Regardless of the total volume of wastes, it is commonly agreed that disposal and treatment supply fall far short of demand. Many hazardous waste disposal facilities were closed in the 1980s because of unsafe treatment practices and fears of environmental and public health dangers in the event of continued facility operation. Only a handful of new facilities were opened in either Canada or the United States in the past decade, and the majority of these are relatively modest in scope. Many of these new facilities have merely expanded the capacity of existing facilities, as in Michigan, or will treat only selected types of wastes, as in Quebec.

Swan Hills, Alberta, a town of 2,396 people that is 209 kilometers northwest of Edmonton, remains the only community in Canada or the United States to accept a comprehensive hazardous waste facility in the 1980s. It features multiple treatment and disposal methods and has potentially expansive treatment capacity. However, even this facility will not handle all Albertan wastes, much less those of neighboring provinces or states, allowing it to make only a modest contribution toward total continental hazardous waste management needs. As one of the most comprehensive surveys of hazardous waste generation and management capacity in the United States noted in 1989:

Once again, almost no new waste management capacity came on-line in the past year . . . the amount of waste management capacity that has actually become available during the past year is relatively small and is primarily directed at high-energy, liquid wastes. Thus, net waste management capacity for other types of wastes has continued to decrease, albeit more slowly, for a sixth year. (McCoy and Associates, 1989: 1-2)

With the lone exception of the Alberta facility, the Canadian situation is very similar. As a result, the single case of cooperation in Alberta will have to be replicated frequently in future years if adequate disposal capacity is to be developed.

Subnational governments in Canada and the United States dominate siting policy because of the absence of national siting legislation in both nations. Subnational authority remains somewhat more dominant in Canada, consistent with the constitutional deference to provinces on natural resource matters. These moderate differences in degree of decentralization are reflected in Figure 32-1 with the American and Canadian cases occupying different parts of cells 2 and 4.

Figure 32-1: Typology of Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Policy
in Canada and the U.S.

	Centralized	Decentralized
Regulatory	1. (US HLRW)	2. Florida New Jersey New Yori (US LLRW)	Ontario
Market	3. (Canada LLRW)	4. Minnesota Michigan Massachusetts North Carolina	Alberta British Colombia Quebec Saskatchewan

Key:
Centralized—national government dominant in siting process
Decentralized—state/provincial government dominant in siting process
Regulatory—government agency/agencies make main siting decisions
Market—private site developers make main siting decisions
HLRW—high-level radioactive waste
LLRW—low-level radioactive waste

The 1988 Canadian Environmental Protection Act may begin to chip away at provincial powers in hazardous waste management, although this remains highly unlikely. The American states must contend with the regulatory structures imposed by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). This legislation provides uniform national standards and permit guidelines for hazardous waste management, and has attempted to shift states away from land-based disposal methods. However, it operates on a conjoint basis, and more than forty states have acquired authority to operate RCRA permitting programs. Moreover, RCRA does not in any way establish a process for hazardous waste facility siting, leaving this matter almost entirely up to the states.

Given this latitude from federal legislation, Canadian provinces and American states have devised a wide array of policies to attempt to overcome this dilemma, few of which have demonstrated much promise to date. A fundamental dividing line between the varying approaches that have been adopted by individual provinces and states involves the nature of governmental involvement, as noted in Figure 32-1. Provinces such as Ontario and states such as Florida, New Jersey, and New York (cell 2) rely upon provincial or state environmental and natural resource agencies to make the main siting decisions and impose them on local communities. Under these "regulatory" approaches, governmental officials weigh a number of siting criteria—technical, economic, social, and political—and decide what type of facility is necessary and where it should be located. Local governments and the general public may be consulted at varying points of the process, but the final decision rests with provincial or state officials. A variety of coercive or consensus-seeking methods may then be used to either force construction of the new facility or gain local support for it. Private corporations may be included on a contractual basis. They may be hired to construct and operate the facility after the provincial or state officials have decided its location, the wastes that will be accepted, and the methods that will be used for their disposal or treatment.

By contrast, provinces such as British Columbia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan and states such as Massachusetts, Michigan, and North Carolina give their public officials a far more passive role in the siting process (cell 4). Private sector initiative drives the siting process under this "market" approach. After establishing general guidelines for safety, provinces or states wait to receive proposals from private facility developers to specify the site, the types of wastes to be accepted, and the nature of the facilities to be constructed. These private developers work directly with communities that would "host" the site, often negotiating the terms of agreement with little or no direct involvement from provincial or state officials. In the absence of proposals from the private sector, no new facilities will be developed.

