Question and Answer for Public Administration Essay

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solid waste management in impoverished areas versus affluent areas by examining the social, economic, ethical, and political reasons for placement of landfills and other waste removal facilities in poorer neighborhoods. By exploring the background of specific social movements, the first section of the assignment will seek to explore why the government placed landfills in certain locations versus others. The essay will also seek to examine what caused the social movements. As well as why the issue evolved from placement of landfills in poorer neighborhoods to placement of landfills in minority-majority poorer neighborhoods.

The next section will seek to analyze which candidates would be best for a nonprofit. Candidate one is a business-savvy employee wishing to change things by dismissing all the older employees and hiring new ones. Candidate two is a college graduate with experience in the field. By looking at the various perspectives of public administration theory, this section hopes to address why candidate two is the best candidate overall. Additionally, other aspects like diversity will be explored.

Question #1

Solid waste management is an ever growing economic and environmental issue in developing countries. While efforts have been made to increase recycling and reusing of waste material in the last few decades, the growing volume of waste amassed by the population needs a place to be transported to, which means the need to build new landfills. Landfills are often difficult to place due to the problems that arise once a landfill is built. The smell of garbage, the aesthetic value of the adjacent land decreasing, these things often spell encumbrance for those living in a neighborhood with a landfill. This essay will explore the political, social, and ethical aspects of decision-making involved in the placing of a new landfill in an economically impoverished neighborhood versus placing it in a politically connected, economically well-to-do neighborhood.

Those that live in economically impoverished areas have to deal with several big issues. Noise pollution, regular pollution, and crime to just to name a few. Those that can afford to live in nicer areas avoid most of these problems. But is it fair to have one area clean, noise-free, with less crime just because someone can pay a higher price? The concept of environmental justice essentially means the fair treatment of people irrespective of culture, race, or income with respect to the implementation, development, and enforcement of environmental regulations, policies, and laws, as well as their significant involvement in the administrative processes of the government (Zimring & Rathje, 2012, p. 56). While it may seem like the more likely option to place landfills in undesirable areas like impoverished neighborhoods, can it be considered fair to implement such a practice? This is where the ethical aspect of this question comes into play.

Morally speaking, it is wrong to place undesirable spaces like landfills only in poor neighborhoods. In fact, the first cases of environmental justice came from an ethical standpoint when in 1979 and 1982, two cases were brought to the Courts when a choice was made to place a garbage dump within the Northwood Manor in East Houston. Those that were against the place of the garbage dump believed it was racially motivated and violated their civil rights. Another case, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corporation also saw the placing of a garbage dump as unfair and morally wrong as it would cause irreparable harm to the community (Vanicek, 2007, p. 500).

One of the reasons people from the case felt that way was because the garbage dump would bring a host of problems to the community namely the dump would affect the safety and health of the people that lived nearby. While taking the case to court for these instances did not stop the waste facilities from being built, it shows how placing landfills and garbage dumps in impoverished neighborhoods can be seen as morally wrong, especially when it is believed to be racially motivated. While it is hard to prove intentional discrimination on the part of those placing the waste facilities, these court cases show that there is an awareness of potential discrimination.

There was an increase of such awareness in the late 1970's as well as the early 1980's because many Latinos, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans saw that communities of color and low-income communities were getting exposed to dangerous chemicals and other health threats thanks to the continual placing of waste facilities in those areas. They saw that while there was a need to have such facilities, by continuously placing them in areas where colored people lived, it showed a potentially moral problem.

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Whether racially motivated or not, the health effects from exposure to landfills and the ongoing placement of such landfills in certain locations promoted the idea that race equals poverty equals nonchalance of health and safety of a community.

The political aspect of landfill placement is another interesting perspective. One of the reasons why landfills are placed in poor neighborhoods and not in areas without residents is to preserve wildlife. Ever since the 1960's Americans have begun the debate over where national and state officials should place hazardous and toxic waste disposal sites. Wealthy American groups like the Boone and Crockett Club and the National Audubon Society initiated a movement in order to preserve the environment for the purpose of recreation such as sailing, fishing, and hunting (Vanicek, 2007, p. 560). These groups not only had wealth, but also had powerful military and political connections.

They were able to empower the movement along with the middle class and their grassroots efforts so that the government had to preserve wildlife and untouched areas. Along with keeping the government from placing hazardous and toxic waste disposal sites in such areas, they opposed placing such sites inside their neighborhoods. So the government only had one option. They had to place these sites in places that were already developed and had no opposition, low-income neighborhoods that were populated with people of color.

While low-income communities did not welcome the introduction of these sites into their neighborhoods, they did not oppose often the placements because of several reasons. The first being they did not have the money to lobby against it. The second being they were too busy dealing with other epidemics such as violence, crime, and drugs. At the end, they simply did not have the resources or time to devote to protecting their environment like the middle-class and wealthy communities did.

In fact, those groups fought hard to not have those sites put in their communities without caring where they were placed. The movement was called 'Not in My Backyard'. It then became a 'place a waste site in a community with the least political influence' scenario. Oddly enough, these low-income communities of color even welcomed the garbage dumps at times because it gave them job opportunities.

While it may seem unfair for people to place dump sites in communities of color, politically speaking it seemed like the best option. It helped the government avoid picking battles with white communities with money and political influence. It kept untouched land from being destroyed by those waste sites. It also became a chance for job opportunities for the poor. That is why it makes sense why the poor communities are often the target for waste disposal sites rather than affluent communities.

Minority communities in fact are the site for the biggest hazardous waste landfills in the United States.

In communities with two or more commercial hazardous waste facilities or any of the nation's five largest landfills, the average percentage of minorities in the population was more than three times that of communities without such facilities ... Three out of five of the largest hazardous waste landfills in the U.S. were located in predominantly African-American or Hispanic communities (Hill, 2014, p. 103).

What seems to be clear from the political perspective is, the less rights or political influence a group has, the more likely the government and business will be to place unwelcomed additions to a neighborhood, like landfills. In essence, it requires time (opposition), money (resources), to keep such waste sites from being placed in neighborhoods. Without any money or time to devote to the cause, it simply gets done over and over again until it becomes entirely reasonable to place hazardous waste sites in these kinds of locations.

Similar to the political aspect, the social aspect came from concern for what the placement of landfills had on the environment and on health. Environmental abuse became a significant cause for concern during the 60's. Those that proposed better health conditions and preservation of natural resources created a new social force of environmentalism that expanded their focus onto environmental abuse, growing population, increasing pollution levels, radiation, waste disposal, natural landscapes and habitats, and human impact on animal population. This all culminated through the holding of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Environment.

Why was there such concern then for the environment at that point in time? Socially speaking, people who had enough….....

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