Environmental Protection Public Affairs lA 1
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Cities and the Environment
Thomas Hopker photo, Woodfin Camp.
Tlii! old nursery story til the
li ibulalions experienced
hv tin1 country mouse \vlio
came tn visit the city mouse
illustrates two points that
converge in this issue ol h'PA
/oiimu/. First, cities exist in
;m uneasy relationship with
the natural environment the
countryside ol' green
wilderness and wide open
spaces. Second, nrhan
environments present special
challenges.
Introducing this issue ol
the /onniuJ. EPA
Administrator I.ee XI.
Thomas provides an
overview ol the
environmental challenges
confronting our cities now
anil in the immediate I nlure.
As Thomas points out.
environmentalist!) as a social
movement in this country
really originated from
conditions in the urban
environment. And nrhan
conditions, according to John
Kenneth (ialbraith. provide
(he ultimate lest ol (he
quality of life in modern
society. 1'rotessor (ialbraith
lollows Thomas in this issue,
with a feature excerpted from
a lecture given at LPA on the
subject of "the economic case
lor the environment."
Since the environmental
movement took hold two
decades ago, how much
progress has been made on
major urban environmental
problems in our cities? An
article by KPA analyst Arthur
Koines tackles Ihi.s question,
with a "scorecard," A story
follows on the solid waste
disposal crises lacing many
cities across the 1,'nited
States, written by William S.
Forester of the American
Public Works Association.
Based on a recent study
issued by (he National
Council on Public Works
Improvement, a subsequent
piece by Michael [•'.. Hell
|nnw at The 1 Than Institute)
assesses the infrastructure
that supports urban America.
Among oilier things, this
infrastructure includes the
nation's highway system,
water supplies, wastewaler
treatment facilities, and solid
waste and hazardous waste
disposal capacities.
The phenomenon of
"accidental cities" created as
a consequence ol urban
sprawl is the subject of an
article by Luther Propst. an
associate with The
Conservation Foundation.
The Journal then features two
pieces on urban
environments that are quite
the opposite ot accidental.
An essay on urban waterfront
development, by urban
planning consultants Ann
Breen and Dick Rigbv. is
reprinted as an excerpt.
According to an article by
Peter R. Stein of the Trust for
Public Land, new emphasis
is being placed on creating
and protecting or
rehabilitating parks and green
spaces in city environments.
On the other hand, in a
recent speech excerpted in
this issue, master developer
James W. Rouse calls our
attention to the hidden
"second cities" that persist in
contrast to the visible success
stories of urban revilaii/ation
around the country.
Two contributions focus on
particular urban
environmental problems in
New York City and
Jacksonville, Florida,
respectively. Christopher
Uaggett, EPA's Region 2
Administrator, reports on the
continuing struggle to deal
with air pollution problems
in the Big Apple. Jacksonville
has also had to struggle with
air pollution--m particular
an offensive odor problem
that undermined community
pride and property values.
The story of Jacksonville's
"war on odors" is told by
Khursliid K. Mehla and
James L. Manning of the
city's Bio-Environmental
Services Division.
In a iinal article on (he
theme of cities and the
environment, Don Bronkema
of EPA'S Office of Public
Affairs looks back at (In;
history ol urban pollution
problems.
Concluding this issue of
the Journal are two regular
features, Appointments and
Update: and a Letter to the
Kditor. a
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United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Affairs (A-107)
Washington DC 20460
Volume 14
Number 4
May 1988
vvEPA JOURNAL
Lee M. Thomas, Administrator
Jennifer Joy Wilson, Assistant Administrator for External Affairs
R. Augustus (Gus) Edwards, Acting Director, Office of Public Affairs
John Heritage, Editor
Ruth Barker, Assistant Editor
Karen Flagstad, Assistant Editor
Jack Lewis, Assistant Editor
Marilyn Rogers, Circulation Manager
EPA is charged by Congress to
protect the nation's land, air, and
water systems. Under a mandate of
national environmental laws, the
agency strives to formulate and
implement actions which lead to a
compatible balance between
human activities and the ability of
natural systems to support and
nurture life.
The EPA Journal is published by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. The Administrator of EPA
has determined that the
publication of this periodical is
netessary in the transaction of the
public business required by law of
this agency. Use of funds for
printing this periodical has been
approved by the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget.
Views expressed by authors do not
necessarily reflect EPA policy.
Contributions and inquiries should
be addressed to the Editor (A-107),
Waterside Mall, 401 M St., S.W.,
Washington, DC 20460. No
permission necessary to reproduce
contents except copyrighted photos
and other materials.
The Environmental
Challenges
of Our Cities
by Lee M. Thomas 2
Some Perspectives
by John Kenneth
Galbraith 4
A Scorecard on the
Urban Environment
by Arthur Koines 8
Solid Waste:
There's a Lot More Coming
by William S. Forester 11
All the King's Horses
and All the King's Men...
by Michael E. Bell 13
Problems on the
Urban Frontier
by Luther Propst 16
Festival Markets:
Show-Stealers of the
Waterfront
by Ann Breen and Dick
Rigby 19
Reconnecting Cities
and Nature
by Peter R. Stein 22
Suffering in the
Second City
by James W. Rouse
24
The Choices
Are Getting Tougher
by Christopher Daggett
Hatching an Environmental
Battle Plan in Jacksonville
by Khurshid K. Mehta and
James L. Manning 30
It Didn't
Happen Yesterday
by Don Bronkema 33
Appointments 35
Update 35
Letter to the Editor 36
27
Front Cover: Downtown Miami.
Photo by Al Messerschmidl, Foiio,
inc.
Design Credils:
Donna Wasy/kiwsky/;
Ron Farrah;
James R. Ingram.
Editor's note: The next issue of
EPA Journal ivi'll ba on the Marine
Environment.
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-------
The Environmental
Challenges of Our Cities
by Lee M, Thomas
Automobiles, key to our individual mobility, are also a major
source of environmental problems in our cities.
Steve Delaney photo.
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When conversation turns to the topic;
of environmental protection,
images of open spaces, green fields, and
blue sky come to mind. It is natural to
equate environmental quality with
wilderness and pristine settings.
Yet the momentum for what has
become one of the most important social
movements in our nation's history—
environmentalist!!—actually came from
conditions in the urban environment.
Pollution from smog and sewage is
found in cities far more often than in
rural settings.
It is in our cities that air pollutants
tend to collect to the point that they can
actually be seen, smelled, and felt. The
automobile is one of the major sources
of the smog that can sting our eyes and
choke us. Where cars are found in large
concentrations, as is the case in most
urban areas, we generally have ozone
and carbon monoxide non-attainment
problems.
It was the discharge of large volumes
of untreated sewage from cities into
rivers, streams, bays, and lakes that
brought many of our most important
water bodies to the brink of disaster 20
years ago. And the continued expansion
of urban areas is an important ongoing
threat to the existence of valuable
wetland resources in some parts of our
country.
Lead is a pervasive pollutant found
throughout the urban environment. Over
the last decade. EPA has undertaken a
variety of efforts to address lead
problems in cities. And we are making
important progress.
The most dramatic improvement has
been our phase-down of lead in
gasoline. Since 1977, we have'cut
allowable lead content in gasoline by
more than 90 percent. That action has
yielded reductions of nearly 90 percent
in ambient lead levels in our cities. And
that is a significant accomplishment. We
are now confronting challenges related
to lead in urban soil, drinking water.
water distribution systems, and
household plumbing.
Yet another major urban
environmental challenge is the proper
management and disposal of household
discards. Municipal solid waste will be
a major issue for every American city
during the 1990s. Every local
government will have to confront tin;
question of where to put the millions of
tons of waste generated by our citizens
each year.
Traditional landfilling of refuse is
becoming more difficult. No one wants
a new landfill sited in his backyard.
And promising new technologies such
as incineration are no less controversial.
The public is concerned about potential
hazards associated with stack emissions
and residual ash.
One of the best ideas for reducing our
waste stream is recycling, and it is being
tried in many states and cities. EPA
supports aggressive recycling programs
and believes we can achieve a goal of
25-percent recycling of our urban waste
stream over a relatively short period of
time. But public education.
understanding, and active support will
be necessary if we are to succeed.
Finally, cities are the setting for our
newest environmental challenge—the
indoor environment. Over the last
several years, a growing body of
scientific evidence has indicated that
the air within buildings can become
polluted from a variety sources.
Smoking; the use of cleaning solvents
and pesticides: fumes from carpeting,
furniture, and photocopying equipment;
asbestos; radon: and combustion sources:
all of these contribute to indoor air
pollution. Urban Americans are
spending more and more time indoors.
Each of these issues affects us,
individually, far more than
traditional "big industry"
environmental issues of the
past two decades.
and the quality of the indoor
environment will be an increasingly
important issue in the years ahead.
There is a common thread associated
with the environmental challenges in
our cities. Each of these issues affects
us, individually, far more than
traditional "big industry" environmental
issues of the past two decades. Solving
the urban ozone and carbon monoxide
problems will require us to change our
driving habits. Improving our
wastewater treatment systems and
expanding our drinking water regulatory
program will significantly increase the
rates paid by consumers for water and
sewer services.
Further regulating solid waste
disposal practices will increase our
garbage collection costs. Recycling
programs will force us to accept the
inconvenience of sorting solid waste at
the source. And restricting further
development of wetlands will impose
limits on growth in many desirable
areas.
This issue of the KPA /ounnil is
devoted to the urban environment anil
the environmental challenges of the
cities. It addresses issues that cmifmut
most of us where we live and work in
the urban areas of tin; United States.
The environmental movement really
began in our cities. Clearly, we have
made important progress on tin; urban
environmental front over the past two
decades. But it is equally clear that the
major new challenges confronting us are
largely urban challenges as welt. '~
(Thomas is Administrator of EPA.)
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Some
Perspectives
by John Kenneth Galbraith
F.dsl XovemlH.T, John Kenneth GaJbraith
gave (in open lecture lit h'PA
headquarters on "flic economic case lor
(he environment." (hirin» ivliicli he
discussed iirl>(in environmental issues
in (i brood economic tint I historical
conlexl. 7'lie folJoiving I'eninrks have
Ixmn e\'r:erp(e(/ or Hi'A Jounic'il /ro/n fi
recorded franscripl o/ Professor
GaJbraith's lecture:
The lest of tin; quality of life in an
advanced economic society is now
largely in tlii! quality of urban life.
Romance may still belong to the
countryside Ihe future may still belong
lo the country lull Ihe present reality
ol lite abides within the city.
The "city," however, is not a single
entity. Historically, there have been
three quite distinct types. It is important
to recogni/.e the differences union" these
cities, not only lor the purpose- til our
discussion here today, hut for the
general concern of our time.
To begin, there has been over time the
political or ecclesiastical city -the
capital. Second, there has been the city
founded on mercantile trade- the
merchant city. Third and most recently.
there has been the industrial city. The
first two cities have been very
successful and serve' to show what the
city con be. The third. Ihe industrial
city, has not been successful.
The capital city was and remains a
city with a reputation not only for
success, but for grandeur. In past times.
it was the extension of the personality
of
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<^CT
*r • *
MAY 1988
-------
Venice, an early merchant city, as shown in Francesco Guardi's View of the Rialto (c. 1780). National Gallery of Art,
W/dener Collection
Till: Affluent Society, the subject was
perceived by most people in terms of a
nither distant vision. Public perception
bas changed considerably since then.
(llearly, lo overcome its past and
present reputation, the industrial city
must continue its escape from the
environmental disorders that are so
much a part of its history. It must do so,
not for compassionate reasons, but
because chum air, clean water, clean
streets, and a healthy workplace are
economic imperatives. Simply stated,
economic development occurs where
people including executives,
engineers, scientists, and the sponsors
of new business enterprises in the
arts want lo live. And they do not
wish to live amidst industrial debris and
gloom.
Hul tliis is not all. The industrial city
must also escape from the social and
cultural environment of its past. In the
past, its social environment reflected the
broad industrial commitment to laissez
faire. Apart from some exceptional
cases, no one took responsibility for the
city's overall design and
development—for anything beyond its
mere habitability. Its growth and
development were autonomous, an act
of nature or accident. In contrast, the
higher reputation of the capital city or
the merchant center depended on the
overall authority that explicitly or
implicitly assumed responsibility for its
design and ongoing development.
The industrial city, to repeat, has
lacked the kind of foresight and
planning that went into the foundation
of the capital and merchant cities. It
must, as a very practical matter, have
these things in the future. Let there be
no doubt: there is no really good and
perhaps no really habitable city where
growth, development, and
redevelopment are not subject to a
competently administered design.
The industrial city must escape
traJition in still another respect.
Historically, the city was meant to
house people cheaply for employment
in the factories and mills. Public
services—schools, libraries, hospitals,
parks, public sanitation, even the
services of the police and courts—were
deemed good insofar as they wen;
cheap. To support such services, levies
had to be borne either directly by the
industries, or by the wage earners of the
city. Such services were seen,
especially, as costs to the competitive
position of the industrial firms,
something to be kept to a minimum.
In other words, the public standard of
living was seen as u threat to. or a
EPA JOURNAL
-------
deduction from, the private living
standard. Some of these attitudes
persist. We still seek to maximi/.e the
private standard of living. We; still seek
to minimix.e the public standard of
living. A TV set is a valued amenity:
public schools are a social cost.
Privately purchased books are part of
our living standard. Public libraries are
a burden on the public budget. Clean
houses are essential for our quality of
life: clean streets are not. The affluent
accept the private cost of security
guards, but resist the public cost of tin-
police. These attitudes, we must now
recognize, are among the obsolete
legacies of our industrial past and must
be changed to-accord with the present
reality.
In the post-industrial city, the public
living standard must be seen as no less
There is no really good and
perhaps no really habitable
city where growth,
development, and
redevelopment are not subject
to a competently administered
design.
important than the private living
standard. Public services must be
wholly on a par in their quality with
private consumption. It follows that the
great modern city, the post-industrial
city, will be expensive to develop and
maintain. As a society, accordingly, \ve
must squarely face facts concerning the
expenditures that will be required to
sustain the post-industrial city. The
costs of public services do not simply
rise proportionately as urban
populations increase. Sometimes they
rise exponentially. Nevertheless, these
expenditures will be economically
functional: they will be necessary if wo
are to ensure the further development of
the industrial city.
The quality of life in our cities will be
decisive to our economic future, and the
quality of urban life depends heavily on
the quality of public: services. \Ye must
outgrow fears concerning the adverse
effect of the burden of taxes on
industrial development. Instead, from a
wholly pragmatic political standpoint, it
is time to focus our attention on the
quality of life, the nature of the
demands of modern industry, ami the
quality of our educational and other
public service systems. Here again I
speak not in any theoretical way about
something that is hard to establish in
fact. There is solid proof. Consider as tin
example the state of Massachusetts,
which has long been subject to attack
for its high taxes. A popular term used
by the politically unlettered was
"Taxachusetts." In Massachusetts these
past years, a combination of good
environmental protection and good
public; services—including colleges.
universities, museums, and cultural lile
generally—has been a powerful
attraction to new enterprises.
