Publication Date

2019

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Groves, Jeremy R.

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of Economics

Abstract

My dissertation focuses on assessing environmental equity in neighborhoods hosting hazardous waste lands known as Superfund sites. I define environmental equity as equal and timely removal of Superfund sites regardless of the demographic profile of hosting communities. In the first chapter, I introduce the Superfund program and various steps that need to be taken by the EPA in order to remove a hazardous site from a neighborhood. The second chapter discusses theoretical frameworks that motivate the empirical analysis by visualizing the Superfund enforcement and cleanup process.

The third chapter objectives are twofold. First, I investigate the factors that may affect the enforcement and litigation process of Superfund sites. The enforcement time could become lengthy due to the formal process of finding and negotiating with all the responsible parties, making Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods such as mediation and arbitration more efficient. I investigate whether Superfund sites located in communities with a higher level of education are more likely to benefit from the use of ADR and hence experience faster enforcement duration. Second, I investigate the impact of the socioeconomic characteristics of communities close to the Superfund sites, as well as the site's specific characteristics, on the duration of Superfund cleanup. The results of this chapter demonstrate that while race is not a determining factor in the choice of enforcement or duration of site cleanup, community participation characteristics play a role in explaining the variation in the enforcement and cleanup duration of Superfund sites located in different communities.

The fourth chapter examines the impact of newspaper coverage on the duration of enforcement at Superfund sites. Newspaper coverage about Superfund sites may attract regulators and oversight attention, expediting the negotiation process between the EPA and polluters. I estimate several binary choice and survival models to explore how media publicity affects the likelihood of settlement and the duration of the litigation, controlling for demographic characteristics of communities living close to the Superfund sites as well as site-specific characteristics. The results indicate that newspaper coverage does increase the likelihood of settlement between the EPA and polluters, and newspaper coverage shortens the litigation time.

Extent

86 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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