A suggested approach to overcome California's inability to permit urban resource recovery facilities.

Abstract

The premature political termination of the permit reviews of five urban resource recovery projects in California may indicate a deficiency in the process under which project health risk assessments are performed and policy biases of the public agencies that control the contents of the assessments. This article examines the permitting process that separates project health risk assessments from environmental impact reports and the anti-resource-recovery goals and policies of the state and local agencies that guide the preparation of project health risk assessments. Also examined are two independent studies made of the informational adequacy of the LANCER project documents. The article concludes that it is only by merging the risk assessment process with the environmental review process that control of the agencies can be loosened and project proponents be able to prepare project risk assessments for urban California resource recovery projects that will offer the projects any likelihood of being able to complete the permitting process.