Our first fieldwork comparison focuses upon the processes involved in two
distinct incinerator siting attempts: a successful attempt in Delaware
County, Pennsylvania, and a defeated project in a rural area of Cape May
County, New Jersey. In both cases, the incinerators were targeted for rela-
tively downscale communities. Both counties began serious searches for so-
lutions to their mounting solid waste disposal problems in the early 1980s,
as existing landfills were reaching capacity. Incineration was becoming an
increasingly acceptable alternative to landfilling, and county authorities ex-
perienced few constraints in discussing their waste problems with waste-to-
energy vendors, because grassroots opposition to this technology was still
in its infancy. By 1986, without encountering more than nominal citizen
dissent, both counties had made official decisions to invest in modern incin-
erators. Within a year, however, opposition emerged in both counties, from
quite different sources and with very different results. By the late 1980s, the
Delaware County incinerator was under construction, while the Cape May
County plant had been abandoned by that area's Municipal Utilities Au-
thority (MUA) officials after an intense struggle with local opponents. Why
such divergent outcomes?

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