Consequently, the people of
Massachusetts enjoy high prosperity and
full employment. The state's older
industrial cities and towns have largely
escaped the exceedingly grim reputation
of their industrial past. To some of
them—for example the one-time textile
town of Lowell, which is now a center
of high-technology industry—even the
tourists come in numbers.
A ceutr.d responsibility for urban
design and development, environmental
protection, a high standard of public.
services including education: all of
these, to repeat, are vital steps toward
redeeming the future for our industrial
cities. In addition, we need also to have
positive economic support for some ot
the central characteristics of advanced
economic development, In particular
there is the importance we should now
attribute to the arts.
There is a long-standing belief that
out on the cutting edge of economic
development are the engineers and the
scientists. I don't want to diminish their
role. But beyond the engineers and the
scientists, there are the artists. After
things work well, people waul them to
look well. After good function comes
the rather more difficult problem of
good design, and beyond wcll-dt'sigm-d
products there are entertainment and
the enjoyment of life.
Artistic enterprise, like environmental
controls, is central to our future, part of
our means of escape from (he tailings of
the urban industrial past, Clean air,
clean and sale streets, good public
services, serious attention to artistic:
endeavor: all ol these are imperatives il
we are to succeed in bringing our
industrial cities up to a standard th.it
historically has been achieved in our
merchant cities around the world, and
particularly in our capital cities.
(Galbraith is Paul M. IV'urburg Professor
Emeritus at Harvard University mid lite
author of numerous hooks including
The Affluent Society, The \ew
Industrial State. Economics in
Perspective, and most recently.
Capitalism, Communism and
Coexistence.)
MAY 1988
-------
A dangerous situation.
Lead-paint chips are freed
during renovation of some
older homes, and lead
dust may remain after the
work is finished. Children
from both poor and
affluent families may be
vulnerable to lead
poisoning.
Maryland Consumer
Courier photo. Reprinted
with permission of
the Office of the Maryland
Attorney General.
A Scorecard
on the Urban
Environment
by Arthur Koines
Perpetual lo-and-fro excites the. citi/ied
citizen, robs him of deeper sympathy, of
(he meditation and reflecfion once his
as he Jived and walked under clean sky
among (he fresh greenery lo ivhicfi lie
was born companion,
(From The Living City, 1970)
Even Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
ant) champion of the American city,
saw a conflict between city living and
our natural environment. Nearly two
decades have passed .since The Living
City was published in 1970. It has also
been nearly two decades since Earth
Day propelled the United States into an
era of environmental consciousness.
What can we say about our attempts
since then as an urban society to find a
balance between the lure of the city and
our birthright of a clean environment?
In the parlance of our workaday lives.
how should we score our commitment
and actions in addressing the
environmental problems of our cities? I
have answered this question for myself
by looking at progress on tour
EPA JOURNAL
-------
environmental problems that are
common to most of our major cities.
You may wish to draw up your own
scorecard and do the same.
Municipal Waste Management
and Urban Sprawl
People make garbage—the more people,
the more garbage. This is perhaps the
simplest calculus in the field of
environmental protection. In our cities,
that simple calculus translates into
literally mountains of garbage annually.
Making decisions on what to do with
all the garbage we create is very
difficult. The search for places to
manage municipal garbage has become a
painful political process, often taking
several years to complete and offering
no guarantee of success. The two major
waste management
alternatives—traditional landfilling and
incineration (increasingly the option of
choice)—can be designed to provide
high levels of human health and
environmental protection. Yet even with
gold-plated pollution controls, neither
of these management options has
proven to be an antidote for the "not in
my back yard" (NIMBY) attitude of
residents living in the vicinity of
potential sites.
History suggests that simply locating
waste management facilities in areas far
away from current urban populations
may not be the answer. This strategy
was used over the past 30 years to
locate our current municipal landfills.
But the enormous suburban, and more
recent exurban, growth around large
cities has overtaken these once-remote
sites. Today, the operators of many of
these same landfills face stiff public
opposition to their requests for time
extensions on their operating permits.
In recent years, some city waste
managers have dispensed with cost
concerns and begun exporting garbage
to management sites outside their
political jurisdictions. This strategy has
its risks, as evidenced by New York's
"garbage barge" experience of last year.
As I see it, the garbage barge did not
evoke atypical reactions from the local
governments that rejected the New York
waste it carried. In fact, our general
attitudes toward accepting other
people's waste are best reflected in our
current waste management practices.
Today, there are roughly 6,000 active
municipal waste disposal sites in the
United States. By contrast, there are
only about 3,000 counties, or similar
political jurisdictions. Conclusion?
Isolationism in dealing with waste
management is almost universal and
deeply etched in the value systems of
local governments.
The long-term solution to the waste
management dilemma faced by our
cities lies in changing attitudes toward
garbage creation and management. The
American public must learn to accept
modest lifestyle controls in the form of
programs for recycling and reusing
household waste materials. Local
governments must find the political will
to cooperate with iiearby jurisdictions to
find locations for new waste
management facilities that are both
environmentally sound and politically
feasible. Waste management must be
given priority in long-range urban
planning to avoid future conflict over
competing land uses caused by urban
sprawl. These solutions, among others,
are now being considered by EPA's
municipal solid waste task force, formed
last year to provide federal leadership to
resolve the deepening waste
management crisis. It is not at all clear,
though, that the political will now
exists at the local level to make those
solutions a reality.
Air Toxics and the "Urban Soup"
What do buses, air conditioners, and the
corner dry cleaner have in common?
They all testify to the comfort,
convenience, and efficiency of our
modern urban society. They are also
ubiquitous sources of toxic air
pollutants that combine in large cities
with other sources of pollutants to form
the "urban soup."
The urban soup is often composed of
dozens of chemical compounds. An
EPA study of air toxics risks in
Philadelphia, conducted in 1984,
identified over 100 different chemical
compounds in the city air. A more
recent study in Baltimore found over
250 different chemical compounds in
that city's air. Most can be traced back
to discrete sources (e.g., a power plant)
or source types (e.g., cars). Yet we are
able with current monitoring technology
to measure ambient concentrations of
only a handful of these substances. We
are able to evaluate the public health
implications of exposure for fewer still.
As a result, local policy debate over safe
levels of control for air toxics in the
urban soup seems to focus as much on
what is not known as what is known
about the problem.
What is clear about the urban soup is
that its multiplicity of causes defies a
uniform, national policy solution. With
this in mind, EPA established the Air
Toxics Strategy in 1986, which divides
the responsibility for taking action on
air toxics problems between the federal
and state governments. The strategy has
three elements:
• EPA will use its federal Clean Air
Act authorities to regulate sources of air
toxics that are found to have national
significance. These may include sources
that pose human health risks that are
large enough to warrant a national
program response.
• States will address sources that may
not represent problems large enough to
receive national attention, but that pose
unacceptable risks in the areas where
they do occur.
• Federal research will develop
information and analytic methods to
help state and local governments better
understand the complex nature of the
urban soup.
Federal, state, and city authorities
seem to be several years away from
implementing programs to manage
important air toxics risks. Basic research
must continue to expand the body of
knowledge needed by regulators to
define manageable problems from out of
the urban soup. In spite of its slow start,
the federal/state partnership established
by the Air Toxics Strategy offers a
promising framework for planning and
progress.
Multimedia Lead
The story of lead in our major cities has
taken as many turns as a good mystery
novel. In response to growing evidence
that lead in the ambient air caused
anemia and other such blood disorders,
EPA set a National Ambient Air Quality
Standard (NAAQS) for the substance in
1978. Over the decade of 1975-1985 the
Agency conducted a gasoline lead
phase-down to remove the major source
of lead in the air. The results of these
efforts stand as one of the EPA's major
achievements. Within a few short years,
lead levels in the ambient air declined
dramatically. In large metropolitan
areas, where automobile emissions had
caused particularly high levels of lead
in the ambient air, health experts
observed encouraging declines in blood
lead levels in the American public.
Unfortunately, the story does not end
there.
In the early 1980s new research
uncovered evidence of health effects at
lead blood levels well below those that
prompted EPA's promulgation of the
lead NAAQS and lead phase-down.
Continued on next page
MAY 1988
-------
These health effects, such as
hypertension in older males ;iml
learning disabilities in children, an;
insidious and frightening. Mori-
recently, high load levels were found in
drinking water delivered through pipes
constructed with lead solder. In
response. EVA is planning to propose
new, lower standards for lead in
drinking water. Hut the story continues.
Since the i!)(i()s. lead-based paint,
used in over half of the older homes in
many cities, has been known as a cause
of lead exposures in young children
living in low-income housing. More
recently, the legacy of lead-based paint
has resurfaced tinder the most unlikely
of circumstances. Many decaying
inner-city neighborhoods have been
restored in recent years through a trend
called gentrification, the purchase and
renovation of old homes by young,
affluent buyers. The renovation of these
old homes hits been found to release
lead-paint chips during the period of
home renovation and lead dust long
afler the work is completed. The result:
a wave of lead poisoning cases among
children from affluent families.
Baltimore records over BOO cases of
lead poisoning among young children
each year. Some of these cases can be
attributed to renovation activity in older
homes in which the children live. Hut
the people of Haltimore found the
political will to act. and. last year.
Baltimore amended its housing
regulations to require lead-paint
abatement actions in homes found to
have high levels of lead dust. At this
point, I hope it is safe to say that the
story of lead in our cities has reached its
denouement.
Rivers in Urban Areas
Most major U.S. cities grew up around
rivers. This is no historical accident. In
an amicable relationship spanning
nearly three centuries, our nation's
rivers nurtured the growth of cities by
providing convenient transportation and
reliable water supplies. Yet in the late
KHiOs we were forced as a society to
admit that the relationship between
cities and rivers had turned predative.
Cities were using rivers as repositories
for municipal and industrial wastes to
the point where the waterways were
unable to restore themselves.
In 1972 Congress enacted the Clean
Water Act (CU'A) in an effort to find a
balance between the demands of our
modern urban society and the health of
the nation's rivers. To this clay.
regulatory activities born of the CVVA
and its amendments command the
largest share of combined federal, state,
and local environmental resources. The
lion's share of these water programs'
resources is used in cities to finance the
construction of sewage treatment plants.
We found the political will to act on the
problem. But what have we to show for
our efforts?
Since; 1072. the federal government
has helped finance the building of over
15,000 sewage treatment plants in urban
areas. Eighty percent of these treatment
plants now operate in full compliance
with relevant federal and state
standards. Most importantly, controls on
municipal sewage discharges to rivers.
as well as controls on direct industrial
discharges, have dramatically improved
water quality in our rivers. The
Cuyahoga River, so choked with
pollution in 1970 that certain stretches
posed fire hazards for Cleveland, now
shows few visible signs of human and
industrial waste. The South Platte River,
which runs through the heart of Denver,
today adds to the area's sources of
outdoor recreational enjoyment, even
though nearly 70 percent of its
downstream flow is contributed by the
metropolitan sewage treatment plant.
More work is needed to restore the
relationship between cities and rivers.
And with the eventual phase-out of the
CWA Construction Grants Program, the
cost of future water quality gains must
be borne increasingly by state and local
governments. Yet the predation of our
rivers by the cities they helped to create
seems to have ended. In its place we
can see a more peaceful coexistence,
and. in some cases, renewed friendship.
Scorecard
So how did cities fare on your
environmental scorecard? Looking
across the scores on my own. I see
successes, failures, and false starts.
These results are at once gratifying,
frustrating, and cause for hope. But
more than anything, they make us
wonder about the future of our cities.
Irrepressible social and economic: forces
cause cities to grow, and as they grow,
history suggests, so do their
environmental problems. If only our
storecards showed evidence of the
unwavering commitment and political
will needed to manage urban
environmental problems. An
environmental scorecard is but a device
to remind us of the need to monitor
progress in addressing environmental
problems in our cities. That is a task we
should do honestly and often, a
(Koines is Chief, Geographic Studies
Branch. EVA Office of Policy. Planning.
and Evaluation,)
Cleveland's Cuyahoga River is a much
cleaner waterway today. Before the
Clean Water Act was passed in 1972,
some stretches were so full of industrial
wastes that they posed a fire hazard.
Greater Cleveland Growth Association
photo.
10
EPA JOURNAL
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Solid Waste:
There's a Lot
More Coming
by William S. Forester
Cities throughout the United States
are struggling to deal with solid
waste disposal crises. The amounts of
municipal solid waste produced have
continued to increase, while disposal
capacity in the nation's landfills is
decreasing at a rate that has staggered
local officials. City budgets for some
solid waste management agencies have
quadrupled during the 1980s, causing at
least one city official to feel fortunate to
have wastes hauled away at any cost.
"A few selected cities are faring well,
with enough disposal capacity to last
into the next century. The national
figures, however, tell a tale that has
unsteadied even those with no
immediate problem.
As a nation, we currently produce
about 160 million tons of municipal
solid waste per year, with a 20-percent
increase expected by the year 2000,
according to EPA figures. This translates
as approximately 3.4 pounds of garbage
now being produced per person per day,
as compared to about 2.7 pounds per
day in I960 (and roughly 4 pounds per
day projected by 2000). A survey
conducted last summer by the American
Public Works Association (APWA)
suggested that the current figure may be
even higher, as much as 7 pounds per
person per day.
At the same time, disposal capacity is
decreasing. When the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
was enacted in 1976, an estimated
30,000 landfills were in operation. A
survey done by EPA in 1984 revealed
that the impact of increased
environmental concern had eliminated
open dumping and reduced the number
of official municipal landfills to 9,284.
An even more recent survey by EPA last
summer reveals this number has been
reduced even further, to 6,584.
The APWA survey found that
approximately 92 percent of solid waste
nationwide is disposed of in landfills.
MAY 1988
Some landfills are compacting and bailing solid waste in order to use available
space more efficiently. Waste Age photo.
About 40 percent of tho.se responding to
the APWA survey said their
communities will rim out of landfill
capacity within the next five years,
The impact of the disposal crisis hit
Boston in 1986. That year city officials
signed collection and disposal
contracts totaling $27 million.
This compared with $13 million for tin:
year before, an increase of more than
100 percent. Director of Public Works
Joseph Casu/./a points out these new
contracts averaged 502.50 per ton, with
individual contracts going as high as
$86.00 per ton. Robert Mehegan,
executive secretary for the Public Works
Department, says he shudders to think
what the costs will lie next year when
the city negotiates for new collection
and disposal contracts.
Boston was forced lo close its
incinerator in 1975 because of stringent
air emissions regulations. Faced with
court action, it also closed its landfill in
June 1980. Plans for a new
waste-to-energy incinerator are currently
at "dead-end," says Mehegan, because of
citizen and environmental group
opposition.
