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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.34961 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Fletcher, Thomas Hobbs. |
| Contributors | Ewing, Gordon (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Geography.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001641521, proquestno: NQ44430, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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