Produced With
- The Metropolitan Regional Council
Other Reports in this Series
436
Mar 1968
A Report of the Second Regional Plan
While this is a preliminary study, focused mainly on developing a procedure for waste management analysis, some tentative conclusions emerge.
The consultants who wrote this report were asked to sketch the dimensions of the waste disposal problem in the Second Regional Plan Study Area between 1965 and 2000 and to set out a method for more precise waste projections, to suggest the costs and uncertainties of alternative management policies, to outline the information needed for a systematic approach to waste management, and to relate different patterns of urban growth to the quantities of wastes each might generate and to differences in management costs. Basically, Regional Plan wanted to know what effect waste management problems might have on the Region’s future and hence on the Second Regional Plan.
The major contribution of this study is a process for developing waste management policies for a metropolitan area. This process has four steps: (1) projections of total population and employment for the Region to the year 2000; (2) selection of different distributions of total population, jobs, and other activities - termed Variants I, II, and III in this study - to show the impact of alternative settlement patterns within the Study Area; (3) selection of various “generation conditions” to analyze the effects of factors contributing to waste production - such as changing technology, consumer preferences, and packaging practices - which yield assumed quantities of wastes that will be generated; (4) choice of “management conditions” to show the impact of different techniques and policies for handling and disposing of the generated wastes, including waste reduction, transformation of a waste from one form to another, different handling or disposal costs, or salvage and reuse. The multiplicity of possible variants and assumptions about waste generation and waste management yield many combinations. This analytical framework can be used to test the costs and benefits of policy proposals.
The data and assumptions used in the study only illustrate the analytical procedure. They are not firm figures, either for waste quantities or management costs. Few of the necessary data are now available; among the objectives of the study are to point out what information is necessary for efficient waste management and how it might be obtained and used.
Although this report is a response to environmental pollution, a basic premise of the study is that the discharge of wastes does not necessarily result in “pollution.” Pollution only occurs when discharges are of such duration and concentration that they have deleterious consequences for users of air, water, or land. This study emphasizes the effects of policy alternatives. It does not suggest how “clean” the environment should be, nor what levels of “cleanliness” are desirable. These are qualitative goals which require political determination. But the determination is best made when the facts about alternatives and their costs are clear. Making these facts and alternatives clear is one purpose of the study.
436