Contested environmental hazards and community conflict over relocation.

摘要

The majority of the literature on contaminated communities indicates that environmental hazards lead to conflict and dissension. This paper examines the salient dimensions of conflict and factionalism in a rural community in Oklahoma, USA. The community is heavily contaminated from 80 years of commercial mining operations and was one of the first sites designated on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund List in 1983. Despite two decades of remediation efforts, the community remains polluted with lead and other heavy metals. Based on in-depth interviews with community residents, observation, and document analysis, the study finds that the community has splintered into two competing groups over the environmental controversy. One faction of the community supports a federally sponsored relocation campaign, while the other has organized to oppose relocation. The results of the study indicate that the contentious split is centred around the ambiguity of harm associated with the contamination, conflicting economic concerns, and variations in community attachment..