Both regulatory and market approaches have consistently failed to produce agreements on hazardous waste facility in both nations. Among regulatory approaches, even the existence of a dominant governmental authority is insufficient to overcome local resistance. In fact, it often triggers enormous public distrust of any governmental role in siting. Among market approaches, the attempt to establsh a workable bargaining process in the absence of a substantial governmental role faces similarly rigid public resistance. Private site propenents repeatedly withdraw their proposals in response to fierce local outcry.

The Emergence of Cooperation in Alberta

Background

The record of governmental efforts to site hazardous waste facilities is a gloomy one, although a few Canadian and American cases have deviated from the NIMBY pattern. The most noteworthy of these involves Alberta's novel approach to siting and its major siting breakthrough. The Alberta Special Waste Treatment Centre near Swan Hills has proven a model of private, provincial, and local government collaboration, antithetical to the pattern common in most other provinces and states that have attempted siting. As noted in figure 32-1, the Alberta approach defies categorization in either the regulatory or market cells of the typology and in many respects constitutes a hybrid strategy. Both Manitoba and Minnesota have modeled their siting programs after Alberta and will be a test of its replicability to their subnational units.

The Swan Hills case is intriguing not only for its seeming transcendence of NIMBYism but also for its alternation of the traditional structure of the siting process and nature of interactions among key participants. Under many current approaches to siting, a conflict emerges that resembles a one-shot, zero sum game such as prisoner's dilemma. In such cases interaction between factions ends rapidly, as local communities "defect" rather than pursue cooperative strategies in conjunction with waste facility proponents.

Alberta has countered this pattern by transforming the siting process into an open-ended, non-zero sum game that, at least in the case of Swan Hills has resulted in multiparty cooperation. In the parlance of game theory, the case appears to most closely resemble an assurance game, where both factions prefer negotiation to conflict and both expect to receive optimal payoffs if they cooperate. The Alberta case is consistent with the pattern noted by scholars who suggest that, under certain circumstances it is possible to devise processes that lead to cooperative interaction, even among parties with considerable reason to be skeptical of one another and incentives to take adversarial actions (Hardin, 1982; Bendor and Mookherjee, 1987; Axelrod, 1984; Keohane, 1984; Oye, 1985; Rabe, 1986; Gillroy, 1990). Although the Alberta siting case may ultimately prove a fluke that cannot be replicated elsewhere, it does indicate that hazardous waste facility siting need not always be an intractable problem. It also suggests that careful attention to the conditions necessary to foster cooperative outcomes may be able to transform the process.

Such conditions are consistent with lessons for policy cooperation drawn from the modest but maturing political science literature on this topic. Some of these lessons are derived from institutionalist analyses which stress creation of new governmental institutions that can mediate factional conflict, establishment of mechanisms for meaningful public participation well before final decisions must be made, and development of competent and credible policy professionals to oversee policy and build public trust. Lessons drawn from game theoretic analyses of cooperation offer some similar insights, but they also emphasize the importance of altering payoffs through incentives that give communities greater reason to consider cooperation and the development of norms to generate a collective sense of responsibility for waste generation as well as guide citizen, corporate, and governmental conduct.

Beyond the Failed Market Approach

Alberta seemed a most unlikely candidate to break through the NIMBY syndrome in the early 1980s. The province began the decade with a market approach to hazardous waste facility siting that closely resembled the policies of British Columbia, Michigan, North Carolina Quebec, and Saskatchewan. That approach met a familiar political response as Alberta's market-driven efforts resulted in a pair of private site proposals that were spurned in short order by fierce local opposition. In response, the province placed a moratorium on the siting of hazardous waste facilities in 1980 and established a provincial Hazardous Waste Management Committee to study the problem and devise an alternative siting process.

The committee operated in the absence of any structured process for siting or provincial regulation of hazardous waste management, having been encouraged to design a novel approach. Its report provided the basic structure of the approach that was ultimately embraced by the Alberta legislature. This new approach emphasized volunteerism, as only communities offering to host a site would be considered as candidates. In addition, private developers would be asked to propose facility plans to provincial authorities. At the same time, the new Alberta approach established a major provincial role through establishing siting criteria and educating the public as to the nature of the hazardous waste problem and alternative remedies. It also was designed to allow provincial authorities to make the final decision on site selection and the private corporations to be involved in construction and operation of the site and ultimately to play a direct role in the management of the facility. This blending of features resulted in a systematic role for government in the hazardous waste siting process that was unprecedented among all other provinces and states.

Siting criteria were applied through constraint mapping, which ruled out parcels of Albertan territory that were deemed inappropriate for various physical, biological. economic, social, and political reasons. Contrary to siting efforts in other provinces and states that used constraint mapping, these efforts in Alberta were shaped through exhaustive consultation with the public. This was an important part of a process that provided for extensive public participation at each stage.

