Host Community Compensation and Municipal Solid Waste Landfills

Abstract

Strong local opposition to the construction of solid waste landfills has become commonplace and the siting of landfills in the United States is time consuming and expensive. To ease the siting process, host compensation in exchange for permission to construct a landfill has become popular. The value and nature of host compensation varies dramatically across communities, but the reasons for this variation are relatively unexplored. We construct a national data set consisting of host fees paid by the 104 largest privately owned solid waste landfills in 1996, along with the characteristics of the landfills and the host communities. Our findings suggest that he direct participation of citizens in host fee negotiations, the community knowledge stemming from having hosted a prior landfill, and the presence of state mandates for minimum host compensation all lead to much greater amounts of host compensation. We find that the bargaining position of the landfill developer is less important, in terms of the magnitude of the effect. However we do find evidence that firms with deeper pockets are more likely to pay higher host fees. We find limited evidence that a community's race and income level matter after accounting for factors that directly reflect citizen involvement. The analysis also indicates that landfills that accept risky wastes, such as contaminated soil or sludge, and problematic wastes, such as tires pay higher host fees.

Policy Watch: Examining the Justification for Residential Recycling

“…The landfill internalizes some of these external costs by paying per-ton "host fees" to neighboring townships and county governments for original permission to site the landfill. Presumably these host agreements are negotiated to make neighbors no worse off with the landfill and payment than without them (Jenkins, Maguire, and Morgan, 2004). As an example, 26 private landfills in Pennsylvania pay local governments an average per-ton host fee of $4.05 per ton.…”

Waste Generation and Landfill Diversion Dynamics: Decentralised Management and Spatial Effects

“…The works discussed above sometimes touch on the spatial (dependence) factors that may impact on environmental performance spatial phenomena, have been prominent in analyses of waste siting (Jenkins et al, 2004;Miranda et al, 2000;Ley et al, 2002). This rather specific stream of wasterelated works includes studies of mainly Scandinavian and UK experience, due mostly to the lack of data for most countries.…”

Are You Sure You Want to Waste Policy Chances? Waste Generation, Landfill Diversion and Environmental Policy Effectiveness in the EU15

“…A first grouping comprises countries with high levels of both materials recovery and incineration, and relatively low levels of landfill, a second grouping includes countries with high materials recovery rates, medium incineration levels and medium dependence on landfill, while the third group of countries has low levels of both materials recovery and incineration, and relatively high dependence on landfill (EEA, [23]). Although costs and benefits should be evaluated specifically for each situation, the environmental impacts of landfilling and waste sites mostly in urban areas are massive (Pearce,[59]; Eshet et al, [28]; Ilhanfeldt and Taylor, [35]; Jenkins et al, [39] Dijkgraaf and Vollebergh [19] among others. The focus has shifted over the last 3-4 years to the role of waste in production and consumption processes and how prevention of waste and better waste management can contribute to more sustainable outcomes.…”