Getting to Maybe: Some Communications Aspects of Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities

The United States generates roughly fifty million metric tons of non-radioactive hazardous wastes annually.[ ¹ - ² ], ³ While much can be done to reduce this figure, a healthy economy will require adequate facilities for transporting, treating, storing and disposing of hazardous wastes for the foreseeable future. Current facilities are far from adequate; new ones and safer ones must be sited and built. The alternatives are dire—economic and technological slowdown on the one hand, or "midnight dumping" and similar unsafe, illegal and haphazard disposal practices on the other.