The Alberta approach also involved a potpourri of general information meetings and frequent sharing of technical and related reports with community organizations. The province established a host of liaison and other committees that were intended to foster regular and direct communication between public, provincial, and private corporation, and crown corporation representatives at every stage of the siting process. In the early stages of the site selection process Alberta Environment officials hosted more than 120 meetings in every county, municipal district, improvement district, and special area in the province. These meetings responded to citizen questions, provided briefings on the hazardous waste situation in the province, and offered general information on the types of criteria that ca be used in a siting program (McQuaid-Cook and Simpson, 1986; 1031-36). Those communities that expressed interest in possible participation continued to have far-reaching access to provincial officials and hazardous waste data. Communities that expressed an interest in this activity were offered a detailed provincial analysis of their area, which could prove useful to them in considering the viability of hazardous waste site as well as potential landfill sites or other land uses. Fifty-two of a possible seventy jurisdictions requested these assessments, and they were invited to volunteer to further explore the possibility of hosting a site.

Fourteen communities requested further consideration, although nine were subsequently eliminated on either environmental grounds or in response to vocal public opposition. Five communities remained eager to pursue the possibility of further involvement. All of them held plebiscites in 1982 that drew heavy voter turnout and overwhelmingly approved the idea of hosting a hazardous waste facility. Seventy-nine percent of Swan Hill voters supported the facility proposal in a plebiscite in which 69 percent of eligible voters participated. The town was selected by Alberta Environment as the site of a comprehensive waste facility in March 1984. Community leaders from the town of Ryley, which is 85 kilometers southeast of Edmonton and has 500 residents, were very outspoken in registering their disappointment in not being selected as a site host.

Swan Hills proved attractive to provincial policy makers because it was relatively close (209 kilometers) to the major metropolitan area of Edmonton and linked to this area by highway. At the same time, unlike Ryley and other candidate sites, Swan Hills had no immediate neighboring communities, so its acceptance of a facility did not require gaining the support of any nearby towns. Swan Hills also was eager to diversify its economy, which was previously reliant on oil and natural gas extraction, and attract investment of long-term economic development. Like many small Albertan—and Western Canadian—towns of this period, the Swan Hills' unemployment and bankruptcy rates increased rapidly in the late 1970s and early 1980s (McParland, 1981). The other four communities that held plebiscites over siting were also eager for economic development and diversification but were not in as serious an economic down-swing as Swan Hills.

Local political leadership played a pivotal role in building public trust in the provincial siting process and support for pursuing the waste management facility. They emphasized the economic development potential, the voluntary nature of the siting process, and the fact that the proposed facility was part of a comprehensive provincial waste management strategy. Upon initial discussion, many Swan Hill residents expressed alarm and formed citizen opposition groups. "When I brought the idea back to council, I was almost run out of town on a rail," explained Margaret Hanson, the mayor at that time. But after the council embraced the idea, they formed a citizens committee to hold regular public meetings prior to the plebiscite. These gatherings were held every week over a twelve-week period, and every Swan Hills resident was actively encouraged to attend at least two of them. All relevant provincial and local officials were available at these meetings to discuss any aspect of the proposal. "We became taxi drivers, dishwashers, babysitters, whatever it took to get everyone out," recalled the former mayor of council-led efforts to build support for the proposal. "We divided up the phone book and called everyone to town" (Houston, 1990). Such extensive deliberations also served as a forum to consider—and refute—claims from national and international environmental groups such as Greenpeace that the facility would pose dire environmental and health consequences if accepted.

Local leaders also attempted to defuse opposition by highlighting the slipshod, unsafe waste disposal practices previously used in Swan Hills and the province. There had been recent revelations of hazardous wastes being intermingled with garbage in area landfills and extensive dumping of oil industry wastes into ditches and waterways. "It's better to get rid of it properly," explained a local newspaper editor (Bohn, 1986). He emphasized that many Swan Hills residents were very familiar with such shoddy waste disposal practices in Alberta and gradually came to perceive the facility as providing a safer method of addressing a major local problem as well as potential economic stimulus. These extensive public deliberations differed markedly from those over similar proposals in other provinces and states in their thoroughness, openness, and ability to foster an atmosphere of trust.

