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A Case Study of the Chem-Dyne Superfund Site

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A Case Study of the Chem-Dyne Superfund Site ABSTRACT LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: A CASE STUDY OF THE CHEM-DYNE SUPERFUND SITE by Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe This thesis explores lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice through in-depth interviews with a snowball sample of people affected by, and former employees of, the Chem-Dyne Superfund site in Hamilton, Ohio. Open coding and qualitative content analysis revealed that participants used the following criteria to define both environmental crime and environmental injustice: illegality, intentionality, harm and safety, and unfairness. These findings have important implications for studies of environmental crime and environmental injustice. In the context of the Chem-Dyne Superfund site, (1) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental justice are multidimensional concepts; (2) lay conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are mostly anthropocentric; (3) there is significant conceptual overlap between environmental crime and environmental injustice in lay victim accounts; and (4) lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice are both similar to, yet distinct from, official definitions. LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: A CASE STUDY OF THE CHEM-DYNE SUPERFUND SITE Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Environmental Science by Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019 Advisor: Dr. Ryan Gunderson Reader: Dr. Jonathan Levy Reader: Dr. Nishani Frazier ©2019 Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe This thesis titled LAY VICTIMS’ CONCEPTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE. A CASE STUDY OF CHEM-DYNE SUPERFUND SITE IN HAMILTON by Emmanuel Abiodun Ogundipe has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Science and The Institute for the Environment and Sustainability Dr. Ryan Gunderson Dr. Jonathan Levy Dr. Nishani Frazier Table of Contents Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………. iii List of Tables …………………………………………………………………………… v List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………. vi Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………… vii Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………… viii Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………1-10 Chapter 2: Methods ………………………………………………………….11 Study Area …………………………………………………………………..10 Data Collection ……………………………………………………...............11 Data Analysis ………………………………………………………………..12 Chapter 3: Results …………………………………………………………...13 Interviews ……………………………………………………………………11 Demographics ……………………………………………………..................11 Chapter 4: Discussion ………………………………………………………..13-30 Chapter 5: Conclusion ………………………………………………………..31-32 References ………………………………………………………....................33-41 Appendices …………………………………………………………………...41-44 Appendix A: Consent Form ……………………………………......................42-43 Appendix B: Interview Guide ………………………………………………...41-44 iii List of Tables Table 1: Demographics of lay victim public participants ………………………………….11 iv List of Figures Appendix A: Consent Form ………………………………………..42-43 Appendix B: Interview Guide ……………………………………….41-44 v Dedication To my faculty, family and friends for their indescribable and unrelenting support to make this research a reality. vi Acknowledgements This study would not have been conceivable without an inspiration from the director of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, Dr. Jonathan Levy who introduced Chem-Dyne superfund documentary to me - thank you so much for everything. I am most fortunate to have met Dr. Nishani Frazier who gave me a ride for my first visit to the Chem-Dyne Superfund site in Hamilton. I am grateful for your interest in this research. My most profound appreciation goes to my wonderful thesis advisor Dr. Ryan Gunderson for his intellectual support, patience and understanding to make this research a reality. I think I am very lucky to have you as my thesis advisor. Thank you so very much for your encouragement. I also extend my appreciation to Miami University’s Graduate School for granting me funding through the Thesis and Dissertation Research Award to support this study. For all those who have supported me in various ways to complete this study, thank you so much vii 1. Introduction The goal of this research was to explore lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice. By “lay victims” I mean victims of environmental crimes and injustice who are part of the non-expert public. By “conceptions of environmental crime and environmental justice” I mean the criteria used to judge an event as an environmental crime and/or environmental justice. I examined how people affected by a historic Superfund site - the Chem-Dyne hazardous waste site - defined environmental injustice and environmental crime, focusing on the criteria implicitly and explicitly used to evaluate criminality and unjustness. The project engaged larger questions in environmental justice, environmental crime, and the social- scientific study of social justice, including: What are the social and social-psychological dimensions of conceptions of environmental injustice and environmental crime? How do non- experts construct meanings about environmental injustice and environmental crime? How do lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime and environmental injustice relate to official (academic, legal, and policy) definitions? The following specific objectives were developed to investigate these questions: 1. Explore the conceptions of environmental crime among lay victims of Chem-Dyne. 2. Explore the conceptions of environmental injustice among lay victims of Chem- Dyne. 3. Examine if those affected by Chem-Dyne view people and/or the environment as victims of Chem-Dyne. 4. Examine if those affected by Chem-Dyne believe that Chem-Dyne was sited justly or unjustly. Section 2.4 returns to these objectives in the form of focused research questions. 1 In what follows, I first put these specific objectives and broader research questions in the context of the current literature on environmental crime, environmental justice, and lay victims’ conceptions of crime and justice (Section 2). I then summarize the environmental impacts and social dimensions of the Chem-Dyne hazardous waste site (Section 3). After summarizing the research design and methodology (Section 4), results concerning lay victims’ conceptions of environmental crime (Section 5) and environmental injustice (Section 6) are given. The implications of these results for the fields of green criminology and environmental justice are explained in Section 7. Section 8 concludes with the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research. 2. Literature Review After summarizing the environmental-scientific dimensions of hazardous waste management, this section provides a conceptual overview of environmental crime and environmental justice and summarizes research on lay conceptions of crime and justice. 2.1. Hazardous Waste Management The US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priority List (NPL) (2007) identified 1240 hazardous wastes sites with federal facilities. The Environmental Protection Agency (2007) claimed that about 41 million people in the US reside within a 4 mile-radius of this NPL sites. In Europe, 342,000 contaminated sites with nearby residents living around these sites were identified (EPA, 2007). Based on data from the World Health Organization in 2006, a one-third of the diseases in Africa have been linked to environmental risk factors like hazardous 2 wastes and that 20% of the wastes in African urban centers were disposed in landfills. Hence, the need for hazardous waste management (Fazzo et al., 2017). The study of hazardous waste management is a relatively new field that is sometimes considered under the umbrella of environmental science (American Chemical Society, 2019). A good number of industries are now appreciating and conducting research in hazardous wastes management with the belief that thorough scientific research can produce sustainable solutions to environmental problems in the society. As a result of the stricter environmental laws and policies from the governments, these companies now seek the help of chemists and environmental compliance officers who possess requisite knowledge to provide modalities of complying with these laws (ibid). One goal of this thesis is to show the relevance of environmental social science to hazardous waste management, especially the social and justice dimensions of hazardous waste management failure. 2.2. Environmental Crime It is a difficult task to assign a universally accepted definition to the term “environmental crime” (Barclay and Bartel 2015) because green criminology is a relatively new field (Wiernik 2006), there are regional variations in definitions of environmental crime (Eman et al. 2011), and the causes of environmental crime are diverse (White 2007; Barclay & Bartel 2015). Pecar (1981: 33–45) defines environmental crime as: every permanent or temporary act or process which has a negative influence on the environment, peoples’ health or natural resources, including building, changing abandonment and destruction of buildings; waste processing and elimination of waste, emissions into water, air or soil; transport and handling of dangerous substances; damaging or destruction of natural resources; reduction of biological diversity or reduction of natural genetic resources; and other
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