In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war.
Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s.
This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.
Questions the literal burying of the nuclear threat and how it relates to expectations for our future
A rising ocean. A falling building. A toxic river. Species extinguished. A nuclear landscape. In a world so configured, the state of contemporary ecological thought and practice is woefully—and perilously—inadequate. Focusing on the government’s nuclear waste burial program in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Signs of Danger begins the urgent work of finding a new way of thinking about ecological threat in our time.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad began receiving shipments in 1999. With a proposed closing date of 2030, this repository for nuclear waste must be secured with a sign, the purpose of which will be to keep people away for three hundred generations. In the official documents uncovered by Peter van Wyck, we encounter a government bureaucracy approaching the issue of nuclear waste as a technical problem only to find itself confronting a host of intractable philosophical issues concerning language, culture, and history. Signs of Danger plumbs these depths as it shows us how the problem raised in the desert of New Mexico is actually the problem of a culture grappling with ecological threats and with questions of the limits of meaning and representation in the deep future.
The reflections at the center of this book—on memory, trauma, disaster, representation, and the virtual—are aimed at defining the uniquely modern status of environmental and nuclear threats. They offer invaluable insights into the interface of where culture ends and nature begins, and how such a juncture is closely linked with questions of risk, concepts of history, and the cultural experience of time.
Winner of the 2005 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize of the Canadian Communication Association
It is an unenviable task, but one that all state governments face: finding a final “resting place” for low-level nuclear waste from power plants, hospitals, university laboratories, and other industries. John Weingart was the official in New Jersey who for many years led this onerous charge. This book is the story of how he and a commission appointed by the governor, instead of imposing a top-down solution, designed an approach that would confront public fears by seeking a community that would volunteer to host a disposal facility. Initially, this novel approach was surprisingly successful, as leaders in a dozen municipalities stepped forward to say they might be interested. Once their interest became known, however, the process in each town derailed. Residents demanded assurances of zero-percent risk and expressed profound distrust of government assertions and promises.
Waste Is a Terrible Thing to Mind is a compelling, suspenseful, and amusing insider’s account of New Jersey policy and politics, but it is also a larger saga of the challenges facing society in the post–9/11 era when the public’s distrust of government is increasing at the same time that its sensitivity to health and safety threats is heightened.
For more information, see: http://wasteisaterriblethingtomind.com/
"Written with a wry sense of humor, it is a pleasure to read and could provide the blueprint for future efforts to find locations for controversial land uses."
- Marie Curtis, Executive Director, New Jersey Environmental Lobby
"A penetrating look at one state's struggle with radioactive waste ... offering some tantalizing reflections on the public understanding of science and how we, in a democratic society, deal with complexity and uncertainty."
- Jay Kaufman, State Senator, Massachusetts State Legislature
"A provocative story, laced with humor, demonstrates how public distrust of government can make it impotent. It should be read by anyone working on public policy issues, especially planning, growth, and the environment."
- Harriet Keyserling, Former Energy Committee Chair, South Carolina State Legislature
"Readers interested in environmental policy, land use and how governments make decisions will learn much from this fine reflective insider's account. It's also a primer on how to survive and thrive in state government."
- David N. Kinsey, Visiting Professor, Woodrow Wilson School Princeton University
"... a fascinating case study of how a government agency creatively tried to solve an intractable public issue. Although the agency failed in its quest to recruit a town to host a low-level radioactive waste site, Weingart's detailed and often humorous narrative of the agency's efforts is a clear winner."
- Jack Sabatino, Judge, New Jersey Superior Court
"... a very engaging and sometimes discouraging case study about the pitfalls and perils of trying to site a controversial facility the right way."
- Gregg Larson, Administrator, Center for Biometric Research, University of Minnesota
Contributors. Rodney K. Baxter, Julia G. Brody, Bruce Clary, Lori Cramer, William H. Desvousges, Riley E. Dunlap, Douglas Easterling, Judy K. Fleishman, James Flynn, William R. Freudenburg, Michael E. Kraft, Richard S. Krannich, Howard Kunreuther, Mark Layman, Ronald L. Little, Robert Cameron Mitchell, Alvin H. Mushkatel, Joanne M. Nigg, K. David Pijawka, Eugene A. Rosa, Paul Slovic
The toxic legacy of Love Canal vividly brought the crisis in industrial waste disposal to public awareness across the United States and led to the passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980. To discover why disasters like Love Canal have occurred and whether they could have been averted with knowledge available to waste managers of the time, this book examines industrial waste disposal before the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Colten and Skinner build their study around three key questions. First, what was known before 1970 about the hazards of certain industrial wastes and their potential for causing public health problems? Second, what were the technical capabilities for treating or containing wastes during that time? And third, what factors other than technical knowledge guided the actions of waste managers before the enactment of explicit federal laws?
The authors find that significant information about the hazards of industrial wastes existed before 1970. Their explanations of why this knowledge did not prevent the toxic legacy now facing us will be essential reading for environmental historians and lawyers, public health personnel, and concerned citizens.