They also made possible an extensive public review of possible economic and social advantages that might be generated by acceptance of the facility. Swan Hills leaders argued that the construction of a facility with an anticipated $45 to $50 million in capital costs and creation of an estimated fifty-five new jobs would boost the area economy and its capacity to attract desired developments, such as a new hospital. In addition, the crown corporation provided the following: $105,000 to cover expenses incurred by Swan Hills for town meetings, consultation with outside experts, and travel expenses; funding to enable the town to hire a permanent consultant to evaluate monitoring data; subsidized housing for approximately thirty-five family units; and purchase of a van to provide transportation for Swan Hills residents to the site, which is twenty kilometers northeast of the town. The private corporation responsible for development and operation of the facility supplemented these benefits with the following: approximately $65,000 to support various local activities, including golf course development as well as other educational, sporting, and cultural activities; planting 400 trees for town beautification; and a special medical surveillance program for all facility employees. It has also provided such symbolic forms of compensation as making headquarter offices available for public meetings, sponsoring a hockey school, and donating a bear rug to the town council chambers.

The process for finding a host community went hand in hand with a provincial search for private firms to construct and operate the facility. The Alberta legislature created a provincial crown corporation, the Alberta Special Waste Management Corporation, in 1982 and also began in that year a national and international competition to attract private proposals for site development and management. This resulted in nineteen proposals, which were later winnowed down to four finalists. One month after Swan Hills was selected as the site acceptable to both provincial and local constituencies, Chem-Security Ltd. (later purchased by Bow Valley Resource Services Ltd.) was selected to build and operate the facility. Representatives from both the private and crown corporations sought a high public profile in Swan Hills, attempting to maintain public trust and support for the project.

The Swan Hills Special Waste Treatment Centre opened in September 1987, with capacity to incinerate organic liquids and solids, treat inorganic liquids and solids, and landfill contaminated bulk solids. The center is expected to process approximately 15,000 to 20,000 metric tons of hazardous waste each year, although its potential capacity is significantly greater. It is the most comprehensive treatment facility ever constructed in Canada or the United States, given the breadth of treatment approaches and types and volumes of waste that it can handle. The center is expected to preclude any need for additional major facility in the province, the central component in a comprehensive provincial waste management and waste reduction system that also includes regional facilities for storage and ultimate transfer to Swan Hills.

The Swan Hills experience is unique not only in its ability to foster sufficient cooperation to attain a siting agreement but also in its fundamental transformation of the siting process. It suggests that it may be possible to overcome the problems that have been so rampant in both regulatory and market approaches. In at least the instance of Swan Hills, this alternative approach has transformed siting from a fierce conflict that quickly produces an unresolvable disagreement to a more prolonged bargaining process that culminates in an agreement acceptable to all participants. Some of the most crucial in this transformation include the following.

Tripartite Management and Governance

New, intermediary institutions have often served to transform highly conflictual situations into more cooperative ones. For example, Robert Keohane argues that new, multinational institutions have played a pivotal role in fostering cooperation in an era in which no single nation or institution is likely to enforce agreement through hegemonic power (Keohane, 1984). New institutions may be needed to transform the siting process, distinct from traditional agencies within individual states and provinces that lack public credibility, meet stiff resistance, and repeatedly fail to attain agreement. The introduction of a crown corporation into provincial hazardous waste management appears to have contributed to the cooperative outcome in Alberta. This corporation assumes a number of the important responsibilities delegated to either private developers or regulatory agencies in most states and provinces (Laux and Molot, 1988). It provides for direct governmental oversight of facility operation and also affords uniquely direct public financial and technical assistance to private corporations responsible for site development and management. As a 1981 government report endorsing the crown corporation concept noted, the corporation

would provide effective evidence of an arm's length position relative to government and industry . . . while allowing various government departments to continue their particular regulating, inspecting and monitoring functions. . . . [T]he public would be more likely to trust the administration of a crown body. Industry has indicated that if allowed to operate facilities in a free market environment, they too could function efficiently under such administration. Therefore, both concerns are met. (Alberta Hazardous Waste Team, 1981)

The crown corporation is distinct from Alberta Environment and related provincial agencies, which set regulatory standards that specify the ways in which respective wastes are to be treated. Alberta Environment also provides a system for registering these wastes and punishing regulatory noncompliance by either the crown or private corporations. At the same time that the Swan Hills siting decision and Bow Valley Resource Services selection were made, Alberta was devising one of the more comprehensive hazardous waste regulatory systems of all the Canadian provinces, and it was to be implemented by these agencies. In addition to regulating waste management, provincial agencies provide a number of requirements and incentives for waste generators to alter their production processes in order to recycle or reduce the volumes (or toxicity) of the wastes that would otherwise be sent to Swan Hills.

Public Participation

The notion of any significant role in the siting of hazardous waste facilities in Canada and the United States has become synonymous with protests that ultimately thwart siting agreements. Neither regulatory nor market approaches have found mechanisms of public participation that provide citizens with opportunities that enable them to influence policy and encourage them to cooperate. As Gary Davis has noted, common participatory measures such as formal adjudicatory hearings and informal public comment sessions "are usually held too late in the process to really make any differences in the facility siting decision and both tend to create hostility and discourage cooperation" (Davis, 1987:29).