This pattern of diminished capacity
and increased costs is repeated in
Philadelphia. In December 1984. city
officials were told that the Kinsley
Landfill in nearby New Jersey no longer
could accept the 40 percent of
Philadelphia's trash being disposed ol
there. This was tin; final straw,
according to Bruce Ciledhill.
Philadelphia's chief sanitation official.
Gledhili also points out that the city's
solid waste bills quadrupled between
1981 and 1987, with the average current
disposal costs being $75.00 a ton.
Philadelphia went through a pha.se of
deciding between refuse-derived fuel
and mass-burning incineration, hut this
was made moot when the incineration
project lost local political support.
To get rid of their solid waste., suiue
cities thus are forced to transport wastes
great distances to other disposal areas,
which increasingly art; vocal about not
wanting other people's trash. A portion
of Philadelphia's solid waste now goes
to a waste-to-energy facility at
Baltimore, Maryland, The rest goes to
rural areas in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West
Virginia, and Kentucky.
Continued on next pugc
! 1
-------
In California, one-way haul distances
of more than 70 miles are reported. A
city in Florida recently announced that
it was examining the feasibility of
transporting all of its solid waste to a
resource recovery facility to be
constructed on a Caribbean island. An
official of one major East Coast city,
when asked where that city's waste was
going, responded: "We don't ask—the
issue is too sensitive."
Chicago joined the growing number of
crisis cities this year when it found that
private disposal firms in the Chicago
area were interested in accepting far
smaller amounts of the approximately
75 percent of its solid wastes that is
landfilled. The city, which seeks bids
annually for the portion of its solid
waste not going to the Northwest
Incinerator, was shocked to discover
that some of the bids coming in for this
year were three times last year's. Until
negotiations were undertaken with local
private firms, there were concerns that
portions of the waste could not be
gotten rid of at any price.
Chicago responded by setting up an
Advisory Commission of experts and
concerned citizens. One result has been
a city ordinance mandating recycling.
Plans are to recycle 25 percent of the
city's waste by the year 2000, according
to Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
A different pattern is seen in some
sunbelt cities in the American
Southwest. Unlike long-established
cities in the East and Midwest, these
cities have increased greatly in size only
recently, and have had the luxury of
available landfill space. Dallas has
capacity in its large McComb Landfill
for that facility to last well into the next
century. Phoenix and Los Angeles have
their solid waste disposal needs under
control.
Nationwide, however, these cases are
exceptions. The characteristic most
often shared is the frantic look for
solutions, and, to date, solutions have
been hard to come by. Siting for any
type of new solid waste management
facility has been greatly hampered by
citizens and protest groups that do not
want them in, or even near, their
neighborhoods, fearing environmental
pollution and depressed property
values.
While the siting of landfills has been
greatly slowed, the siting of incinerators
has been brought virtually to a standstill
in some communities. The issues of
dioxins in stack emissions and of
organics and heavy metals in ash have
12
stiffened local opposition to solid
waste incineration. The impact of this
standstill is considerable, given that
incineration can reduce the volume of
solid waste by 90 percent and its weight
by 75 percent.
Many cities have turned to ambitious
recycling programs, and there is promise
these programs can significantly
reduce solid waste by 15 to
50 percent. In addition to Chicago,
Philadelphia and Berkeley have adopted
goals of recycling 50 percent of their
trash. The state of New Jersey hopes to
The characteristic most often
shared is the frantic look for
solutions, ana to date,
solutions have been hard to
come by.
recycle 25 percent of its solid waste by
1991. Smaller communities like
Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Marion
County, Oregon, already have successful
programs in place.
As the figures show, however,
recycling can provide only a partial
solution. The broader problem remains
even if recycling reduces volumes by as
much as 50 percent. A recent report on
solid waste management by the National
Council on Public Works Improvement
points out that a full array of practices
and technologies must be brought to
bear if problems are to be solved.
The Council's report also states the
need to put the national policy
formulated in RCRA into effect. As a
nation, we must reduce waste
production at the source, we must
recycle as much as we can, and we must
reduce as much of what remains as
possible, landfilling only treated
residuals.
In addition, we must bring into play
solutions that are social, cultural, and
political, as well as technical. In many
ways these will be the most difficult.
Our multi-jurisdictional system of local
governments does not lend itself to
area-wide problem-solving. A small
community adjacent to a large
city cannot, at the expense of and
against the interests of its citizens,
accept waste disposal responsibility for
its larger neighbor. Solutions must be
framed by higher levels of government
with jurisdictions that cross local
boundaries. There have to be area-wide
planning and trade-offs for those
residents most severely affected.
The draft report mandated by the
1984 Hazardous and Solid Waste
Amendments to RCRA and prepared by
EPA's Office of Solid Waste, Solid
Waste Disposal in the United States: A
Report to Congress, addresses precisely
this approach. It recommends specific
roles for federal, state, and local
governments, involving long-term
planning that would require
communities to work together. This
obviously will not be popular in some
quarters and must be approached with
the wisdom of Solomon if we are to
succeed.
The precise roles for the various
levels of government are defined, first,
for the federal government, which must
revise the national criteria under RCRA
for municipal solid waste landfills.
Also, the federal government must
increase technical assistance to state
and local governments, foster research,
and promote recycling and
source-reduction.
State and local government
responsibilities would include ensuring
that landfills are provided, establishing
a dependable future source of funding
for their programs, and strengthening
enforcement. States and localities must
undertake improved long-term solid
waste management planning, and,as
required by federal law,must adopt the
new federal criteria.
Specific legislative recommendations
are for RCRA to be amended to require
states to develop enforceable solid waste
management plans, and it is here that
the strongest outcries may be heard.
This potential criticism can be softened,
but only by including the citizenry
initially and comprehensively, and by
informing the citizenry in terms the
layperson can understand. Otherwise
the necessary consensus will not be
formed.
Thus, we begin by looking at what
constitutes a city in new kinds of ways.
This new concept involves the entire
urban area, not just the old inner core
set off by political boundaries at some
point in the city's past. The waste
management problem does not
recognize these boundaries and the
challenge is to get citizens to realize
that a solution must come from the area
at large.
Current fears are not unfounded and
must be dealt with. Waste management
is a basic urban need and must be
provided. Nothing short of the success of
our cities is at stake. Q
(Forester is Director of
Intergovernmenta] Relations for the
American Public Works Association.)
EPA JOURNAL
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All the King's Horses and All
the King's Men...
by Michael E. Bell
The collapse of a 100-foot section of Connecticut Turnpike Bridge into the
Mianus River in June 1983 caused many states to intensify inspections of
pin-connected bridges. Sara Krulwich photo, New York Times Pictures,
For centuries, cities have been centers
of economic: production and
exchange as well as havens for
intellectual development and
discussion, and for cultural interaction.
Today, nearly 85 percent of the U.S.
population lives and \vorks in
metropolitan areas.
Too often we tend to take the
infrastructure of city lifo for
granted—except when there is a major
failure of one type or another. Hut the
cities we live in simply would not be
possible if it were not for effective ways
to reliably transport goods and people,
to provide clean and .safe drinking
water, and to safely dispose of society's
wastes.
Previous generations invested in such
infrastructure to make life as we know it
today possible. Between 1888 and 1914,
the number of waterworks grew from
1,000 to 10,000; sewer miles increased
from 6,000 to 30,000; and transit miles
from 5,000 to 35,000. Thus, much of the
core infrastructure standing in
MAY 1988
America's older cities today was put in
place around the turn of the century.
This is our inheritance from the
generations of Americans before us.
However, a recent study of the nation's
infrastructure concludes that we an; in
danger of squandering that inheritance.
In 1984, Congress and the President
created the National Council on Public
Works Improvement to study and report
on the state of the nation's
infrastructure. The Council's final
report, Fragile Foundations: A Report
on America's Public Works, concluded
that the quality of America's
infrastructure is barely adequate to
fulfill current requirements and is
insufficient to meet the demands of
future economic growth and
development. The report also concluded
that unless steps are taken now to
dramatically enhance the capacity and
performance of the nation's
infrastructure, our generation will forfeit
its place in the American tradition of
commitment to the future. We will
default on our obligation to the future,
and succeeding generations will have to
compensate for our failure and
shortsightedness.
The findings of the Council are
reinforced by the conclusions of a
recent Urban Institute study conducted
for EPA on the impact of global climate
changes on urban infrastructure. That
study concluded that the cost impacts of
global climate change on urban
infrastructure will be much larger if
infrastructure providers fail to respond
to incremental changes now. The
Council's evaluations of the state of
major categories of infrastructure that
support urban America are summarized
below.
Highways
The overall performance of the nation's
system of highways, streets, roads, and
bridges has been good. During the
1960s, while the country was building
the Interstate Highway System, the
capacity of the road network grew
continually. Since the completion of the
majority of the Interstate System, the
increase in system capacity has slowed
and the capacity even decreased in
some areas as roadways reached the end
of their useful life. In 1984, however,
capacity once again began to grow, due
to additional capital spending made
possible by the five-cent increase in the
federal tax on motor fuel.
While highway system investment
levels have varied over time, the
number of vehicle-miles travelled on the
nation's transportation network has
risen steadily since 1960, at an average
annual rate of three percent. As a result,
existing highways, streets, roads, and
bridges are being used with increasing
intensity. In general, pavement
condition has been improving since
1985; however, congestion is an
increasing problem, particularly in
rapidly growing urban and suburban
areas. It has been estimated, tor
example, that congestion in Los Angeles
County results in $507 million in
wasted time and 72 million gallons of
wasted gasoline annually.
Since 1960, vehicle-miles travelled
per dollar o| public spending have
increased by 3.5 percent annually. This
suggests that either the nation is making
more productive use of its roads and
bridges, or the public sector is not
spending enough to meet growing
transportation needs, in essence
borrowing against past investments. To
a certain extent, both were true through
1984. Beginning in 1985, increased user
taxes, supporting greater investment,
have helped spending keep closer to
need. However, given increasing
13
-------
population, regional shifts, and growing
intersuburban travel patterns, the
capacity of the nation's urban highway
and road network will have to expand
further to avoid serious problems in the
future.
Water Supply
In the water supply arena the story is
inur.h the same as for our highway
Cloverleaf in San Mateo, California.
Highway capacity will need to keep
expanding to meet increasing
demands. U.S. Department of
Transportation photo.
sysiem. The few statistical studies of the
nearly 60,000 water systems nationwide
reveal a largely self-sufficient
cross-section of publicly and privately
owned utilities, the majority of which
produce a high-quality product at
reasonable cost. Yet, national numbers
can mask significant regional problems.
One such regional concern is the
deterioration of storage and distribution
systems in older cities, mostly in the
Northeast. Also, some water systems in
western states are beginning to have
allocation problems as urban and rural
users compete for limited regional
supplies.
In general, public water systems in all
regions of the country face potential
performance difficulties for one or more
reasons, including:
• Artificially low. subsidized pricing
conventions that exacerbate revenue
shortfalls and encourage
over-consumption;
• Compliance with increasingly strict
water purity standards, particularly
among small systems with limited
funds;
:
EPA JOURNAL
-------
• Acute or chronic source
contamination, especially where public
systems are supplied by ground water.
Wastewater Treatment
In terms of wastewater treatment, the
situation is even more troubling. Over
75 percent of the U.S. population is
served by secondary wastewater
treatment plants. The purpose of such
treatment is to protect the nation's
drinking water supply and the
environment generally. However,
despite a $44-billion federal investment
in sewage treatment facilities since
1972, water quality has not increased
significantly: nor has it deteriorated
over this period, despite population
growth and rapid industrial expansion.
This lack of improvement in water
quality is due, at least in part, to
uncontrolled sources of pollution such
as run-off from farmland and highways.
In addition, overall productivity at
many wastewater treatment facilities has
been declining, resulting in an increase
in the number of water quality
violations.
Solid Waste
The prognosis concerning municipal
solid waste is even more serious. (See
article on page 11.]
Disposing of urban America's garbage
is quickly reaching crisis proportions, as
illustrated last summer by the efforts of
the town of Islip, New York, to ship its
garbage by barge to a distant landfill,
only to have it returned after more than
a month and over 6,000 miles of travel
looking for a dump site. Given the long
lead time necessary for siting and
developing landfills or waste-to-energy
facilities, progress needs to start now to
avoid serious problems in the
not-too-distant future.
Hazardous Waste
The prognosis is no better for the safe
disposal of hazardous wastes. Each year,
U.S. industries generate more than two
tons of hazardous wastes for every man,
woman, and child in the country. These
wastes, even when properly treated,
pose significant risks to the
environment and public health. Very
little is known, however, about the
current capacity of U.S. hazardous
waste management facilities to deal
with the problem. The vast majority of
treatment, storage, and disposal
facilities (about 95 percent) are on-site
and managed by individual private firms.
The Bureau of the Census estimates
that the private costs of hazardous waste
management totalled nearly $2.5 billion
in 1984—a 75-percent increase in real
spending since the passage of the
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act (RCRA) in 1976. However, for some
industries, the cost of hazardous waste
management is equivalent to less than
one-third of one percent of
industry-wide sales. Again, given the
long lead time required for siting and
developing hazardous waste storage and
disposal facilities, progress needs to
begin today to avoid serious
consequences in the not-too-distant
future.
Recommendations
In summary, America's urban
infrastructure is not in ruins, but there
are important current and emerging
problems that must be addressed. It the
nation does not make a commitment
now to address these problems, there is
a real risk that declining infrastructure
capacity will jeopardize the productivity
of our economy and our quality of life.
No single approach is adequate to
ensure the future viability of America's
infrastructure. A broad range of
measures is necessary to make a
meaningful difference by the turn of the
century. The National Council on Public
Works Improvement recommended the
following steps as part of a strategy for
improving the nation's infrastructure:
• A national commitment, shared by all
levels of government and the private
sector, to increase capital spending by
as much as 100 percent.
• Clarification of the respective roles of
the federal, state, and local governments
in infrastructure construction and
management to increase accountability.
• More flexible administration
of federal and state mandates to allow
cost-effective methods of compliance.
• Financing of a larger share of the cost
of public works by those who benefit
from services.
• Strong incentives tor maintenance of
capital assets and the use of low-capital
techniques such as demand
management, coordinated land-use
planning, and waste reduction and
recycling,
• Additional support tor research and
development to accelerate technological
innovations and for training of public
works professionals.
Progress on all of these matters is
important. The longer the delay in
implementing such a comprehensive
strategy, the greater the cost to the
nation, and each of us individually, as
our cities become increasingly unable to
satisfy their historical roles as economic
and cultural centers.
(Dr. Me/I, iv/io is Senior Hrsrmrli
Associate af The Urban Institute.1, is (lie
former Deputy Executive Director and
Stud}1 Manager of the. .Vcitionul Council
on Public Works Improve/iionl. This
article draws on material from tin?
Council's final roporl ontiflrd Fragile
Foundations: A Report on .America's
Public Works.}
MAY 1988
15
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Problems on the Urban Frontier
by Luther Propst
Every year, a quarter of a million acres of cropland are converted to urban
development, rights-of-way, highways, and airports. J. Clark photo, U.S. Department
of Agriculture.
