more than enough project supporters during these early years to neutralize
the few outspoken opponents.

Proponents of these facilities insisted there was no connection between
such compensation packages and health risks. They wanted to eliminate any
public perception that financial incentives were presented as bribes or trade-
offs for health risks. On the contrary, they emphasized that everything pos-
sible would be done to make the WTE facilities safe, and that the whole
project was a very low risk operation. Compensation, they insisted, was
offered only for the additional neighborhood burdens associated with the
plant. Health risks were a separate issue, and they were addressed by the
county or its outside consultants in risk assessments.

After the mid- 1980s, however, such issues became much more problem-
atic as siting attempts were increasingly challenged by organized oppo-
nents. This change was due to the accessibility of critical technical infor-
mation about incineration, increased enthusiasm for recycling, and to the
emergence of loosely coordinated grassroots protests. The ideas and the net-
works comprising this anti-incineration tributary of the broader environ-
mental justice movement only converged gradually from different sources.
All of the siting projects we examine in this book were in process during the
latter part of the 1980s, and each encountered some organized resistance.

Opposition forces focused upon three general areas: the fairness of the
original siting decisions, health and safety issues associated with the tech-
nology, and the recycling alternative to burning. The fairness question de-
rived from the early environmental justice movement claim that such
burdensome projects were typically targeted for poorer neighborhoods,
where residents had least political power. The industry's health-risk assess-
ments were criticized by technically literate opponents as biased political
documents using statistics to appear as scientific studies. And trash incinera-
tion itself was portrayed as a socially irresponsible alternative to serious
recycling. Our title encapsulates these different foci of the anti-incineration
movement: DON'T BURN (recycle instead) IT (unhealthy and unsafe trash)
HERE (a location selected for political rather than scientific reasons).

Incinerator proponents, in response to such challenges, used both carrots
and sticks. They not only ridiculed opponents as selfish NIMBYs with no
concern for public trash disposal problems, but also insisted verbally on
their wholehearted support for recycling programs. They defended the so-
phistication of both the environmental impact statements and health-risk
assessments associated with incinerator sitings, and some industry consul-

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