Creation of meaningful methods of public participation may thus be pivotal to any future breakthroughs. Prolonged political dialogue may be essential to defuse the adversarialism so common in NIMBY-type situations and to move toward more unitary processes of conflict resolution (Mansbridge, 1980; Williams and Matheny, 1994). Moreover, multiple participatory mechanisms and outlets may be necessary if participation is to have a significant impact (Mazmanian and Nienabler, 1979; Gormley, 1989).

The Alberta approach offered a multidimensional system of participation that was clearly more substantial, and more likely to build public trust, than the ones developed in the other provinces and states that were examined. Ontario and Florida, for example, have attempted to impose sites and have provided only perfunctory opportunities for public input. Explosive political conflict has gridlocked both siting processes. Alberta also surpassed the limited participatory opportunities provided in market-oriented approaches, such as in British Columbia and Massachusetts, where citizen involvement was minimal or nonexistent until after a community was confronted with a site proposal.

This level of participation has continued into the operational stage, through a number of formal and informal mechanisms designed to maintain communication between Swan Hills residents, provincial authorities, and representatives of the crown and private corporations. The Swan Hills Special Waste Liaison Committee was formed in 1985 and meets regularly with members of the Alberta Special Waste management corporation and Bow Valley Resource Services. One member of the Swan Hills council is appointed to the crown corporation board, and facility managers maintain a high profile in the community and its schools. Observers of the public participation process consistently emphasize that it was essential to encourage this openness at an early stage and maintain it throughout, making possible a bargaining process that resulted in settlement and has preserved trust in the initial years of operation (Simons, 1988).

Compensation

Many provincial and state approaches to hazardous waste facility siting have been premised in part on the notion that host communities might agree to accept a proposed site if generous compensation packages were provided. Such packages could offer commitments of health and safety protection, economic subsidies, or support for necessary services such as transportation and education, and they could be agreed upon through negotiation (Portney, 1985; Mitchell and Carson, 1986). The notion of devising methods of compensation to defuse NIMBYism is consistent with lessons offered by game theorists, who suggest that tinkering with the level of payoffs and the structure for their distribution may result in unexpectedly stable, cooperative outcomes (Axelrod, 1984). In the process, highly regulatory and redistributive policies that local communities would normally resist might become more palatable if seen as facilitating local economic and social development.

Merely allowing for compensation to be discussed and provided does not result in cooperation, despite such an assumption by many provinces and states. By contrast, Alberta Environment, the Special Waste Management Corporation, and Bow Valley Resource Services proposed a host of compensatory benefits at a very early stage in the process—and offered them in a very concrete manner—rather than wait for the advanced stages of deliberation over a specific site. Swan Hills officials contend that the economic impact of the facility has helped Swan Hills overcome declines in oil and gas extraction industries, providing eighty-six new jobs and luring new industries eager to locate near the comprehensive waste disposal facility. Swan Hills has enjoyed prosperity in the years following facility approval, with major increases in housing starts, a $5-million upgrade of water supply facilities, the opening of a modern 25-bed hospital, construction of a major new office complex, and planning for a major industrial park in the 1990s. Swan Hills has also begun to lure hundreds of tourists each year, most of them eager to visit the facility. This has proven a completely unexpected aspect of economic development attributable to the agreement.

Policy Professionals

Policies that involve redistribution and regulation invariably lead to political conflict. They often require the guiding hand of nonelected public officials—or policy professionals—to facilitate bargaining, agreement, and implementation (Peterson, Rabe, and Wong, 1986). This is particularly important in hazardous waste facility siting, where political saliency and conflict are extremely high and the credibility of environment regulatory agencies has often been suspect (Price, 1978; U.S. Office of Technology Assessment 1985; 1988). As William Lyons and colleagues have noted, "the public has lost faith in those responsible for waste disposal—whether they are private chemical companies or public agencies . . . and is no longer willing to defer responsibility to 'experts'" (Lyons, Fitzgerald, and McCabe 1987: 89).

The loss of credibility of Alberta environmental officials helped undermine the province's market approach of the 1970s. A 1979 report of the Alberta Environment Research Secretariat indicated that provincial officials were "being seen as aligned with private industry in favour of waste management facilities, as opposed to being neutral" (Krawetz, 1979:10). This perception, along with the other important factors, served to scuttle facilities proposed in Fort Saskatchewan and Two Hills. This ultimately led to the abandonment of the province's market approach in favor of one that established a crown corporation with functions that could be clearly distinguished from those of environmental regulatory agencies.