16
EPA JOURNAL
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A wave of poorly managed growth is
transforming America's suburbs and
small towns, changing some suburbs
into "accidental cities" and some small
towns into suburbs. This transformation
is bringing to these communities many
of the drawbacks of big cities, such as
traffic congestion, with few of the
positive qualities that can make cities
exciting and enjoyable places. While
citizens, officials, and planners ponder
what to do, some of the ingredients
critical to making a community more
livable—open space, rivers and other
natural features, scenic and productive
agricultural lands, historic
buildings—are rapidly deteriorating or
disappearing. How can localities
effectively manage growth and protect
their "special places"?
Consider two examples. Fairfax
County, Virginia (just west of
Washington, DC) and Orange County,
California (just south of Los Angeles]
appear to be doing quite well. Both
counties are booming with commercial
and residential development. Yet on
November 3, 1987, in a Fairfax County
election widely viewed as a referendum
on local development, voters swept out
of office an 11-year incumbent regarded
as the architect of the county's rapid
growth and resultant snarled traffic.
Similarly, on June 7, 1988, voters in
conservative Orange County approved a
dramatic and far-reaching growth
control initiative, which requires new
development to comply with strict
traffic flow, park dedication, flood
control, and emergency services
response time requirements. The
measure will virtually shut down
large-scale development throughout the
county.
These are only two of the many areas
in the United States reeling from the
consequences of unplanned growth.
From Maine to Florida and California,
"close-in" suburbs are becoming
accidental cities, with many of the
negative and few of the positive
characteristics of traditional
downtowns. In Fairfax County, recently
rural Tysons Corner sustains 70,000
jobs, but in the words of one consultant,
"community life and institutions are
almost entirely lacking in a way we
normally understand downtowns as
functioning. It's not a service center for
the community. There's no historic:
identity, no schools, hospitals,
government centers, libraries."
Among the many consequences of
unplanned, mindless growth, traffic:
congestion seems to be attracting the
most widespread attention. Suburban
roads are increasingly crowed, and
"rush hour" periods and commutes are
steadily lengthening. Nationally, the
number of cars is growing twice as fast
as the number of people. Motorists are
traveling twice as many miles per
person as they did in I960. In 1975. two
in five urban interstates were congested
at rush hour. Ten years later, it was
three in five.
Understanding the spread of the
accidental city requires a look at
changes in the nature of suburban areas.
Once almost solely residential, many
suburbs now have "more jobs than
bedrooms." Two-thirds of all jobs
created between 1960 and 1980 were in
suburbs, a shift that has brought a
corresponding change in commuting
patterns. The number of people who
commute to a suburb has grown twice
as fast as the number commuting to a
central city. Now, nearly half of all
commuters travel to a suburb to work.
The long-accepted vision of urban
regions, which assumed that most
workers would have jobs downtown, is
increasingly becoming obsolete.
Signs of unhappiness with the
consequences of rapid growth are
everywhere. Growth management
initiatives often provide the most
convenient lever that citizens can pull
to exert control over local quality of life,
and they are pulling it. According to the
California Association of Realtors, in
1987 Californians in various
communities voted on 57 initiatives to
tighten growth controls; over 70 percent
of these initiatives passed.
Citizens are also speaking with their
wallets. In November 1987, voters
approved bond issues'in Maine, New
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, representing
$230 million of funding to help preserve
open space, recreation lands.
agricultural lands, historic: sites, and
decaying urban areas. In Rhode Island,
state and local bond issues were
approved to spend $126 million for
open-space preservation. In luue 1988.
Planned communities such as Greenbelt, Maryland, were a new idea in 1936
when Greenbelt Project Manager Richard Wallace showed President Franklin D.
Roosevelt this map. The community reflects the planned integration of commercial,
residential, and recreational facilities. City of Greenbelt, Maryland, photo.
MAY 1988
17
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California voters approved a state-wide
initiative to spend $776 million to
acquire coastal areas, parklands, and
wildlife habitat.
An important report on the American
landscape makes specific
recommendations responsive to
concerns about the consequences of
urban sprawl. The 1987 report prepared
by the President's Commission on
Americans Outdoors, entitled
Americans Outdoors: The Legacy, The
Challenge, speaks to the need for
protecting "special places" as an
essential component of quality of life.
The Commission urges state and local
governments to help shape urban
growth, recommending that:
Communities [should] target parts
of their local heritage, including
open space and natural, cultural,
scenic, and wildlife resources and
build prairie fires of action to
encourage that growth occur in
appropriate areas and away from
sensitive resources. We each have
the choice whether we want our
communities as they grow to
become a jumble of unsightly
development and noisy concrete
deserts, or whether we will
preserve fresh, green pockets and
corridors of living open space that
cleanse our air and waters and
refresh our populations.
To some, the Commission's call may
seem unrealistic: can communities
today really afford to protect local
environmental assets, open space, and
other amenities? Given the economic
outlook, however, there is mounting
evidence that communities cannot
afford not to. Research shows that a
community's livability or quality of life
is an important factor in retaining
existing businesses and attracting new
ones. This is true particularly in the
fast-growing and high-skill sectors of the
economy, such as health care, computer
programming, engineering, electronics,
and professions such as law and
accounting.
The challenge of growth must be met
locally. Zoning and other forms of
land-use authority in the United States
rest primarily with local government.
Moreover, local officials and citizens
clearly have the most intimate
understanding of their situations when
it comes to crafting appropriate
solutions to problems. Yet few of the
localities in the path of growth may be
able to anticipate its consequences in
time to respond effectively, and citizens
may despair that mindless growth
inevitably will degrade their
community. Yet there are signs that
communities can and will take
significant steps to protect their local
environment and quality of life.
For example, residents in towns such
as Westmont, Pennsylvania,
Kennebunkport, Maine, and Grosse
Pointe, Michigan, have gone to great
lengths to protect their majestic elm
trees. For different reasons, the urban
There are signs that
communities can and will take
significant steps to protect
their local environment and
quality of life.
renovation efforts of Austin and
Baltimore have reaped much acclaim.
Austin has built a popular trail system
along the creeks in the limestone hills
around the city, and Baltimore has built
a festive market place using its harbor
as a drawing card (see article on page
19).
San Antonio, Texas, has improved its
urban environment by focusing on a
small river that at one tiTne was to be
destroyed. When the San Antonio River
flooded downtown San Antonio in the
mid-1920s, proposals were made to
control the river by burying it under
concrete. However, a young architect
had a vision of the river as a beautiful
canal lined by trees, a flagstone
walkway, shops, and art galleries. It
took over 30 years, but today the
Riverwalk is a great amenity for
downtown and the focal point of the
city's tourist and convention trade.
In Sanibel Island, Florida, emphasis is
being placed on protecting vegetation to
help maintain the original appearance of
the barrier island on which the city is
built. The city reviews each site plan
and advises developers on how to avoid
destroying natural vegetation. If
indigenous species and natural
vegetation are destroyed in the
development process, they must be
replaced or compensated for elsewhere
on the site. The Sanibel-Captiva
Conservation Foundation runs a native
plant nursery, which can supply plants
to developers and homeowners for
landscaping or revegetating sites
damaged during construction.
Obviously, not every community has
a scenic river or subtropical vegetation
to protect. Nearly all, however, have
some asset—often unnoticed—that can
serve to make the community
distinctive. Near Boston, the
Massachusetts town of Lowell has used
such unlikely assets as old factory
buildings to spur a downtown
renaissance. A crucible of the Industrial
Revolution in the 1800s, Lowell
declined in this century. Buildings were
abandoned; unemployment skyrocketed
in the 1960s and 1970s. Out of
seemingly grim prospects, the
community created a vision of Lowell
that celebrates its heritage from the
Industrial Revolution. Lowell gained
federal designation as a national historic
park. With federal planning assistance,
the local government restricted the
demolition of old factories and has used
them as the foundation for a revitalized
downtown, which includes museums,
historic tours, senior housing, and a
revitalized businesss community.
To emulate the success of such
places, communities across the United
States are realizing that they must
manage growth more effectively. But
what specifically do communities
manage for? What does it take for a
community to protect its local
environment and build upon its
distinctive assets? The Conservation
Foundation has launched an ambitious
new initiative called "Successful
Communities," which combines
long-term involvement in specific
"leadership communities" with policy
research and development, a
growth-management guidebook, and
newsletter service. The Successful
Communities initiative also provides
other services to determine
what factors lead to successful
communities and how other
communities can produce similar
successes.
Ultimately, the burden rests with
America's changing suburbs and small
towns to recognize and react to their
particular predicaments in positive
ways. The alternative is final victory for
urban sprawl, as accidental cities fill in
the spaces between traditional cities,
devouring natural beauty and cultural
assets while creating an unsightly urban
mass with no sense of place and little
worth caring about, a
(Props! is an associate wifh The
Conservation Foundation. This article is
based in part on materials prepared for
the Foundation by Todd K. Buchta and
Christopher ]. Duerksen.)
18
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Festival
Markets:
Show-Stealers
of the
Waterfront
by Ann Breen and Dick Rigby
Baltimore's Harborplace, looking out on
pleasure boats and historic craft.
Baltimore Office of Promotion and
Tourism photo.
To many observers, the festival
marketplace symbolizes the epitome
of current efforts to turn underused
urban waterfronts into commercial
centers. The very popularity ol such
installations as Boston's Quincy Market
and San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square,
the two pacesetters, has made them
controversial. With a proliferation of
festival markets now on waterfront sites
from Norfolk to New Orleans and Long
Beach, critics lament that they are
trendy, glitzy tourist traps, monuments
to America's consumeritLs. In
Progressive Architecture, Nory Miller
dismissed Baltimore's Harborplace, for
example, as a cross between Atlantic
City's Boardwalk and a touch of
Disneyland. "The buildings of
Harborplace are a mash of cliches—high
tech, antique store, postmodern, 19th
century band shell and
pavilion-by-the-sea—not well reconciled
to each other nor resolved in
themselves." ..
Says Marty Millspaugh, former
president of Charles Center-Inner Harbor
Management, Inc.. the quasi-public
development organization in Baltimore:
"Downtown (in the 1950s) there was a
sense of impending disaster. Department
stores were closing. Employment had
been static for twenty years. Retail sales
were falling off. The rebirth or renewal
of the old Inner Harbor and the area
around it has done more to rekindle the
spirit, or esprit de corps let's say, of the
whole city, and turned a collective
inferiority complex into an aggressive
and expanding economic development
movement. Nothing like this had
happened to Baltimore since the war
between the states." ...
Two trends are at work. One is the
sign of revival of cities in general, and
the other is the waterfront
redevelopment phenomenon (see
accompanying sidebar). James Rouse,
developer of Harborplace and other
festival markets, viewed the situation
facing American cities in the H)8()s this
way: "The suburbs sucked the blood out
of the central cities and left behind
some of the urban basket cases we see
today." ...
Recalling Baltimore's once shabby
image as "Washington's Brooklyn."
other cities could well say, "If Baltimore
can do this, so can we." Many a mayor
has come to the Inner Harbor and
phoned home to announce an intent to
transform his or her waterfront with a
festival market. What this reaction
overlooks is the twenty-five years of
planning, the crucial cooperation
between business and political
leadership, and plain good luck that
went into Baltimore's transformation,
What is also underestimated is the
beauty and glamor the presence of
nearby bodies of water lend to what
otherwise would just be a particular
kind ol shopping mall. The river, lake,
or harbor views afforded from the
porches, pla/.as. and promenades uf the
waterfront festival market buildings
offer a dramatic contrast to enclosed,
inwardlooking suburban shopping malls
ringed by moats ol blacktop. In
Norfolk's Waterside, ample public areas
afford views ol a marina with a major
shipyard and working harbor. In
Baltimore's Harborplace, porches look
out on a scene of pleasure craft, historic:
vessels, paddlewheelers. and cruise
vessels. In San Francisco's Ghirardelli
Square, patios offer splendid glimpses
of the bay. In New Orleans' Jackson
Brewery project, overlooks enable the
MAY 1988
19
-------
public to see and enjoy the Mississippi
with ocean-going vessels close by....
Opened June 1, 1983, Waterside on
the Elizabeth River in downtown
Norfolk typifies the kind of financing
behind waterfront development. This
project, the first by the Enterprise
Development Co. that James Rouse
headed after his retirement from the
firm bearing his name, cost $14 million
and contains 80,000 square feet
(Baltimore's Harbor/place has 75,000
square feet in each of two structures).
Waterside Associates, with a local
developer and Enterprise Development
Company as partners, used a $9 million
advance from the city, while the rest
came from banks. $22 million has been
invested by the city in public
improvements along the downtown
waterfront, most recently in a marina
and dccpu'.itiM- berth beside the
marketplace. Other publicly-supported
improvements include a parking garage,
bulkheading, a nearby park, and land
acquisition. Part of the payoff to the
city, besides the intangible
improvements to its image, is a new
payroll for hundreds, an increase in tax
revenues, plus added tourist dollars.
How Waterside fares in Norfolk is
seen as a real test of the waterfront
festival market phenomenon. The
market is considerably smaller than the
ones in Boston or Baltimore (the Norfolk
area has just over one million people,
half of Baltimore's size). Initial reports
Two trends are at work. One
is the sign of revival of cities
in general, and the other is the
waterfront redevelopment
phenomenon.
are positive—6 million visitors recorded
annually—and a second market
structure will be added soon. This is not
to say there was not a shakeout among
merchants.
Norfolk's apparent success, duplicated
in part in Toledo at the newer Portside
project (also by Enterprise Development
Company) is fueling what already had
aspects of a fad. Waterfront festival
markets abound. In place or under
construction are at least 10 festival
markets throughout the United States
and more are being planned.
Whether we like it or not. the festival
market is a key to cities' revival efforts.
They work because they are slick,
controlled environments for the affluent.
They are safe and secure. There are no
derelicts or bag ladies in festival
marketplaces. They are attractive. They
attract.
Thus, Marc Older of the Boston
Redevelopment Authority reflects on
The New England Aquarium, along with old Faneuil Hall at Quincy Market, draws thousands of tourists to downtown Boston.
Ken Mallory photo.
20
EPA JOURNAL
-------
what the Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market
has meant to Boston: "(The marketplace)
brings in thousands of tourists, and
we're happy about that...."
In years to come festival markets may
be credited with reintroducing the
suburban public to cities. By providing
a comfortable, fun atmosphere in which
to rediscover the urban environment.
replacing fear with positive feelings, the
festival market serves as kind of
midway station.
Waterfront development is also
occurring at a time when dissatisfaction
with suburban lifestyles is growing. As
traffic, noise, crime, and dirt follow
suburban expansion,
couples—especially those without
children—may well wonder why they
spend time commuting. Why not move
downtown to the waterfront?
There's a downside to every boom.
