Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of economists like Milton Friedman, who advocated market solutions for
everything. He was also inspired by the success of British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, who was deregulating and selling off government indus-
tries. She divested the coal industry, the steel industry, and the oil industry.
Reagan, within days of his inauguration, totally decontrolled the price of
crude oil. His appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
which had regulated the price of natural gas, ended the controls that had
been in place for 48 years. The president saw the leniency in surface mining
control as a way to lower the price of coal. He terminated the synthetic
fuels program. Although done to save money, it prevented the destructive
mining of millions of acres of oil shale in Colorado and Wyoming.
Radioactivity: Pollution from atomic energy followed a different course
than other environmental issues. The danger began during World War
II with the Army Manhattan Project to invent and build the first atomic
bomb. The secret plants refining the fuel in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and
Hanford, Washington, discarded the lower-quality ore. Indeed, until the
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, scientists did not realize how deadly
the radiation was. After the war, nuclear waste piled up at Atomic Energy
Commission facilities. The first commercial electric plant began generat-
ing in 1958 near Pittsburgh, adding a further big source of contamination.
Nuclear safety was regulated by the AEC, which neglected this aspect in
favor of building more plants. Citizens had little way to influence decisions.
That began to change with opposition to the proposed plant in Shoreham
on Long Island begun in 1966. The AEC promoted its construction, local
officials saw it as a clean way to provide electricity and increase taxes, and
the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) wanted profits, but a group
of local residents did not agree. The nearby village of Lloyd Harbor was a
wealthy community, and home to scientists from the Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, a center for biomedical research. They asked to intervene at
hearing before the AEC staff to voice their objections. These scientists
made persuasive witnesses, even though their specialties were not in
nuclear engineering. One of them was James Watson, the co-discoverer
of DNA, who couched his criticism in nearly philosophical terms. About
the same time in Maryland, citizens opposed building a nuclear power
plant at Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay. By this time Congress had
passed NEPA, which required an Environmental Impact Statement for a
significant action. The AEC maintained merely issuing a license was not
significant, but the US Court of Appeals disagreed. Now citizens had the
right to intervene at many steps in the process. It became a powerful tool.
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