The Swan Hills case has resulted in a remarkable coalition between leaders from each of the key components of the tripartite system and local government officials. A major conflict did emerge in 1985 over the role of the crown corporation, resulting in the controversial dismissal of the crown corporation chair by the Alberta environmental minister. This threatened to return Alberta to the adversarial days of the late 1970s, although the quick appointment of a highly regarded replacement as chair defused the situation (Glenn, Orchard, and Sterling, 1988: chap. 3, pp. 4-5). Important leadership has been provided by a number of key provincial officials with extensive experience in natural resources management and considerable public prominence. Elected Swan Hills officials have provided a solid base of support, with the former mayor and council playing a pivotal role in promoting the project and devising a public participation process that could garner trust.

Developing Governing Norms

Norms that guide behavior and lead to a collective willingness to address the problem of hazardous waste management have been notably lacking in most provincial and state siting efforts. A norm functions in a particular social setting insofar as individuals can be expected to act in certain ways and be punished when they fail to act in these ways. Norms may be buttressed by laws but take on a self-policing characteristic that is often fundamental to cooperative interaction and implementable policy (Axelrod, 1986). With regard to hazardous waste, neither Canada nor the United States has devised generally acceptable understandings of what constitutes appropriate conduct either individually or by private or governmental organizations. Moreover, there is as yet no great likelihood of punishment in the event of defection from the norm or refusal to make constructive contributions to resoltuion of the hazardous waste problem. This has led to extensive illegal dumping in both nations and explains the proliferation of abandoned sites that has necessitated, in the United States, the creation of a multi-billion dollar "Superfund" to facilitate highly expensive site cleanup. It has also encouraged exportation of wastes to developing nations, which has mire both nations in embarrassing foreign policy conflicts upon revelation of haphazard dumpings in heavily populated areas abroad.

Alberta has not resolved this issue but has taken unusual steps to begin to develop governing norms through its massive information and educational efforts. "The public needed to be able to identify with the problem before ever considering any responsibility in developing a solution," noted one analyst (Simons, 1988). Alongside these efforts, the comprehensive nature of the system to regulate waste management and promote waste reduction is intended to provide an overarching framework in which all Alberta citizens can begin to understand their personal contributions to the problem and their potential role in its resolution. These efforts have only begun to lead to norm development that might facilitate a collective sense of responsibility for the hazardous waste problem, but they appear to surpass those that have been attempted in the other provinces and states that were examined. Furthermore, Alberta's distinctive political culture may give it certain advantages over many other provinces and American states in developing such norms. This culture has been highly supportive of natural resource extraction as a tool of economic development and may be more trustful of private and provincial leaders than other, eastern provinces or many American states (Gibbins, 1980; Richards and Pratt, 1979).

Limitations and Uncertainties

Background

The ratification of a siting agreement and the opening of a comprehensive waste treatment center are surprising developments given the acrimonious pattern of hazardous waste facility siting in Canada and in the United States. However, the real test of the effectiveness of the Alberta approach will be the environmental, economic, and political performance of its hazardous waste management system over time and the experience of other provinces and states that emulate its unique qualities. Some initial concerns that have emerged in the Alberta program suggest that its implementation may indeed be smoother than that of other provinces and states but will not be foolproof. At the same time, the Alberta approach has already begun to diffuse beyond the province's boundaries, having had significant influence on new policies devised in neighboring Manitoba and Minnesota. These cases offer some early indication of the approach's likely effectiveness when it is replicated elsewhere.

The Dangers of Capture

Regulatory theorists have long warned that outward signs of collaboration between regulatory agencies and regulated parties can result in capture of the former by the latter (Lowi, 1969; McConnell, 1966; Stigler, 1975). Canadian environmental regulatory policy in recent decades has been far more deferential to the preferences of private and public organizations that contribute to environmental contamination than has American policy. The relative absence in Canada of environmental advocacy groups or a strong national government presence in regulation has often resulted in harmonious—but arguably captured—regulatory relationships (Rabe, 1989).

This more cooperative form of policy making is, in the eyes of many analysts, more efficient in economic terms and every bit as effective in protecting the environment and public health than the more adversarial American approach (Vogel, 1986; Brickman, Janasoff, and Ilgen, 1985). For example, Thomas Ilgen's comparative analysis of chemicals regulation in Canada and the United States emphasizes the relative merits of the Canadian approach (Ilgen, 1985). But this regulatory style may not be acceptable in the adversarially oriented American states and those more economically developed provinces, such as Ontario, that have increasingly embraced an American command-and-control approach to environmental regulation. Moreover, this more cooperative style of policy making has regularly failed to overcome NIMBYism in hazardous waste facility siting in a variety of other provinces.

