There is significant demographic inequity in the present location of Los Angeles County hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities (TSDFs) with regard to race, economic status, education, voter participation, land use, and TSDF capacity. TSDFs are concentrated in the area south of downtown with isolated sites located throughout southern and west-central L.A. County. Geographic location of TSDFs is highly spatially correlated with industrial land use and areas characterized by high concentrations minorities and low per capita income. Univariate analysis shows that, in almost every case, census tracts containing or proximate to TSDFs have an aggregate mean demographic profile which is significantly different than the L.A. County mean (usually at p<0.01). A larger percentage of people who live near TSDFs belong to minority groups and are below the County average in terms of income, education, employment, and voting participation. Tracts proximate to TSDFs also lag behind the County mean in property value and rental value, and much larger percentage of the land occupied by industrial land use. Demographic, economic, and land use differences tend to be greater for tracts containing or proximate to large capacity TSDFs (>50 tons/yr) and these trends persist in tracts located up to one mile away. The total number of minority residents living proximate to TSDFs is two to four times the number of non-minority residents, proportions which far exceed overall minority representation in L.A. County's population. More than one in five minorities live in a tractlocated within one mile of a large capacity hazardous waste TSDF in L.A. County, as compared to fewer than one in ten non-minorities living in similar circumstances. Logit multivariate regression analysis determined the relative importance of demographic characteristics in predicting TSDF location. All logit regression runs support the demographic inequity relationships discovered in the univariate analysis and indicate that percent industrial landuse and percent minority population within a tract are the strongest predictors of TSDF location in L.A. County, followed by per capita income and, to a lesser degree, population density. Logit results also indicate that neighborhoods nearest large capacity TSDFs are predominately populated with relatively poor residents, but neighborhoods within a short distance (0.5 to 1.0 mile radius) of the facilities are characterized by a high percentage of minorities who are not low income.
In the spring of 1995, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began using a new Permit Application Management System (PAMS) to streamline the process of evaluating and tracking the status of permit applications submitted to the agency for approval. PAMS is a mission-critical, menu-driven application housed in the Oracle environment and accessed from the personal computers of over two hundred trained users. From the time a permit application is received to the time it is either approved or denied, DEP uses PAMS to record and access applicant (company), application, application activity, permit, fee, staffing, scheduling, and locational information from the agency's geographic information system (GIS). Developed in ArcInfo and linked to Oracle, the GIS component to PAMS maintains a permanent, spatial inventory of application activity locations in Connecticut. Representing where permit application activities occur, activity locations include facilities, air stacks, landfills, surface and ground water discharges, wells, dams, bridges, marinas, etc. For each activity location in PAMS, GIS performs a series of spatial overlays, comparing the location with other baseline data layers including Connecticut town boundaries, the coastal boundary, the natural diversity database, subregional drainage basins, surface and ground water quality classifications, and USGS quadrangles. the results of the overlay process are then passed to PAMS as attributes. GIS populates the Oracle tables and PAMS ties the new locational information to the permit application. Using PAMS, permit staff are then able to determine for themselves whether their application is in the coastal boundary, a natural diversity database area, or within the vicinity of a particular surface or ground water quality classification. PAMS-GIS includes a graphical user interface for digitizing, viewing, and mapping application activity locations and a batch job for processing newly digitized application activity locations. The GIS batch job runs every ten minutes during the work day and performs the spatial overlays, populates PAMS, and sends activity location checkplots to the nearest, appropriate printer.
Producing a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a large federal facility requires consideration of a wide range of activities, collection of an extensive amount of data, and analysis and modeling to determine the nature and extent of potential environmental impacts. EIS documents provide the most detailed analyses of federal facilities required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1973. An extensive, environmentally focused Geographic Information System (GIS) was developed and used for analysis, modeling, and production of maps and statistics for the EIS of a federal facility with an area over 100 square miles. The final products will include a printed document with over 250 GIS produced maps, CD-ROM versions of both the document and the GIS metadata dictionary, and most importantly, an environmentally focused GIS that will form a baseline of information for the sponsor. This GIS will augment their existing infrastructure-related GIS. This paper, written from the perspective of the GIS technical leader, details the GIS development process, many of the analysis and modeling efforts, components of the final system, and discussion of special technical issues and lessons learned. The submitted manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the U.S. Government under contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38. Accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. * Work supported under a military interdepartmental purchase request from the U.S. Department of Defense, through U.S. Department of Energy contract W-31-109-Eng-38.