This volume analyzes the politics of hazardous waste siting and explores promising new strategies for siting facilities. Existing approaches to waste siting facilities have almost entirely failed, across all industrialized countries, largely because of community or NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) opposition. This volume examines a new strategy, voluntary choice siting—a process requiring mutual decisions negotiated between facility developers and the host communities. This bottom-up approach preserves democratic rights, recognizes the importance of public perceptions, and addresses issues of equity.
In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of experts probes recent examples of waste facilities siting in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan. Both the successes and the failures presented offer practical insights into the siting process. The book includes an introductory review of the literature on facility siting and the NIMBY phenomenon as well as instructive essays on the use of voluntary processes in facilities siting.
This book will be of value to policymakers, industry, and environmental groups, as well as to those working in environmental studies and engineering, political science, public health, geography, planning, and business economics.
Located in the heart of the Kentucky Bluegrass Region, the "Paris Pike" is a scenic, twelve-mile corridor running between Lexington and Paris. Beginning in 1969, the state of Kentucky sought to widen the road in order to improve safety and capacity. Various objections led to a federal court injunction imposed in 1979 that halted the project for more than fifteen years. Over the span of three decades, several consultant studies contributed to the public understanding of the road's significance and set the stage for what has been regarded as the model for context-sensitive road reconstruction in America.
The Paris-Lexington Road focuses on the history of the reconstruction of the Paris Pike (now renamed the "Paris-Lexington Road") to critically review this reconstruction project and illustrate its significance to the profession of landscape architecture. It also situates the role of landscape architects in the history of highway design, and examines the various contemporary challenges and opportunities represented within the Paris Pike project.
For better or worse, the view through a car’s windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal. These varied environments are neither necessary nor accidental but the outcomes of historical negotiations, and whether we abhor them or take delight in them, they have become part of the fabric of human existence.
The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe is the first systematic, comparative look at these landscapes. By looking at examples from the United States and Europe, the chapters in this volume explore the relationship between the road and the landscape thatit traverses, cuts through, defines, despoils, and enhances. The authors analyze the Washington Beltway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as iconic roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and Great Britain. This is a story of the transatlantic exchange of ideas about environment and technology and of the national and nationalistic appropriations of such landscaping.
The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions.
Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.
Historians of midwestern railroading during the early part of the twentieth century have generally focused on the production of railroad company histories while ignoring the regional view. Fortunately for railway historians and buffs, coincidentally with the zenith of the Railway Age, the national fad for producing and mailing postcards was at its height. Millions of cards, including "real-photo" images, were produced between 1905 and 1915. Roger Grant has selected more than a hundred representative picture postcards to visualize the principal themes and characteristics that gave this dynamic industry its distinctive regional features.
By the turn of the century, the railroad map of the Midwest was unequaled. Anyone who examined it carefully sensed that this was the vital center of America's massive network of steel rails. Depots erected in the western prairie environment were spartan, with only minor decoration, but those in the Midwest usually mirrored more ornate New England styles. These features are often reflected in the images in this heavily illustrated book, which depicts the spare but strong pioneering spirit of the enterprise.
What began as a study of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway stretched into more than a dozen contributions on Hawkeye state railroad topics. By 1969 Donovan had examined Iowa's “Little Three”: Chicago Great Western, Illinois Central, and Minneapolis & St. Paul as well as the state's “Big Four”: Chicago & North Western; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific; and Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific. In addition to these seven core carriers, Donovan covered the state's less prominent railroads: Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe; Great Northern; and Union Pacific and Wabash. Moreover, he contributed an issue on Iowa's principal interurbans, most of which survived into the 1950s as electric-powered freight-only short lines. In uniting Donovan's articles into a single volume, Iowa Railroads provides the most complete history of Iowa's rail heritage.
Michigan Railroads and Railroad Companies is an invaluable reference manual for everyone interested in regional transportation history, the history of railroading, and Michigan history in general. It contains complete, cross-referenced listings for every company formed to operate a railroad in the state of Michigan. In addition to the comprehensive entries for major lines, Graydon Meints has included details about the many small, common-carrier steam and electric companies, logging roads, and numerous other primitive and contemporary rail systems. This encyclopedic reference guide also contains information on the so-called "paper railroads," companies that were projected but which never laid a foot of track.
Michigan Railroads is divided into three parts. One includes alphabetical entries for the actual and intended railroad companies themselves, the date and purpose for their organization, and a brief history from their origins to their dispositions. Included in this portion of the work are a number of railroad "family trees" showing the corporate antecedents of the largest of the rail lines operating in the state today. Another contains a chronology of significant corporate events; it works as a useful finding aid for accessing source data contained in the first section. A third contains a statewide county-by-county listing of railroads, both paper and real.
The Detroit, Michigan-based Grand Trunk Corporation was established more than two decades ago by Canadian National to oversee and maximize the potential of its railroad holdings in the United States. By making use of corporate records, oral histories, and archival material, Hofsommer uncovers the interesting and complex history of Grand Trunk from its inception in 1971 through 1992.
For nearly seventy years, John J. Young Jr. photographed railroads. With unparalleled scope and span, he documented the impact and beauty of railways in American life from 1936 to 2004.