The rediscovery of the waterfront has
now attracted investors and developers
by the score. Boston represents the
trend. Current proposals there would
populate major sections of the
downtown waterfront with high-rise and
high-income housing, joining many
such installations already in place both
downtown and in the Charlestown Xavy
Yard.
With rediscovered waterfronts and
opportunities for major private profits,
what is left for the public, whose water
is the attraction in the first place? Is a
waterfront walkway a sufficient return
for the major municipal investments
that have underwritten not only festival
marketplaces but numerous other
private developments as well?
For there are public uses to which
waterfront settings lend themselves
beautifully. As Boston's Hatch Shell has
demonstrated for years, riverside setting
for outdoor concerts is a combination of
experiences enjoyed by all. Detroit's
Hart Plaza, Chicago's Lakefront, Seattle's
Waterfront Development in Review
The redevelopment of urban
waterfront lands is occurring at a
feverish pace in communities across
North America. Many factors are
responsible for making the waterfront
a focus of attention, including:
Water Quality
Improved water quality has made
harbor living far more attractive than
it was in the past. Thanks to an effort
that began in earnest in the 1970s,
funding of waste-treatment plants has
now surpassed highway construction
as the largest national public works
program in United States history.
Reduced phosphates in water allow
more oxygen, contributing to
healthier fish populations. Holding
basins for dredge waste spills, and
efforts to curb runoffs and clean up
toxic waste dumps have all had their
beneficial effect.
Obsolescence
Changing industrial and port
technologies have resulted in
outmoded industrial facilities and
port areas which have been
abandoned along many waterfronts.
Such land can be relatively
inexpensive to purchase, even
allowing for clean-up costs, and it
does not require displacement of
neighborhoods.
Downtown Renewal
In many communities where central
downtown revival undertaken in the
1960s and 1970s has run its course,
the nearby waterfront area becomes
the next logical focus for the business
and political leadership.
Precedents
With knowledge of healthy
redevelopments in such cities as San
Francisco, Newport, Savannah,
Boston, Baltimore, Toronto,
Vancouver, and Seattle, and news of
dramatic new projects in Toledo,
Norfolk, Detroit, and New Orleans,
communities in all sections are
interested in their own waterfront
success story.
Historic Preservation
Abandoned warehouses and factories
lend themselves to restorations for
varied new uses, including
residences and shops, qualifying for
substantial tax credits. Refurbished
old vessels or replicas, the focus of
the maritime preservation movement,
enrich many waterfront settings.
Back to the City
A visible segment of today's society
is showing a preference for city
lifestyles. Beyond those few urban
pioneers that opt to live downtown,
there is a larger group—young
childless adults and "empty nesters,"
for example—that may be bored with
suburban settings, tired of the
commute, and interested in more
dynamic downtown offerings, if
Waterfront Park, and Miami's new
Bayfront Park are just a few of the
varied examples of waterfront public
parks. And then there are the
much-visited aquaria in Boston, Seattle,
Baltimore, and Monterey....
The question for concerned
citizens—now that the festival markets
and waterfront redevelopment
phenomena have caught hold—is
whether their municipal decisionmakers
are aware of the public interest in and
the desirability in preserving portions of
the waterfront for major civic.
educational, or artistic installations. Is
there a collective will to make public
facilities correspond with what is
certain to be massive private investment
on the waterfront for years to come? :
fReprinted ivith permission from the
1987 issue of the Xeiv England
Aquarium journal, Aquasphere. This
issue featured "harbor portraits." )
personal safety and security is
provided.
Fitness
Increased public interest in healthy,
outdoor activity has led to a demand
for more boating slips, fishing
facilities, park space, and pathways
for jogging, biking, and walking.
Federal Funding
Many U.S. waterfront projects, and
Canadian projects to an even greater
extent, have been made possible by
federal grants to help with the initial
public improvements often necessary
to attract private investment. Today's
projects along the Detroit River stem,
in part, from the city's ability to
secure federal funds for establishing
parks. Likewise federal funds played
critical roles in the Baltimore and
Toledo projects. Toronto's waterfront
is a federal project.
Views
Water views are a major selling point
in the real estate market. Both
Toronto and Detroit are examples of
cities where downtown sites for
condominiums had never developed,
whereas waterfront sites sold readily.
Although most apparent in
residential construction and
adaptation along the shoreline, office
and commercial installations, notably
restaurants, show this same increased
value for water views.
MAY 1988
21
-------
Reconnecting
Cities
and Nature
by Peter R. Stein
From the Platte River Greenway,
which meanders through downtown
Denver, to the recently initiated Hudson
Waterfront Walkway, a riverside
corridor with spectacular views of
Manhattan: urban open spaces are
receiving renewed and enlightened
interest in their protection, creation, and
rehabilitation. Across the United States,
governments, concerned citizens, state
agencies, and private corporations are
working collaboratively to increase our
urban park and recreation resources.
This rekindled appreciation of the
value and benefits of a liveable urban
environment has many roots. Historical
examples include Frederick Law
Olmstead's pioneering achievements as
demonstrated by Central Park in New
York, Golden Gate Park in San
Francisco, privately created spaces such
as Gramercy Park in lower Manhattan,
and Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill in
Boston. Yet even though the history of
urban development in America has been
laced with open spaces, consistent
attention to the provision of such
amenities has until recently been
lacking. Now real estate developers,
community organizations, and city
governments all have come to view
parkland as a means to add economic
value, social benefits, and ecological
attributes in both workplace and
residential settings.
Social Benefits
Green spaces in cities provide an oasis
from the hectic lifestyle urban dwellers
have to contend with. From large public
parks such as Fairmount Park in
Philadelphia to community vegetable
gardens in low-income neighborhoods,
green spaces provide opportunities for
both passive and active recreation. They
provide a location for quiet
contemplation and serve as a common
meeting ground for people from all
walks of life.
Parks in the city also offer an
immediate opportunity for people to
make a contribution toward improving
their environment. Local citizens acting
through voluntary organizations such as
"friends of the parks" groups, land
trusts, or regional or nonprofit national
conservation organizations, are playing
an ever-increasing role in the creation,
maintenance, and stewardship of urban
park resources.
This citizen involvement yields more
than improved city parks. Active
participation by local residents brings
people together and fosters mutual
enjoyment and responsibility for a
place. These cooperative efforts to
improve urban open space resources
often lead to increased cooperation in
other aspects of neighborhood life.
Community groups working together
initially to create or protect a
neighborhood garden have gone on to
tackle additional issues including crime,
youth development, education, housing,
and employment problems. Involvement
in parks close to home also encourages
appreciation of more distant natural
areas, far-off mountain ranges, or
pristine lakes and streams. This helps
build a land ethic, a community
stewardship of natural resources, so that
generations in the future may have a
parks legacy to enjoy.
The Telegraph Hill neighborhood in
San Francisco provides one example of
what citizen groups can accomplish. In
April 1986, a coalition comprised of
neighbors, community groups, elected
officials, the Trust for Public Land
(TPL), and caring citizens across the
nation succeeded in preventing a
construction project that would have
irreparably damaged the unique open
space of Grace Marchant's garden on the
slopes of Telegraph Hill. This beautiful,
sloping, verdant hillside was created
over a 20-year period by local residents
under the leadership of Grace Marchant.
Concerned neighbors founded the
Friends of the Garden (FOG) to stop the
proposed construction of a house on
Grace's garden site. FOG took its
concerns to City Hall, and two San
Francisco supervisors in turn asked
TPL, a national land conservation
organization, to help. TPL staff and FOG
volunteers, with the support of city
officials, the San Francisco Examiner,
and a local developer, launched a
fundraising campaign whereby
supporters of the garden could "adopt"
square inches of the garden.
An outpouring of public support and
private contributions from corporations
and foundations helped TPL and FOG
exceed the orginal goal for the Square
Inch Campaign. Future maintenance of
the garden has thus been assured by an
endowment created with the surplus
funds.
Economic Benefits
Open spaces, when properly planned
and cared for, are an asset to both
residential and commercial
development. The private real estate
development sector is demonstrating its
understanding of the added value of
urban open-space amenities by adding
plazas, atriums, roof-top gardens, and
outdoor recreation space to new
developments. From the Rouse
Company's well-designed open-space
program for Columbia, Maryland, to the
extensive esplanade and open-space
network planned for Battery Park City
in New York, major housing,
commercial, and mixed-use
developments are including elaborate
open-space elements in their designs.
Not only do these elements enhance a
project from an aesthetic point of view,
but such green spaces allow the
developer to create a marketing
advantage by appealing to Americans'
increased demand for high-quality
living environments.
For municipal governments, parks
provide an indirect, but very significant
benefit due to the increased property tax
assessments on buildings near parkland.
Beyond the fiscal benefit of additional
tax revenues, cities with well-managed
park and open-space systems provide
themselves and their citizens with a
competitive edge in attracting new jobs
and new development, as well as
retaining existing employers who might
otherwise contemplate a move to
greener pastures. Parks are part of the
package that keeps cities vital. This
reduces the pressure to convert
suburban and exurban landscapes into
tract housing and shopping malls,
which generally serve to heighten
infrastructure problems, destroy
productive farmland, and despoil
wildlife habitat.
For America's older cities, open
spaces are an essential ingredient in the
revitalization process. Lack of amenities,
unimaginative urban design, poor
planning, as well as social and
economic ills all contributed to the
decline and abandonment of many
inner-city neighborhoods. As these areas
are rejuvenated, concerned citizens,
elected officials, city managers, and
private real estate developers are joining
together in efforts to integrate park and
open-space resources into the
revitalization efforts.
A revitalization project in a very
dense neighborhood on Manhattan
serves as an example. The project has
managed to marry the usually
antagonistic elements of city
22
EPA JOURNAL
-------
government, a local community
organization, and a private real estate
development corporation, all interested
in preserving a significant public open
space. Under a precedent-setting
agreement among the TPL. real estate
developers Jerome Kretchmer and
Joseph Wasserman, and West Side
Community Garden, Inc. (a local land
trust), a permanent community garden
is being developed on 18.000 square feet
of land alongside new condominium
townhouses on Manhattan's Upper U'est
Side.
Twelve years ago, local residents
cleared the rubble from an
89.000-square-foot, city-owned urban
renewal site and created an
award-winning garden. When the city
announced in 1977 that the land would
be sold for development, community
and open space organizations rallied to
save the garden. After negotiations
among TPL, the gardeners, the
developers, and the local community
planning board, agreement was finally
reached last fall. The design includes a
terraced floral amphitheatre.
meandering landscaped paths, benches.
trees, and individual garden plots.
Environmental Attributes
Green space in the city is more than
pastoral views and a place for
recreation. It is the place for cleansing
the urban environment. Vegetation in
parks cleans the air and, along with
water resources, helps to mitigate
extremes in temperature. Parks in urban
stream valleys and protected urban
wetland areas provide natural
storm-water management solutions at a
cost far below artificial, man-made
systems. Urban greenbelts and large
expanses of preserved open space in
cities also allow for significant
ground-water recharge and aquifer
replenishment.
Networks of urban parklands also
form the initial segments of greenwavs
by linking inner-city open spaces with
suburban and rural parkland. For
example, Cleveland Metroparks and
Akron Metroparks provide urban
linkages to Cuyahoga Valley National
Recreation Area, thereby allowing city
dwellers access to a national resource
and re-establishing the connection
between people and their natural
environment.
Conclusion
Urban parks are key components to the
well-being of America's cities. As places
for social interaction, they are unique
and indispensable. As elements
necessary to sustain quality of life
values and thereby attract and or retain
industry, they cannot be duplicated.
Each acre of parkland in a crowded
metropolitan area yields environmental
benefits in excess of 100 acres of
parkland located in more remote areas.
according to an estimate by the
American Society of Landscape
Architects. These factors combine to
make protection and stewardship of
urban green spaces a true national
priority. -
(Stein is Senior Vice President of the
Trust for Public Lund.)
City life. Steve Delaney photo.
MAY 1988
-------
' - U-t S- . L
Suffering
in the
Second City
by James W. Rouse
Urban revitaiizdtion is a recurring
theme in (his issue of EPA journal.
From Ghirardelli Square in San
Francisco to a community garden
preserved amidst condominiums on
Manhattan's Upper West Side, from
Baltimore's Harborplace to San
Antonio's Hiverwalk—highly successful
renewal efforts around the country
stand as evidence that a remarkable
rebirth of our cities is under way.
On the other hand, there are many
urban environments that are still
waiting for their success stories. In
many inner-city communities, residents
typically experience less than their fair
share of everything except economic,
social, and environmental problems.
Certainly urban blight tends to include
a convergence of environmental hazards
such as lead in chipped paint, lead in
plumbing systems, and crumbling
asbestos, to name just a few.
One of the most influential figures in
urban development is James W. Rouse,
who master-minded Baltimore's
Harborplace and numerous oilier
successful renovation projects and
founded the community of Columbia,
Maryland. In the last few years, through
his Enterprise Foundation, Mr. Rouse
has used his talents to help transform
certain impoverished inner-city
neighborhoods by providing decent,
affordable housing for the very poor. In
Robert
photo, Folio, Inc.
the following remarks, excerpted by
EPA Journal from a recent speech
delivered by Mr. flouse, he speaks of the
impoverished "second cities" that
persist in nearly every American city.
Two cities ... exist in almost every city
in America.
There is the sparkling, growing city of
fine new office buildings, hotels.
restaurants—of new institutions of art,
music, education, entertainment that
mark the extraordinary rebirth of the
American center city.
There is new vitality, new life, now
spirit downtown in cities across the
country—Baltimore feels like a new
city. The spirit of the people soars with
pride in what has happened and with
high expectancy for the future. There is
a new sense of community among the
people of Baltimore—centered on the
inner harbor.
And in Washington, which never
tumbled as far as Baltimore, there is
new strength, new energy, growth and
confidence about the future of the
center city.
These are the cities of those who are
making it.
But right alongside in almost every
citv is a second city of those who are
EPA JOURNAL
-------
not making it—the city of the poor. It is
like a Third World city—the city of
people who are struggling to survive in
miserably unfit housing in wretched,
disorderly neighborhoods—with too
little food, too little health care, too
little work, and too little training for
work, too little education, too little
happiness, too little hope. It is like
another nation where we are growing
people who feel left out, abandoned,
separated from the opportunities for the
good life that abounds all around them.
For the most part, the people of this
country—leaders in business, banking,
government, the managers of our wealth
and our institutions—do not know how
millions and millions of people in our
country live. We think we do. We have
read the dismal figures, seen pictures of
dilapidated housing in derelict
neighborhoods, but most of us have not
walked those streets, stepped inside
those houses, climbed the stairs in those
apartments, have not seen good people
with clean, decent families huddled in
that miserable housing, paying
outrageous rents; have not looked into
the saddened, sullen faces; felt the
hopelessness, the distrust, suspicion,
and separation that pervades their life
and all around them.
Let me tell a little story that illustrates
that feeling—that suspicion and distrust.
