ABSTRACT
In December 1981 the State of Massachusetts Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Committee declared a site in the town of West Warren as 'feasible and deserving' for building of a comprehensive waste treatment plant by the Industrial Tank Corporation (IT). Even before the site was approved by the state, local residents began organizing against it. By early 1982 residents of more than twenty communities in the area supported the organization, known as STOP IT. They worried about the risks of spills on highways and residential streets, feared the gases emitted by incineration, and the danger of explosion caused by the accidental mixing of potentially incompatible substances treated by the plant. They also worried about seepage of buried waste into the nearby Quabbin Reservoir, which supplied drinking water for nearly 2 million Massachusetts residents. 1
STOP IT persistently raised the issue of justice. Not only would the facility place local residents at considerable risk, but it would permanently alter the tranquillity of this rural town. Why should these risks and inconveniences be forced on us, they asked, while the rest of the state suffers nearly nothing, and in many cases benefits from the removal of waste from their areas? After a two-year state-wide debate, IT abandoned its plans.