The more cooperative approach may also lead to more superficial forms of public participation than would first seem likely, given the proliferation of meetings, outreach efforts, and citizen involvement opportunities in Alberta hazardous waste management. For example, the Alberta Hazardous Chemicals Advisory Committee, which coordinated the assessments of the provincial Hazardous Waste Regulation and its amendments, is dominated by industry representatives. More than half of the committee's members are from the private sector, with the remainder from provincial agencies or municipal associations. This complete absence of environmental advocacy group representation is characteristic of environmental policy making in the province, as the major North American organizations have only a minimal presence in Alberta. It is also consistent with repeated pledges by Alberta environmental officials to consult closely with the regulated community and not allow hazardous waste regulations to thwart economic development. In such a setting, capture could emerge once the political flames of NIMBYism have been contained, particularly if a community such as Swan Hills became economically dependent on the continued operation of the facility (Crenson, 1971).

Planning Pitfalls

The early experience of the Swan Hills facility may underscore the difficulty that a provincial or state government may face in assuming responsibility for all aspects of waste management. Since the facility opened, it has received more incinerable solids and less materials for physical and chemical treatment than had been anticipated. These surprises can be attributed in part to the fact that the province was so eager to get a comprehensive facility sited that the Swan Hills treatment center was "designed, built, and opened before authorities had any reliable data on the waste types and volumes being generated" (Glenn, Orchard, and Sterling, 1988: chap.3, p. 6). Moreover, Alberta Environment has continued to prove far more reluctant than American states (under the prodding of the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) to require waste generators to provide detailed waste production data to the province. This has made the projection of waste disposal needs a highly uncertain process.

As a result, Alberta has found its share of treatment center costs to be much higher than originally anticipated. The province provided $32.7 million to Bow Valley Resource Services to cover operating losses during the first two years of operation, and such subsidies are expected to continue for at least five more years. Moreover, the underutilization of certain components of the comprehensive facility has led Alberta officials to take a more receptive view toward importation of certain nonprovincial hazardous wastes to bring the facility up to capacity and trim operating losses. An original selling point of the comprehensive facility was its anticipated capacity to give Alberta complete control over its own waste management and the autonomy to restrict waste importation from other provinces and the United States. In fact, a 1985 Ontario highway spill of a truck destined for an Alberta storage facility led the Alberta environment minister to ban further acceptance of out-of-province PCB wastes (Glenn, Orchard, and Sterling, 1988: chap. 3, pp. 6-7). This was rescinded, however, when Alberta agreed to incinerate substantial PCB residues from a major 1988 fire in St. Basile-le-Grand, Quebec, a policy shift triggered in part by economic considerations.

The Swan Hills facility is far too new for any definitive analysis of its economic efficiency, capacity to respond to provincial waste disposal needs, or ability to protect the environment and public health. But its early difficulties illustrate some of the potential pitfalls that may occur when an individual province or state attempts to sponsor and manage its own facilities and relies on a comprehensive central facility to serve as the system's focal point.

Replicability

Alberta's unique approach to hazardous waste facility siting will have significance for all of North America only if it proves worthy of emulation elsewhere and can in fact be adopted by other provinces and states. The capacity of the Alberta approach to be replicated elsewhere with success is already being tested in a neighboring province and state. Manitoba and Minnesota have abandoned their ineffective siting efforts and borrowed heavily from Alberta in establishing new approaches to siting. Thus far, the Manitoba case is the more promising of the two and may well lead to a major siting agreement in the early 1990s. Like Alberta, it has established a crown corporation and an extensive public participatory process that invites local communities to volunteer as possible hosts for a comprehensive facility. Much like Alberta, Manitoba has a far-reaching system of hazardous waste regulation and offers numerous incentives to stimulate waste reduction. Thus far, it has met most of its timetables without NIMBY-like explosions.

Five communities had expressed strong interest in hosting a facility, although the Rural Municipality of Rossburn dropped out of contention after a January 1990 referendum was defeated. Among the remaining communities, the City of Winnipeg and the Local Government District of Pinawa are thought the most likely candidates. The Winnipeg metropolitan area generates more than 80 percent of the province's hazardous waste, and a nearby site would limit the dangers and costs associated with long-distance waste transport. Pinawa, a town of 2,100 residents located ninety kilometers northeast of Winnipeg, has appeared most eager to acquire the facility. It has a sizable concentration of technically skilled residents accustomed to environmental risk since the primary employer is the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment. Pinawa leaders view the hazardous waste facility as a potential source of economic diversification.