Jubilee Housing is known by many as
a nonprofit group that has performed
miracles in transforming wretched
buildings and miserable lives in
northwest Washington. Their work
began in 1973 with the purchase of the
Kit/, and Mozart, once fine buildings,
home for 90 very poor families—no
doors on the front; the lobbies were the
street. Mail boxes ripped off the walls,
elevators that didn't run, five-floor
walk-ups. Garbage and trash thrown
down the elevator shafts out of fury and
frustration. The stench made one gag.
This was their home. Think of it. Now
with over 50,000 hours of volunteer
work and a little cash, the Ritz and the
Mozart have been restored to decent
buildings with now hope for the
families living there.
One day I was working with Rosa
Hatfield to help raise money for Jubilee.
Rosa, a black woman with very low
income, lived in the Kit/, with her three
children. She had been very suspicious
of Jubilee's takeover, had gradually
turned around to become a co-worker
and manager of the Ritz. We had come
to know one another well enough to talk
frankly with each other.
One day. 1 turned to Rosa and asked,
"Rosa, what did you think when all
those white people came in here to fix
up these apartments?" Her reply was, "I
thought the same thing everyone else
thought: what are they going to do to us
now."
There in a sentence was the mood
that burns inside the hearts and minds
of millions of very poor people who feel
abandoned and stepped on by our
society.
Most of us don't know those lives and
don't know:
• That there are more than 32 million
people living in poverty in the United
States, up from 25 million 10 years ago.
• While the number of poor people
seeking housing has increased, the
quantity of housing affordable to them
has declined. Therefore, the cost of
housing has gone up—way up.
• Of the 13 million families with
incomes under $10,000 a year, nearly
half—42 percent—pay more than 50
percent of their income for housing.
Think of it, over half their income in
rent—and at incomes of $7.000 a
year—more than half pay more than 70
percent of their incomes for housing.
• The pools of jobless at the heart of
our cities are 30-40 percent, sometimes
50 percent of the population in the
areas.
• About 48 percent of all young, black
men seeking work are jobless. This
means that a kid graduating from high
school—or quitting before he
Jubilee Housing, a nonprofit group in
Washington, DC, buys and renovates
run-down apartment buildings, then
rents them to low-income tenants.
Jubilee Housing photo.
graduates—has about an equal chance of
work or hustle—hustling to survive,
petty crimes, drugs, then larger crimes,
with families living in fear. Trapped in
these urban jungles.
And now the new phenomenon that
arises from our national
unawareness—and inattention to these
conditions—the homeless—the picture
of men and women asleep along the
sidewalk; of families with no place to
spend the night—shocks us all.
And who are the homeless?
A 1985 study of homelessness by the
Maryland Department of Human
Resources reports that:
• The leading causes of homelessness
include the lack of low-income housing,
unemployment, eviction, release from
an institution. And, of course, there are
the drug addicts, alcoholics, and those
who simply choose to live outside of
society.
• Twenty-two percent of the homeless
were children; 28 percent were in
family groups; 36 percent were females.
• In central Maryland counties (that
excludes Baltimore City], family groups
predominated, with 40-50 percent of the
homeless being children.
A recent Washington Post survey
showed that 25 percent of the people in
shelters were working, but with no
place to live. National estimates show
30-35 percent of the homeless are
families. A Los Angeles Times study
showed 44,000 families living in cars or
garages in Los Angeles.
Is this our country? Can this really be
America?
Homelessness has drawn tin1 attention
of the media, of caring people, of the
politicians as has nothing else relating
to the housing of the poor.
Homelessness has awakened us to the
desperate need of the poor.
And in this, there is hope. For as the
homeless open us up to caring, we are
led to the conditions behind the
homeless—to the millions and millions
of near-homeless—the people at the
edge who are paying rent they cannot
afford, often for housing that is unfit,
who have little in reserve who live
with tiie knowledge and the fear that
one setback and they are on the street
We are the wealthiest country in the
world, with the highest problem-solving
capability in the history of mankind.
Surely we have the capacity to match
our resources to our deep concern for
the dignity and well-being of our
people, a
MAY 1988
-------
•I ''•*
26
EPA JOURNAL
-------
The Choices
Are
Getting
Tougher
by Christopher Daggett
The height of a smog episode in New
York City in 1963. While air quality has
improved, "going that last mile" to
achieve clean air in our cities is proving
to be a challenge of historic proportions.
APWide World photo.
Once again, the Big Apple is on the
move. In 1975, wracked with
chronic, mismanagement and urban
decay, New York City teetered on the
brink of bankruptcy. Now, the pace of
New York is phenomenal as old-line
manufacturing has given way to a
dynamic financial, communications,
and service-industry Wonderland.
Glittering office tower construction
projects race to completion, and oven
the once-quiet suburbs have themselves
become independent commercial and
industrial centers and created suburbs
of their own.
New York's economy is moving fast,
but not its transportation. City traffic, on
average, now creeps along at about 11
miles an hour, and, in terms of related
air quality problems. New York is going
no place fast.
The city's urban ecology problems are
legion. New Yorkers use 1.5 billion
gallons of increasingly scarce water each
day, piping it in from the Catskill
Mountains 120 miles away. Another 1.7
billion gallons, enough to fill Yankee
Stadium to the top 10 times over, are
created daily in raw sewage and storm
water. And while the city sanitation
department figures out how to dispose
of 27,000 tons of refuse a clay, landfills
that ring the city continue to close. Kven
so, the city, with 60 new skyscrapers
built below 60th Street since 19HO,
continues to grow.
Despite such assaidts on the ecology,
New York City is becoming an
increasingly popular place to live and
work. But the economic growth and
neighborhood renewal notwithstanding,
New York's aging arteries are clogged
with shiny new cars, and the lungs of
19 million metropolitan area residents
clogged with air the government says is
too polluted to breathe.
Few, if any, of the problems that EPA
Region 2 has had to grapple with are as
difficult, frustrating, and complex as the
struggle to attain clean air .standards for
ozone and carbon monoxide in the New
York area.
Six months after the national Clean
Air Act (CAA) deadline for attaining
those health-related standards came and
went, ozone levels throughout the
region continue to exceed them by
almost 50 percent. The central city
districts exceed the carbon monoxide
standard by well over 50 percent.
Since CAA enactment in 1970, the
New York metropolitan area has, in fact,
made major strides toward reducing the
concentration of air pollutants. Sulfur
dioxide and particulate matter once
major pollutants here—have been
reduced to healthful levels. Gone are the
black smogs that took hundreds of lives
in 1953, '62, '63. '66, and '70.
Reductions were also made in carbon
monoxide and o/.one levels, but
progress on these two motor
vehicle-related pollutants has been
difficult to achieve. It is estimated that
automobiles emit IK) percent of ail
man made, ozone-producing
hydrocarbons and 9H percent of
manmade carbon monoxide. Therefore,
the motor vehicle must he at the center
of our air pollution control eilorts.
Reducing such pollution is a critical
health issue. Carbon monoxide impairs
normal functioning of the heart and
lungs; o/.one can cause permanent
damage to the respiratory system.
Over a 15-year period, Now York's
far-reaching, comprehensive control
programs tor carbon monoxide and
o/.one have not been successful. Then;
art; three basic reasons for this. First, the
economic boom has increased
congestion and vehicle miles traveled
much more than anticipated. Rush
hours begin earlier and end later as
whole populations from the suburbs
awaken earlier and earlier to beat tin-
morning gridlock. Second, state and city
MAY 1988
27
-------
officials have been hard-pressed to find
effective control measures without
identifying non-traditional approaches
that challenge deep-rooted assumptions
about personal mobility. And third, key
measures have been opposed by special
interests and local businesses, thereby
undercutting the effectiveness of
enforcement programs.
The causal chain is clear. Carbon
monoxide and ozone pollution are
created by increased traffic both in the
city and its massive suburbs. The traffic,
in turn, results from an inability to
sufficiently expand the roads and mass
transit systems.
Zoning laws in communities just
outside the city permit a great deal of
dispersed business and residential
development, especially along major
access gates into the city. Not designed
for heavy local traffic or the lines of
autos commuting to the city, such roads
are jammed with vehicles throughout
the work day and on weekends. Because
property taxes are the primary income
source for municipalities, communities
seek to create new commercial and
corporate centers to boost their revenues
from farms and residences, spurring a
"rateables chase" to lure larger
companies to the countryside. The end
result is an increased transportation
need and a mobile source air pollution
problem shared by city and country
cousins.
An even more fundamental shift in
consumption patterns is also at the root
of the development/transportation/air
pollution quagmire. In greater numbers
than ever before, people are living alone
and demanding more housing and
automobiles. The number of
single-person households has doubled
in the last generation. The number of
private autos has far outpaced
population growth. And the promise of
increased prosperity as a result of New
York's economic resurgence has brought
these people and their demands to the
city's doorstep.
In trying to accommodate both
economic development and
environmental quality, policy-makers
have found the search for new and
economically painless control measures
a difficult one. Across the Hudson River
from New York City, New jersey
legislators, concluding that only
state-wide land-use planning to limit
development can relieve highway and
air pollution problems, are attempting to
tackle the whole problem.
Facing estimates of a rise in the state's
population of 1.3 million, an additional
one million jobs, and 212 million
additional square feet of office space
over the next 20 years, New Jerseyans
are considering a plan that would
redirect development patterns to focus
on those areas that have already
experienced growth, especially
depressed inner-city areas in Newark,
Trenton, Camden, and jersey City. This
could avoid the cost of providing
expensive roads and mass transit to
each new commercial center built too
far away from existing ones. At the
Over a 15-year period, New
York's far-reaching,
comprehensive control
programs for carbon monoxide
ana ozone have not been
successful.
same time, environmentally sensitive
areas left relatively untouched by
development would be protected.
The proposals face monumental
opposition from both municipalities and
development interests. Home rule is a
fiercely defended tradition. But New
Jersey leaders understand that until they
are willing to reconsider the public's
right to private transportation and the
notion that developers can build
anything, anywhere, at any time,
transportation problems will continue. If
the political and economic will can be
mustered, New jersey's solution might
begin to decrease the spread of new
development and increased traffic.
New Jersey's control problems,
however, are quite different from those
of New York City, where snarled and
choking traffic has long been at
intolerable levels and changing land-use
patterns is a moot question.-Therefore,
different solutions are called for.
In theory, the traffic congestion
problem can be separated from the air
pollution problem. If cars can be made
to run cleaner, then the large number of
autos will only cause headaches for
commuters and traffic engineers, not
lung problems associated with current
levels of ozone and carbon monoxide.
The potential solutions for New York
are fourfold:
• Land-use-based controls like those
proposed for New Jersey
• Mass transit
• Emission controls
« Cleaner-burning fuels for motor
vehicles.
While the last three have been on the
table for some time, they continue to
promise cleaner air at the least cost.
Mass transit offers the most
comprehensive solution, aiming not
only to solve the traffic and air
pollution problems, but to give back the
many hours of individual productivity
currently lost in the traffic jam. For
example, dramatic improvements in
New York City's subway system,
providing new and refurbished cars free
of graffiti and policed more heavily than
ever, have resulted in increasing
ridership. But even if all the money
needed to make such service available
could be.raised, the city fathers really
couldn't count on getting New Yorkers
out of their beloved automobiles.
The answer for New York City, where
fully a third of all Americans who take
public transportation live, is clearly to
create more incentives to take mass
transit and more disincentives to drive a
car. In the Washington, DC area, drivers
must form carpools to use certain
highways, and in Denver, carpools enjoy
dollar-a-day parking in town. New York
officials have considered levying a $10
penalty on all single-occupant vehicles
entering the city, or an outright ban on
some Manhattan traffic.
The best measures, however, are often
not sticks but carrots. For example, the
U.S. tax code currently encourages
automotive transportation by allowing
companies to include the cost of
employee parking as a business
expense. Similar tax benefits could
encourage employee use of mass transit
or car pooling. And thinking even more
creatively, the train ride to work in the
morning could be made attractively
productive for commuters by equipping
them with phones or even, as in one
European experiment, with computer
terminals and wide desks whose costs
have been underwritten by employers.
How much are we now paying in lost
vehicle time? The person with an hour
commute loses the equivalent of more
than one working day a week to traffic.
Those with two hours each way—and
their numbers are growing—lose two
days and no doubt experience tension
and illness that result in poor work
performance. Imagine the windfall if
these workers' productivity could be
improved by using this time more
effectively!
One significant accomplishment in
the fight for clean air has been
placement of emission controls on
motor vehicles, with state Inspection
28
EPA JOURNAL
-------
and Maintenance (i/M) Programs to
enforce these controls. But experience
shows that for urban areas, this has not
been enough to control the air pollution
problem.
Nevertheless, "conventional wisdom"
currently suggests that if New York
State's I/M program for motor vehicles
were operating at peak effectiveness, or
if the program were enhanced, little else
would be needed to attain the carbon
monoxide standard. If Congress or EPA
would tighten control measures
nationwide, according to this line of
thinking, the problem would solve
itself.
Some state and local groups like this
reasoning because, in effect, it removes
the burden of making state and local
decisions related to land use,
transportation, and other pollution
problems. But, in fact, this conventional
wisdom is faulty: nothing could be
further from the truth. Congress, still
debating reauthorization of the Clean
Air Act, is still far from tightening
controls. And while EPA has proposed
more effective vapor recovery systems
and legislation to control gasoline
volatility, there is serious concern that
without action on the part of localities,
the pollution problems will worsen.
The New York I/M Program is clearly
not achieving the degree of emissions
control it was designed to produce. A
well-designed and efficiently operating
system would certainly result in more
emissions reduction. But EPA analysis
shows that unacceptable levels of
carbon monoxide would exist now and
persist in the future even if the I/M
Program were enhanced and operating
in a fully effective manner.
Obviously, emission controls offer
only a partial solution to the carbon
monoxide and ozone problems, but so
long as New Yorkers imagine that state
I/M Program improvements or swift
Congressional action alone will do the
trick, they are missing an opportunity to
help solve their air quality problem by
themselves.
Switching to alternative fuels is
perhaps a promising solution that
separates the traffic and pollution
problems. Although economic and
technical obstacles to making the switch
will be formidable in a society that has
been running on gasoline for almost a
century, there are significant ways cities
such as New York can encourage at
least a partial transition.
In the New York Borough of Queens,
six New York City buses have begun
running on methanol in an experiment
that authorities hope will lead to
conversion of the municipal fleet of
20,000 vehicles. Queens may then go on
to convert its army of privately owned
yellow cabs and every other centrally
fueled fleet of over 50 vehicles to
methanol use.
This local effort in Queens and
similar programs in California and
Colorado can spur the alternative fuel
industry to overcome economic and
technical obstacles to broader use of
methanol and other clean-burning fuels
like ethanol and compressed natural
gas. However, a realistic look at how far
and how fast alternative fuel switching
can go leads to considering it only a
partial solution.
