Preemption and organized interests: The National Priorities List of Hazardous Waste Sites

This work considers the National Priorities List of Hazardous Waste Sites and the organized and unorganized interests that are involved in the listing process. The performance indicators are the numbers of sites in each state discovered and proposed during the listing process. The independent variables are factors that characterize both organized and unorganized interests. Background on the legal and organizational aspects of listing is presented, along with theory and literature relating to the variables. Literature on the listing process itself has not been found. Hypotheses consider both the organized chemical and petroleum refining industries and unorganized interests. Among the indicators of unorganized interests are the political complexion of the states, population and income characteristics of the states, and organizational aspects of state hazardous waste activities. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine the contribution of each of the independent variables to the dependent variables--discovered sites and proposed sites. The variables for organized and unorganized interests were analyzed separately. The significant variables for each of these analyses were included in two final models, one for each of the dependent variables, which were then re-analyzed using multivariate regression techniques. The regressions showed that the petroleum refining industry was significantly positively correlated with discovered sites and significantly negatively correlated with proposed sites; the chemical industry was significantly correlated only with proposed sites, and that correlation was positive. These results suggest that the petroleum refining industry has pre-empted the implementation of the listing process of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) through a clause in the original legislation that makes the listing of petroleum refining sites more difficult, while the chemical industry did not have such a protective clause. The evidence suggests that this pre-emption was a response to organized interests of the petroluem refining industry rather than to unorganized (voter) interests.