As a child during the Great Depression, J. J. Young Jr. began to photograph railroads in Wheeling, West Virginia. This book collects over one hundred fifty of those images—some unpublished until now—documenting the railroads of Wheeling and the surrounding area from the 1930s until the 1960s.
The photographs within this book highlight the major railroads of Wheeling: the Baltimore & Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the Wheeling & Lake Erie, the Pittsburgh & West Virginia, the New York Central, and the industrial and interurban rail lines that crisscrossed the region. These images capture the routine activities of trains that carried passengers and freight to and from the city and its industries, as well as more unusual traffic, such as a circus-advertising car, the General Motors Train of Tomorrow, and the 1947 American Freedom Train.
Crossing Under the Hudson takes a fresh look at the planning and construction of two key links in the transportation infrastructure of New York and New Jersey--the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. Writing in an accessible style that incorporates historical accounts with a lively and entertaining approach, Angus Kress Gillespie explores these two monumental works of civil engineering and the public who embraced them. He describes and analyzes the building of the tunnels, introduces readers to the people who worked there--then and now--and places the structures into a meaningful cultural context with the music, art, literature, and motion pictures that these tunnels, engineering marvels of their day, have inspired over the years.
Today, when new concerns about global terrorism may trump bouts of simple tunnel tension, Gillespie's Crossing Under the Hudson continues to cast a light at the end of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels.
A standard track gauge—the distance between the two rails—enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauge at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In Tracks across Continents, Paths through History, Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauge, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted.
Drawing on the economic theory of path dependence, and grounded in economic, technical, and institutional realities, this innovative volume traces how early historical events, and even idiosyncratic personalities, have affected choices of gauge ever since, despite changing technology and understandings of what gauge is optimal. Puffert also uses this history to develop new insights in the theory of path dependence. Tracks across Continents, Paths through History will be essential reading for anyone interested in how history and economics inform each other.
Shawn Hall's immensely popular guidebooks to Nevada ghost towns have become essential resources for backcountry explorers and scholars alike. Now Hall returns to Elko County to survey the county's railroad and stage stations, as well as other sites not included in his earlier survey of this colorful section of the state. As in his earlier volumes, Hall includes a history of each site he lists, along with period and contemporary photographs, directions for locating the sites, and an assessment of their present condition. His historical accounts, based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, are both scholarly and engaging, rich in anecdotes and personalities, and in the fascinating minutia of history often ignored by more academic writers. Shawn Hall's dedication to documenting Nevada's thousands of historic sites has enriched our knowledge of the state's relatively brief but very eventful past. Connecting the West is a worthy addition to Hall's remarkable efforts to preserve the state's history.
None of the world's great cities is as closely identified with its subway as New York. Its trains provide much more than just rapid transit. They give New Yorkers a powerful symbol of their metropolis, one that they use to express both their hopes and their fears for the urban future.
Subway City explores New York's transit system as both fact and metaphor. Brooks traces the development of the subway from its inception as the newest and most efficient public transportation system to its decline as an overcrowded and dangerous part of city life. The crowded cars gave Harold Lloyd material for comedy, fueled William Randolph Hearst's crusade against the Traction Trust, and convinced Lewis Mumford that the subway was a futile effort to solve the city's problems. Brooks explores films which have dramatized the dangers lurking below ground, and examines the infamous Bernhard Goetz shooting that made the subway a symbol of urban decay. More hopefully, he describes the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's station improvements and ambitious programs for Music Underground, Poetry in Transit, and Arts-in-Transit, as keys to the city's renewal.
In 1849, the new Wheeling Suspension Bridge was a triumph of engineering, the world's longest clear span bridge. The Wheeling bridge was also a landmark in the development of the American frontier, spanning the Ohio River to speed settlement and commerce in the Midwest and beyond. In 1999, historians, engineers, and industrial archaeologists from around the world met in Wheeling to celebrate the still-busy bridge's 150th anniversary. This book presents highlights of the conference, and points out the far-reaching effects of bridge-building.
When Washington made his famous crossing of the Delaware River, it is a shame he couldn't have invited local historian Frank T. Dale along for the ride. Dale could have suggested the easiest crossing points.
Fortunately for contemporary readers, Dale has written a fascinating book chronicling thirty-five of the most historic bridges crossing the Delaware, some of which have served the residents of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York for almost two centuries. Many of us take these bridges for granted as we speed across, impatient to reach our destination, but their histories are too interesting to ignore.
Dale brings us the stories behind each bridge, covering design, engineering, ownership, finances, and politics. He chronicles the life of each, from the original construction, through modifications, and, sometimes, through the bridges' multiple destructions and reconstructions. Along the way, Dale recounts the history of the area surrounding each bridge, including the demise of ferry services, reasons why each bridge was built, politics surrounding construction, debates over public versus privately owned bridges, and stories of the floods and fires that threatened not only the bridges, but the local residents. Dozens of rare photos give readers a captivating window back into the past.
These fine old structures have become integral parts of Delaware River life and have an exciting past of their own. Bridges over the Delaware River will ensure that their legacies endure.
READERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2024
The University of Chicago Press