NIMBY

NIMBY, an acronym for “not in my backyard,” is used to describe the collective or individual opposition to the siting of locally undesirable land uses (LULUs), such as incinerators, landfills, nuclear power plants, lead and zinc smelter plants, and other hazardous waste facilities. Because LULUs potentially expose local residents to some external cost, NIMBYists challenge the siting of such facilities in communities on the grounds that the facilities may present unusually high risks to public health, personal property, and the natural environment. NIMBY represents the democratization of land use planning decisions, as individuals mobilize in response to public and private decision making surrounding land use. However, NIMBY is also criticized as an irrational, emotional, self-interested, or unethical response from those who are unwilling to share in the costs associated with living in an industrialized society. The spread of NIMBY across the United States, in particular, has resulted in what many in business and in government would describe as a political gridlock in which industry is impeded by widespread fear embedded in communities.

A girl stands before an incinerator in a rural community. The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act compelled industries to dispose of waste safely, but community NIMBY campaigns have forced many incinerator operators to find alternative locations.

Source:http://iStockphoto.com

Although NIMBY is often used in the pejorative, citizens engaged in land use planning and decision making raise critical issues and concerns about the effect of private and public development that potentially alters the community in important ways. To some degree, citizen participation in planning may help to improve the environmental, cultural, and social justice impacts on the community. Just as critical as the development in industry itself, citizens exercise their rights to participate in [Page 286]democratic processes and their civic responsibilities to respond in constructive ways to that development.

NIMBYism gained popularity within the U.S. environmental movement after a wave of environmental awareness swept the United States in the 1960s and 1970s about the dangers of hazardous materials. Several high-profile cases, including the near nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the public health emergency and urban planning disaster of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, led to increasing public awareness about the dangers to public health from hazardous materials. Public reaction to the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 and subsequent NIMBY campaigns are held as the most important reasons why nuclear plant construction declined precipitously in the United States through the 1980s and 1990s.

After the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, which regulates the storage, transportation, and disposal of hazardous wastes, industries were made responsible for safely managing industrial by-products and forbidden from the casual disposal practices that were previously the norm. Yet with the new environmental legislation, industries have faced resistance to their attempts to safely process or dispose of the hazardous materials in accordance with Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Operators of incinerators and landfills are frequently forced to find alternative locations to site their facilities when communities launch successful NIMBY campaigns. As NIMBYism becomes more prevalent, the failure to site hazardous waste facilities creates a backlog of waste processing and disposal and increases the long-distance transportation of hazardous wastes to facilities in other communities. The consequences of preventing the development and the distant siting of the facilities may actually exacerbate threats to the environment.

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