The Minnesota experience suggests, by contrast, that the Albertan model may not be so fully—or successfully—transportable to American soil. The state abandoned its politically disastrous regulatory approach in 1986 through amendment of the Minnesota Waste Management Act. Much like Alberta's approach, the new legislation sought local voluntarism through a series of public participation mechanisms and compensation packages. It simultaneously pursued the selection of a site and the recruitment of a private firm for site development and management. Although it did not establish an equivalent of a crown corporation, it does provide for possible state financing and ownership of any facility. This would give Minnesota a far greater role in hazardous waste management than most other states. Minnesota also made other adjustments, such as agreeing to eliminate incineration from any comprehensive facility, because of widespread public opposition around the state. It also must operate within the confines of fairly exacting waste management criteria that are imposed by the national RCRA program. This leaves state officials far less bargaining room than in Alberta or Manitoba (Reinke, 1988).

The politics of facility siting under this approach have proven far less harmonious in Minnesota than in Alberta or Manitoba. They seem far less likely to result in a siting agreement. Fifteen Minnesota counties expressed early interest in the possibility of accepting a site. Many of them were economically depressed area and were attracted by the possible compensation packages and potential economic stimulus that a site might provide. Each of these counties received $4,000 per month from the state, and the four finalists were scheduled to receive $150,000 per year for two years to assist them in technical reviews and in other ways.

A much more adversarial process has emerged in Minnesota than in Alberta. Fourteen counties dropped out, and the one that remains, Red Lake in the northwestern part of the state, may follow this pattern. Local and national environmental advocacy groups proved quite active and encouraged counties to withdraw their offers of participation. Moreover, the staff of the Waste Management Board became divided and suffered major turnover, severely damaging the credibility of the board. Public trust further eroded when the media revealed that the private firm that was selected to build a facility if a site was agreed upon has a poor environmental safety record in other states. In short, there are strong signs of NIMBYism in Minnesota, despite its emulation of the Albertan process. However, the Minnesota experiment deviated from the Alberta approach in several critical aspects, including less extensive public participation processes, the absence of a crown corporation, and less comprehensive compensation packages. Further experimentation among states is necessary to determine whether the Alberta approach is in fact replicable in the United States.

Conclusions

Hazardous waste facility siting poses a series of fundamental political problems that are common to Canadian provinces and American states. The prevailing policy approaches of the 1970s and 1980s have repeatedly failed to produce significant siting agreements. By contrast, an alternative approach has been devised in Alberta that has resulted in a major siting breakthrough. This case meets a number of important conditions on the attainment of policy cooperation that are established by the growing body of scholarship on that subject. The Alberta approach may warrant emulation elsewhere and has already served as a model adopted by one neighboring province and one neighboring state. Of course, it should not be viewed at this early stage as either flawless or capable of easy transborder diffusion. Though the initial political agreement is noteworthy, the mere construction of a comprehensive facility does not guarantee technological effectiveness, long-term economic efficiency in waste management, or protection of the environment or public health. Nonetheless, the case suggests that the NIMBY syndrome need not be insurmountable and that careful attention to the institutional, economic, and social aspects of the siting process can enhance the likelihood of cooperation.

Notes

Acknowledgment: Funding for this research was provided by a grant from the Canadian Studies Faculty Research Grant Program. Research assistance was provided by Richard Compton, Debbie Consans, Margaret Daniel, Laura Flinchbaugh, Elizabeth Lowe, Jessica Miller, Marion Perrin, Pamela Protzel, and Robin Norton. Both sources of support are greatly appreciated. I am also grateful to Colin Campbell, John Gillroy, Philip Mundo, Paul Quirk, Mark Schneider, Eric Uslaner, Kathy Wagner, Kenneth Warner, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions, and to Becky Pace for her diligent word processing.

1. The word "hazardous" is generally synonymous with the word "toxic" in both Canada and the United States. Individual provinces and states tend to define hazardous, as opposed to solid or radioactive wastes, in somewhat different ways. Over time, however, the definition provided by the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) has become dominant. This legislation defines hazardous waste "as a solid waste or a combination of solid wastes that, because of its quantity, or physical, chemical, or infectious characteristics, may cause, or significantly contribute to, an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible, or incapacitating reversible, illness; or pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment when improperly treated, stored, transported, or disposed of, or otherwised managed." Solid wastes may be deemed hazardous under RCRA if they exhibit one or more of the following four characteristics: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity. (Fortuna and Lennett, 1987:26-27).

References

Williams, Bruce A., and Albert A. Matheny. 1994. Democracy, Dialogue, and Social Regulation.. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Index

Introduction
The Problem of Hazardous Waste and Alternative Approaches to Siting
The Emergence of Cooperation in Alberta
Limitations and Uncertainties
Conclusions
Notes and References

Back to Environment Index