Whatever specific measures are taken
to answer the air pollution challenge,
none of them can be effective without
the support of many different interests
in New York City. Anywhere you go,
there is a limit to how much
government agencies can do when
dealing with problems of this scope. In
the New York metropolitan area, where
such issues affect hundreds of
government jurisdictions, thousands of
businesses and manufacturers that are
critical to the economy, and millions of
people, government agencies quickly
reach that limit. The number of local,
city, regional, state, interstate, national.
and even international interests and
jurisdictions that can and do become
involved in any given environmental
decision in New York is spectacular; as
a result, the quality of the decisions can
suffer. It is becoming increasingly
apparent that sound environmental
policy and decision-making just can't be
separated from sound land-use
planning, transportation, and economic
development. And given that many of
these issues are local ones, the only
practical approach is cooperative
analysis, planning, and action.
People who care about New York and
are proud of its resurgence and
revitalization do not really want EPA.
the Congress, or the courts to dictate
how the problems will be solved. The
decisions to be made require the
combined wisdom and joint efforts of
the chambers of commerce, financial
and labor leaders, urban and
transportation planners, industrial
councils, environmental organizations,
and elected officials. Those groups
opposing local steps to solve the
problems, because such actions may
hurt their interests, do not imagine that
EPA will consider using its authority to
impose development limitations or
other tough measures in its
Congressionally mandated efforts to
protect human health and the
environment. They could be very
wrong.
There are few choices left in
Wonderland. The suburbs are
overflowing; the air, land, and water
resources are under untold strain. And
yet many people are more concerned
than ever with keeping the very
land-use and transportation privileges
that are choking the an-a. Efforts must
be made now to implement improved
land-use; policies, mass transit, effective
emissions control, and alternative fuels
•to reach the air quality standards thai
will let New Yorkers breathe easier. I
llla;j,;j,ctt. Administrator o) /•.'/', \'s
Hcgioii 2 Sinn; IWM, ivill heroine
Commissioner oj Xriv /rrsrv's
Department of Environmental f'rolcrlinn
(his Au»ust.J
Congestion in Midtown. New York City Department of Transportation photo.
MAY 1988
-------
Jacksonville's odor patrol runs around the clock on weekdays. Weekends are slated for inclusion soon.
Hatching an
Environmental
Battle Plan in
Jacksonville
by Khurshid K. Mehta and
James L. Manning
Blessed with a moderate climate,
sandy beaches, and a number of
historic sites, Jacksonville;, Florida, has
all the ingredients of a beautiful
all-American city and tourist mecca.
The mile-long Riverwalk, the Landing
Marketplace, the Convention Center,
and the riverfront skyscrapers give the
downtown a sparking vitality. The "Old
South" dogwoods, the gentle scents of
jasmine, cool ocean breezes, and the
meandering St. John's River provide a
salubrious quality of life. But there is
something that prevents the city from
being considered one of the nation's
most liveable places: it has an
unenviable reputation as "the city that
smells bad."
The annual record of complaints is
one way of characterizing an area's odor
problem. In 1987, three-quarters of
Jacksonville's approximately 2,000 air
pollution complaints were odor-related.
The complaints amounted to 200 per
100,000 population; the national average
for metropolitan areas is 29 per 100,000.
Complainants reported nausea,
vomiting, headache, irritated eyes,
noses, and throats and loss of sleep.
Although some felt these were
psychosomatic: effects rather than real
illness, Jacksonville's citizens didn't
really care whether the cause was
toxicological or a matter of perception.
Regardless of the underlying cause, the
unpleasant sensation associated with
malodorous exposure posed a threat to
one's sense of well-being. Further, the
effects of the odors included reduced
property values and loss of community
pride. Many felt acutely embarrassed
when visitors encountered the bad
smells as they came into town from the
airport.
Public resentment of the odor
problem and its associated stigma has
grown steadily over the years. It
intensified in March 1984 when a local
television documentary, "The Smell of
Money," was aired. Three years later, it
reached a political crescendo when in
April 1987 Thomas Hazouri was elected
Mayor on a platform that highlighted
ridding the city of its odors.
Mayor Hazouri moved quickly. He
expanded the city's air pollution control
staff and led the effort that strengthened
municipal environmental ordinances
and initiated a major attack on the
source of the problem.
The odoriferous conditions are caused
primarily by emissions from two Kraft
pulp mills (Kraft paper is the heavy
brown paper used in bags and other
products), two organic chemical
manufacturing facilities, and the
30
EPA JOURNAL
-------
municipal Buckman Sewage Treatment
Plant, all of which are located close to
population centers.
The pulp mills release malodorous
Total Reduced Sulfur (TRS) compounds
into the air. These compounds contain
hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan,
dimethyl sulfide, and dimethyl disulfide
and are emitted at several points in the
manufacturing process. In addition,
wood chips cooked in white alkaline
liquor at elevated temperatures release
turpentine. When the turpentine vapor
condenses, it forms liquid crude sulfate
turpentine (CST), which contains TRS
compounds.
The chemical plants, in turn, use the
CST from the pulp mills as a raw
chemical feedstock. (In fact, they use
about 70 percent of all CST generated
by Kraft pulp mills throughout the
United States.) At the chemical plants,
the CST is distilled into several major
components, including, ironically, a
wide variety of flavoring and fragrance
compounds. As the CST is unloaded,
transferred, stored, and processed, leaks
and spills release the malodorous
compounds into the air.
The wastewater from the plants
contains TRS and terpenes, which go
into the public sewers and arrive at the
publicly owned wastewater treatment
plant and are stripped from the
wastewater by aeration. Many
complaints about offensive odors from
the treatment plant are attributed to
those compounds as they complete
Jacksonville's "vicious odor loop,"
which begins with cooking wood chips
and winds up in the sewage treatment
plant.
After assuming office in June, Mayor
Hazouri declared a "war on odors,"
proposing revisions to the city's
environmental ordinance that would
"put teeth into the existing bill" and
enable swift enforcement against
violators. The bill, strongly supported
by citizens and environmental groups,
was enacted by the City Council on
March 23, 1988. Three major features
are:
• It raises civil penalties for air, water,
odor, and noise pollution regulations
from $500 to $10,000 per offense per
day.
• It adds a nuisance provision making a-
source subject to civil penalties of
$10,000 if it causes emissions that result
in the validation of five or more
complaints from different
households within a 90-day period.
• It creates an "odor nuisance" standard
(as evidenced by validation of five
complaints from different households
within a 90-day period), which subjects
violators to civil action initiated by the
city Department of Health, Welfare, and
Bio-Environmental Services (HWB) as
well as criminal action by the State
Attorney General's Office.
As a result, Jacksonville is the only
jurisdiction in the country to have
stipulated this kind of "nuisance"
standard.
Enforcing the nuisance provisions
requires a methodical and rigorous
approach to validating odor complaints.
Inspectors scrupulously follow
established protocols. First they obtain
all pertinent information about a
There is something that
prevents the city from being
considered one of the nation's
most liveable places: it has an
unenviable reputation as "the
city that smells bad."
complaint (e.g., odor description,
duration, location, etc.). Next, perimeter
surveys are done at the complainant's
home and at the suspected source.
Inspectors collect data about wind
movement, odor intensity, and
atmospheric conditions. Because odor
episodes often are transitory, only a
small percentage of the complaints can
be validated in spite of even the most
expeditious action by the inspectors.
Jacksonville also runs a
round-the-clock odor patrol on
weekdays and plans to extend it to the
full seven days because of complaints
that odors tend to get worse over
weekends.
Basically, the new law provides three
regulatory mechanisms for odor
abatement: enforcement against the
sources, development of ambient odor
standards, and development of
industry-specific emission/work practice
standards. The overall strategy uses the
nuisance provisions and ambient
standards as the driving force for
developing the industry-specific
standards which will be the key,
ultimately, to resolving the problem by
abating odors at their source.
Industry-specific standards are easier to
enforce because most of them are
objective; since emissions are measured
at the source, there is no problem of
tracing culpability. By the same token,
enforcement of nuisance provisions and
ambient standards takes substantial
resources to find the culpable source.
Abatement plans requiring
industry-specific measures have been
adopted by the Environmental
Protection Board both for mills and for
the sewage treatment plant. The pulp
mills will have to control emissions
from digesters, multiple-effect
evaporators, recovery furnaces, lime
kilns, and smelt-dissolving tanks
through either incineration or scrubbing.
TRS emissions will be continuously
monitored with state-of-the-art monitors
on the stacks. One mill already has
decided to replace two old lime kilns
with a new one and has reduced its TRS
emissions from an estimated 200 parts
per million (ppm) to 5 ppm. The mill
will also replace existing digest
systems and will burn all
non-condensable gases in the power
boiler, thereby reducing TRS emissions
at that source from 10,000 ppm to 5
ppm. The other mill is renovating its
non-condensable gas collection system
and will incinerate the gases from the
multiple-effect evaporator system. It also
is installing a new mud-washing system
for the lime kilns and will replace three
recovery furnaces with one large one.
These actions will have a salutary
impact on odors since the new
equipment is subject to New Source
Performance Standards far more
stringent than those for the existing
systems.
Abatement plans for the sewage
treatment plant include covering
existing grit and pre-aeration chambers
and ducting the gases to odor control
compost reactors, which have proven
more effective than previously used
activated carbon adsorption media. And
because the sewer treatment plan
changes will only partially abate the
odors, the city's Water Services Division
is developing pretreatment standards to
limit TRS compounds in industrial
wastewater discharges.
The chemical plants are the only ones
in the United States using turpentine to
derive terpenes used as synthetic flavors
and fragrances. They are highly
competitive, and information on their
processes is confidential. Nonetheless,
the urgency of the odor problem and
heightened public awareness have led to
the creation of a special task force
composed of agency personnel and
plant representatives to identify
reasonable odor abatement measures. In
plans submitted to Mayor Hazouri last
October, each company identified
MAY 1988
31
-------
approximately 40 specific: steps to be
implemented within a year. These
included ducting odorous gases from
storage tanks and distillation columns to
an incinerator, replacing steam-jet
vacuum devices with mechanical
pumps, collecting gases from loading
and unloading operations,
steam-cleaning product tanks in
enclosed areas, providing special
treatment of contaminated waters, and
improved housekeeping to minimize
leaks and hasten spill cleanup.
The HWB Department is confident
that implementation of the various
plans will bring significant relief, and
soon, since most of the proposals
should be implemented by mid-May
1989.
Although ambient standards are hard
to enforce because of the need to trace
an exceedance to the culpable source,
they are important to evaluating the
efficacy of industry-specific abatement
measures and determining the need for
further emission controls at the source.
The HWB Department, therefore, plans
to use the ambient standards for odors
similarly to the way they are used tor
criteria air pollutants; i.e., exceedance oi
tin; standard establishes the need lor
After assuming office, Mayor
Hazouri declared a "war on
odors."
further controls on contributing sources.
Developing ambient standards will
involve a new odor measurement
laboratory that has two kinds of
dynamic olfactometers. One, used with
a trained odor panel, measures
suprathreshold odor intensities by
comparison with a stepped series of
concentrations of a standard odorant.
The other measures odor persistence by
determining clilutions-to-threshold. Both
use a sensory approach and are already
in operation.
The development of the ambient TRS
rule is the first priority. With an
October 1988 completion deadline, the
goal is to set TRS compound ambient
standards on the basis of olfactory
objectionability. When Jacksonville's
standards are adopted, they will be the
first ambient TRS standards in the
nation.
Two approaches are being tried. In
one, grab samples of ambient air are
collected in a stainless steel.
teflon-lined container and analyzed on a
gas chromatograph with a Flame
Photometric Detector. The second
approach uses a more conventional
sulfur-dioxide analyzer in conjunction
with a thermal oxidizer. The first
method has better mobility but is
limited by the number of samples that
can be analyzed. The second is
quasi-mobile but has the advantage of
generating continuous data.
Thus, with the political will at its
disposal, Jacksonville, "the bold new
city of the South." has bitten the
environmental bullet to put into action
a plan that will abate the odor problem
that has plagued it for years. Its citizens
truly look forward to seeing the city's
stigmatized reputation for odors
relegated to the past and forgotten and
its true potential as a beautiful.
"all-American city" realized, c
(Merita is an Air Pollution Control
Engineer and Manning is Deputy
Director of Bio-Environmental Services,
Jacksonville, Florida.)
Kraft pulp and paper mill in
Jacksonville, Florida.
EPA JOURNAL
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ft Didn't
Happen
Yesterday
by Don Bronkema
Camilla Pissarro's Boulevard des
Italians, Morning, Sunlight, offers an
idyllic view of Paris in days past. Many
people welcomed the automobile as a
respite from animal droppings. National
Gallery of Art, Chester Dale Collection.
The: sudden burgeoning of urban
centers in tin; ancient Middle-Hast
nearly (>,OOU years ago, historians say.
led directly to a mmibor of striking
social developments, including
specialization of labor, social
stratification, organized governments.
accumulation of capital, a leisure class.
and the birth of science:. Kven the
earliest cities were accompanied by M
number of negative; features, among
them warfare: and the pathology of life-;
in large groups. The; latter is familial' to
everyone: crime, noise, impersonality,
anomie, and—of course—pollution.
Those who think bad air,
contaminated water, and mountains of
waste? are strictly modern developments
might be surprised to learn that people
have been complaining about them lor
thousands of years. Studies in
comparative ecology have found that by
the; time the early hill-towns of Anatolia
reached populations of 5.000-7.000.
people could no longer just dump their
garbage and broken crockery out the
back door. II they wanted to control
vermin and alleviate stencil, their refuse
had to be carried to the: city limits and
disposed of in a special repository.
That's what archaeologists found among
the ruins of t-atal Hiiyuk in present-day
Turkey: a municipal waste; disposal
facility. This was not a sanitary landfill,
to be; sure;, but a place where citi/ens
were perhaps obligeel to dump their
discards.
Later on. according lei other
specialists, Egyptian hieroglyphs relei to
regulation of the smoke ot ceioking lire;s.
and Babylonian te'xts describe the
proper elisposal ol animal oaiv.asses. In
Harappan India, a gen 'eminent ollicial
was designated to oversee the tillering
of silt from drinking water in time ol
Hoods.
It's hard to know for sure when
drunks ami renvely teen-agers tirst
became a pnibleim. but Cihinese scrolls
copieel from the third century IH1 show
imperiiil proscriptions against carousing
after sundown. In early Kurope. acoustic
pollution became: such a problem that
Draco of Athens tried to regulate traffic
and Caesar emtlawed all wagon haulage
between 12 midnight and (>A\1. Repeat
offenders were crucified, a common
means of execution in those days. We
MAY 1988
33
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also know from Tacitus that the Roman
army was under orders to bury its
garbage to discourage marauding
animals and to keep the enemy from
learning where it had been and the size
of its forces.
You might think that in the medieval
period, with its small, widely separated
villages, environmental conditions
would not have been a major concern.
But the surviving records of town
councils show that bad air and water,
noise, and junk were often discussed
and sometimes dealt with harshly.
