Danger All Around : Waste Storage Crisis on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast

In the next twenty-five years, the equivalent of more than 3,000 Astrodomes will be needed to hold the compacted trash and garbage of the Houston area alone. Depending on the depth of the waste, as much as thirty square miles could be filled by the cities of Dallas and New Orleans. The problem of where to store waste has grabbed a lot of headlines recently, but people have been slow to realize that the environmental damage caused by storage sites is an even greater menace. This book makes the danger clear, as Joel Goldsteen offers the first comprehensive look at the selection and environmental impact of municipal and petrochemical waste storage sites along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
Goldsteen has distilled a large landfill-worth of data into a highly readable account of the creation and regulation of waste disposal sites, the health issues that surround them, and the human and natural factors that affect how safe or dangerous they become. Chapters that describe industrial development along the Gulf Coast and the concurrent challenges of wastewater treatment, solid waste management, and hazardous waste control are followed by in-depth descriptions of nine Texas and four Louisiana sites.
The strength of DANGER ALL AROUND lies in the connection Goldsteen draws between land use planning and environmental protection. He documents how industrial facilities are usually located with little, if any, consideration for their impact on people and the environment, even though such facilities almost always produce toxic discharges. He offers hard evidence to local governments seeking to initiate permanent local regulatory change.
In addition to charting the scope of the problem and the failure of federal and state authorities to deal with the waste storage crisis in more than piecemeal fashion, DANGER ALL AROUND offers possible solutions. Revisions to current comprehensive plans, zoning and subdivision ordinances, capital budgeting, the creation of local review boards, and the condemnation of land surrounding certain industrial sites are just a few of the planning tools Goldsteen suggests for existing and newly developed areas.
In a time of growing environmental awareness, DANGER ALL AROUND sounds a frightening warning of what can happen if current heedless land usage continues. Representative of problems far beyond the Texas-Louisiana coast, the book will be crucial reading for everyone involved in urban planning, industrial development, and environmental protection.

Joel B. Goldsteen is a professor of city and regional planning at the Institute of Urban Studies of the University of Texas at Arlington.