who share in a restorative encounter.