Reportedly Edward IV of England got so
fed up breathing the fumes from
countless coal fires in the 15th century
that he denounced London and banned
the burning of this high-BTU fuel
altogether when the smog became
intolerable.
Cities, of course, are great habitations
for rats, and rats mean fleas. Europe was
repeatedly exposed to the bubonic
plague, and during those times the
major environmental problem was how
to dispose of thousands of rotting
corpses. Many of the fields beyond the
walls where corpses were buried en
masse later became unofficial dumps
and then in the 18th century became
exclusive neighborhoods for the rich
and the rising bourgeoisie.
In Victorian times, vast sewers were
built to handle the human waste of
London, then the world's largest
conurbation at three million people.
Unfortunately, municipal planners left
out the treatment phase, and tons of raw
sewage poured down the Thames right
past the Houses of Parliament. So
insufferable was the stench that Prime
Minister Gladstone is said to have
ordered lime-soaked sheets hung over
the stained-glass windows so that
debate could proceed on her Majesty's
budget.
It's hard to imagine now, but at the
turn of the century one of the most
visible and aggravating aspects of city
pollution was animal droppings—not
from dogs, but from tens of thousands of
horses. Urban historian Lewis Mumford
estimated that some 126,000 tons of
horse manure—one ton per
animal—were being deposited on the
streets of New York every year, and
conditions were no better in Paris or
Berlin or Moscow. London had twice
the population of New York and four
times as'many horses, resulting in about
500,000 tons of droppings per year. No
wonder London sustained an army of
bootblacks and streetsweepers.
So when the automobile was
introduced, the futurists of the day
thought it was a godsend that would do
away with all those horses. It did, in
fact. But the exhaust products of the
internal combustion engine may be even
worse. Aside from their impact on the
human cardiopulmonary system, vehicle
emissions are believed to contribute to
acid rain and may speed up the
dissolution of ozone in the upper
troposphere, with unforeseeable
consequences for life forms and global
climate.
Those who think bad air,
contaminated water, and
mountains of waste are strictly
modern developments might
be surprised to learn that
people have been complaining
about them for thousands of
years.
The striking aspect of urban pollution
today is that it is no longer confined to
a few enclaves in Europe or the United
States. It is a global phenomenon. And
some cities around the world are seen
by experts as being ecologically out of
control.
Moreover, vast megalopolises stretch
hundreds of miles so that the exurbs of
one city sprawl into the outskirts of
another. They have even been given
fanciful names like Boswash
(Boston-Washington, DC) and San-San
(San Francisco-San Diego) in this
country and Tokohama
(Tokyo-Yokohama) in Japan. By the year
2000, according to demographers, more
than half the world's people will reside
in vast, sprawling metroplexes.
One cannot leave this subject without
confronting the outlook for urban
impact of natural disasters. As cities
spread, they intrude into areas that
emergency relief experts consider to be
at risk during dam breaks, volcanic
eruptions, tornadoes, tsunamis,
earthquakes, and hurricanes. Cities may
also be vulnerable to water shortages if
regional aquifers become depleted.
In addition, if the "greenhouse effect"
continues unabated, urban areas may be
massively affected because of rising
temperatures, droughts, falling
reservoirs, the dieback of indigenous
flora and, not least, rising sea levels.
Many of the world's supercities are
coastal; a rise in sea level of even a
meter or so—not inconceivable by the
year 2050—could put some coastal
cities out of commission. That would
mean the loss of trillions in capital and
the relocation of tetis of millions of city
dwellers.
And yet our vision of urban life to
come need not be so hellish.
For example, according to press
accounts, air pollution has been cut
dramatically in the larger Japanese cities
by a combination of vehicle exhaust
controls, inspections, and computerized
traffic management. From downtown
Tokyo, it is reportedly possible to see
the top of Mt. Fuji on three times as
many days as 10 years ago. Ankara,
Turkey, is banning the combustion of
brown coal. The European nations are
inching toward agreements on
transboundary acid rain, and in West
Germany and Japan sulfur dioxide (S02)
and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are gradually
being contained with the assistance of
American technology. The Soviets have
experienced a new environmentalism
under glasnost, and Pravda has admitted
that the resource base of the USSR has
been heavily damaged.
In communications with the World
Bank, a number of developing nations,
like Indonesia, Brazil, and Zimbabwe,
have acknowledged the importance of
conserving untrammeled biomes as
renewable resources and places of
respite for their own urbanites as well
as rich tourists. Fertility rates (except in
areas like Benin, Niger, Somalia,
Tanzania, and Oman) are slowly coming
down around the world, with effective
action programs in such previously
unlikely places as Barbados, Antigua,
Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and
Taiwan^ Such programs always affect
the cities first because that's where
resources are concentrated.
In the United States, we have spent
hundreds of billions on pollution
control, most of it affecting urban
locations, over the past 17 years. Some
worthy gains in air quality have been
made, and in water quality we are at
least holding our own.
We do have the potential to
reconfigure our approach to the urban
environment. Much can be achieved
with political consensus and the full
mobilization of social institutions. And
the march of technology can be
expected to bring new breakthroughs,
making new systems available for
pollution prevention, waste disposal,
and urban design and transportation, a
(Bronkema is Editor of EPA Times, (he
monthly newsletter of EPA.)
34
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Appointments
Update
R. Augustus (Gus) Edwards
has been named Acting
Director, Office of Public
Affairs, within the Office of
External Affairs (OEA).
Edwards is not unfamiliar
with OEA; he has been
Deputy Assistant
Administrator for External
Affairs since 1986 and will
continue in this capacity
while serving as Office
Director for Public Affairs.
Prior to his appointment in
April 1986 as Deputy
Assistant Administrator, he
served as a consultant to
OEA.
From 1983 to 1986 he
worked as an Administrative
Assistant (chief of staff) to
U.S. Senator Paul Trible
(R-Virginia). He also served
as Administrative Assistant
to U.S. Representative
Trible from 1977 to 1983.
From 1975 to 1977 he served
as Special Assistant to U.S.
Representative Thomas N.
Downing (D-Virginia).
Edwards has also served as a
political journalist with
several newspapers,
including the DaiJy Press and
Times-Herald, in Newport
News, Virginia.
Edwards received his
Bachelor's degree from
George Washington University
Lawrence W. Reiter has been
named Director of the
Agency's Health Effects
Research Laboratory (HERL).
Dr. Reiter has served in
several positions during his
career including Adjunct,
Assistant, and Associate
Professor at three major
universities. He began his
career at EPA in 1973 as a
Research Pharmacologist in
the Experimental Biology
Division, Neurobiology
Branch. He then became
Neurotoxicology Program
Coordinator in the same
division. In 1980, he became
Director, Neurotoxicology
Division, HERL, a position he
has held until the present.
In addition to his
responsibilities at EPA, Dr,
Reiter is an active participant
in several societies including
the Society of Toxicology, for
which he is Vice
President-Elect of the
Neurotoxicology Section.
Dr. Reiter received a Ph.D.
degree from the University of
Kansas Medical Center in
1970 after earning a B.A.
from Rockhurst College in
1965.
Russ Dawson has been
named Acting Deputy
Director, Office of Public
Affairs, in the Office of
External Affairs (OEA).
Dawson joined EPA in
October 1983, working as a
speech writer for the Office
of Solid Waste and
Emergency Response.
From January 1985
through June 1988 Dawson
served as a Special Assistant
to the Administrator,
responsible for EPA
communications strategy
planning and
implementation. Dawson's
background includes working
as a journalist from 1972 to
1982.
Dawson received his
Bachelor's degree from the
University of Maryland.
Scott A. Hajost has been
appointed to the position of
Deputy Associate
Administrator for
International Activities.
Hajost has worked with the
U.S. Department of State in
the Office of the Legal
Adviser as an Attorney
Advisor for Oceans,
International Environmental,
and Scientific Affairs. In that
position Hajost served as the
department's legal expert on
environmental and marine
pollution matters and
Antarctica; he was
responsible for substantive
knowledge of international
and domestic law and policy
relating to the environment.
Hajost has chaired many
associations, including the
International Environmental
and Natural Resources
Committee of the
International Law Section,
Federal Bar Association.
Hajost received Bachelor's
and Master's degrees in
history from the University of
Dallas and Miami University,
respectively, and his J.D.
from the University of Toledo
College of Law. n
A review of recent major EPA
activities and developments
in the pollution control
program areas
AIR
GM Drops Challenge
EPA has announced that
General Motors Corp. has
withdrawn its legal challenge
to a recall ordered by EPA in
August 1985; instead the
company will repair the
82,600 1981 Pontiacs and
Buicks affected by the order,
to correct excessive
emissions of hydrocarbons.
Though GM will not begin
recalling the cars until
September, its decision to
withdraw the request for a
hearing assures owners the
cars will be repaired.
The affected cars—Pontiac
LeMans, LeMans Wagon,
Grand Prix, Catalina,
Bonneville, and Firebird; and
Buick Regal, Century, and
Century Wagon models
equipped with 4.3-liter
eight-cylinder engines—failed
to meet the 2.0-grams-per-test
(gpt) evaporative-emission
standard. GM will install a
vacuum-control valve in the
evaporative-control system to
increase the amount of air
drawn through the charcoal
in the evaporative canister,
increasing its ability to trap
the hydrocarbons.
New Clean-Air Plans
The Agency has sent letters
to the governors of 44 states
and the mayor of the District
of Columbia notifying them
that their
air-pollution-control
programs for achieving the
ozone and carbon-monoxide
standards have been found
substantially inadequate and
requiring that revisions to
these programs be made.
EPA's Regional
Administrators signed the
letters to the states included
in their respective regions.
EPA Administrator Lee M.
Thomas stated, "As Congress
debates various changes to
the Clean Air Act, there are
actions EPA must take to
MAY 1988
35
-------
Letter to the Editor
ensure progress toward our
goal of cleaner air for all
American cities. New
planning efforts for meeting
the ozone or
carbon-monoxide standards
must begin without delay."
With regard to revision of
the clean-air plans, EPA
believes that, even before the
issuance of a final policy, the
states should take certain
fundamental steps necessary
to continue to make progress
in attaining the ozone or
carbon-monoxide standards.
The states will be required to
correct discrepancies
between EPA's guidance and
the earlier approved State
Implementation Plans; to
satisfy any unfulfilled
commitments in the State
Implementation Plan to adopt
control measures; and to
begin updating the base-year
emissions inventory for the
defined planning area.
WATER
Acid Rain in Eastern
Streams
EPA has said that 2.7 percent
(5,429 kilometers) of the
combined length of the 500
streams recently surveyed
were acidic, with the large
majority of the acidity most
likely due to acid rain.
This figure is a result of a
major research effort to
survey streams in the
mid-Atlantic and
southeastern United States
for acid rain damage.
The Agency found that 4.4
percent of the combined
length of streams surveyed in
the mid-Atlantic were acidic
and that almost half [47.6
percent) had a low capacity
to neutralize acid and thus
might become acidic in the
future. Only 0.6 percent of
the combined length of
streams in the southeastern
portion of the survey were
acidic, but 49.3 percent had a
low capacity to neutralize
acidity.
According to Courtney
Riordan, Director of the
Agency's Office of
Environmental Processes and
Effects, "EPA's stream survey
is a fully documented,
statistically designed survey
showing a broader
geographical extent of
environmental effects from
acid rain than we previously
realized."
TOXICS
EPA Fines DeLonghi
The Agency has entered into
a consent agreement and
final order with DeLonghi
America, Inc., which requires
the company to pay a civil
penalty of $500,000 for
importing and exporting
oil-filled radiator heaters
contaminated with
polychlorinated biphenyls
(PBCs). The agreement also
requires DeLonghi to
establish consumer and
retailer programs for those
who own the
PCB-contaminated heaters.
As part of the consent
agreement, DeLonghi will
send out notices to
approximately 70,000
warranty card holders of
oil-filled radiator heaters that
were manufactured before
June 1986 and have the
model numbers 5108, 5108T,
or 5307. The notices mention
that DeLonghi heaters with
the serial number 86-20 or
lower contain recycled oil
and may be contaminated
with PCBs. DeLonghi also
agreed to set up a toll-free
telephone line by the end of
June to help consumers and
retailers with their questions
about the heaters.
DeLonghi imported for
domestic sale 485,000
oil-filled radiator heaters,
some of which were
contaminated with PCBs.
DeLonghi then exported
approximately 37,500
radiator heaters, some of
which were
PCB-contaminated. a
Dear Editor:
We wish to take issue with the April 1988 edition of the
EPA Journal (Vol. 14, No. 3), nominally dedicated to
"Agriculture and the Environment."
We were amazed to see that the Journal failed to even
address a major environmental problem affecting a
substantial part of our population: pesticide exposure of
farmworkers. Farm laborers are mentioned twice, in
passing, in 41 pages of text, and notably omitted from a
discussion of "groups...[challenged to achieve] respect
for each other's goals" (p. 34).
Such a glaring omission is not an isolated incident in
the Journal; rather, it is characteristic of EPA itself
(farmworker protection concerns also received negligible
attention in the Journal's May 1987 edition on
"Pesticides" [Vol. 13, No. 4]).
Farmworkers (substantially Hispanic) will continue to
be invisible to EPA policy-makers as long as EPA
continues to avoid placing minority employees in
substantive, policy-making roles. Hispanic-American
employees now make up about one percent of the
substantive policy-making positions in EPA, less than
1/2 of one percent of all Senior Executive Service (SES)
positions, and none of the SES positions filled in the
last three years.
In the absence of input from a balanced management
team, EPA will no doubt continue to suffer the lack of
credibility so visibly illustrated by the farmworkers'
walkout of EPA's "negotiated" farmworker protection
rule-making with farm and agrichemical interests. This
lack of balance is nowhere more apparent in the relative
importance both EPA and the Journal apply to
protecting endangered species versus protecting
minority farmworkers. In many respects, EPA's proposed
pesticide endangered species regulations are more
protective of the bluntnosed leopard lizard and the snail
kite than regulations protecting minority farmworkers.
EPA has taken steps in recent years to improve its
recruitment efforts for entry-level positions. However, at
the policy-making level, EPA has failed to integrate
either its staff or its approach to environmental
problems impacting minority population.
Signed,
Sylvia Correa
Alex Varela
Gary Snodgrass-Hortensio
Mario Salazar
Editor's note: As this issue of EPA Journal went to press,
the Agency issued proposed new worker protection
regulations that revise and expand the farmworker
standards originally established by EPA in 1974. The
public is invited to comment on these proposed new
standards during a formal comment period that closes
the first week in October 1988. A story on the national
standards being proposed by EPA is planned for a
forthcoming issue of the Journal.
36
EPA JOURNAL
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Victory in a hotly
contested race for
Chairman of the Board
of Supervisors in
Fairfax County, Virginia
(suburban Washington,
DC). In this election,
urban growth was the
key issue, and the
majority favored a more
cautious approach.
Debra Gentler photo,
Fairfax Journal.
Back Cover: Preoccupied. Photo by
David Lissy, Folio, Inc.
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