ABSTRACT
For the nation as a whole, rural lands present a convenient dumping ground. In many areas rural lands are being redefined by powerful non-rural interests as suitable sites for the cast-off, unwanted by-products of society, thus creating an urban-to-rural effluent flow of unknown magnitude. For rural residents, however, the commodities they are asked to store usually represent an unwanted intrusion. From low-level radioactive waste to a variety of other locally unwanted land uses, many rural American communities are threatened with the prospect that their landscape will become what one resident termed "a rural solution for urban pollution." In New York State, incinerator capacity and land for ash burial is greater than in Connecticut, so there is not yet a statewide ash crisis. The federal radioactive waste legislation, amended in 1985 to include a timetable and fines for noncompliance, triggered a series of actions by state governments.
