Journal of Energy Engineering

The management of health risks from environmental factors continues to be at the forefront of environmental policy and management in many areas, including energy production. In the 1990s, institutions to manage environmental health have continued to be created and refined and new bureaucracies and a professional workforce to deal with these problems have continued to be formed as well. This paper reviews the following aspects of environmental health risk management in the executive branch of the federal government, including those agencies responsible for energy risk management: (1) The nature and size of agency missions in environmental health; (2) the organization of risk functions; (3) the size and composition of agency workforces; and (4) the use of external resources to expand traditional human resources. Major findings are that environmental health has been given a high priority in the federal system in both agency missions and in the organization of the risk management function. The environmental health component of the workforce in many agencies having environmental health responsibilities is still relatively small compared to the representation of the conventional engineering disciplines. The environmental health profession is highly diverse, drawing from many disciplines, and as such, can diversify the existing workforce engaged in risk management. The size and composition of the environmental health workforce in federal agencies (including those devoted to energy production) necessitate reliance upon external resources and cross‐agency linkages to supplement existing agency resources.

The phaseout of leaded gasoline in the United States was accomplished through a series of measures known as the lead‐phasedown program. In accomplishing this program, the regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employed various methods of control from pure mandate to flexibility‐based rules employing economic incentives. This paper discusses the elements of the structure of a flexible system, describes EPA's evolution into such a structure, reviews the governmental administration of the program, and estimates some of the reduced costs and increased benefits that resulted. The lessons learned should be useful for applying flexible and incentive‐based regulations to other programs.

A two‐stage process for siting a noxious facility is proposed in this paper. We assume that each community that is a potential host to a site considers that the proposed project is sufficiently safe and that the community could accept it if given sufficient compensation. The siting problem then revolves around questions of fairness and efficiency. To address the fairness issue we propose the use of a lottery to select a potential site. To promote efficient use of resources a bidding procedure is proposed in which other communities could “win the site” along with a compensation package after the initial location is determined. This procedure guarantees a winner, either through the lottery or through the bidding procedure. The paper discusses different types of compensation packages depending upon the nature of the siting problem and the different cost structures between communities.

The equivalent fuel value methodology was used to compare recycling to recover material values with recycling to recover energy values at a mass burn waste to energy (WTE) plant and a refuse derived fuel (RDF) WTE plant, both generating electrical power. It was determined that the equivalent fuel value, under conditions that existed in Pinellas County Florida during the Middle East crises, reached $57.41 per ton of as‐received municipal solid waste. There is a saving of from 1.15 to 1.35 barrels of No. 2 fuel oil per ton of municipal solid waste (MSW) when the waste is used to generate electrical power. Some of the other waste component equivalent fuel values determined were 2.4 barrels of No. 2 fuel oil per ton of newsprint, 5.63 barrels of No. 2 fuel oil per ton of polyethylene, and 0.81 barrels of No. 2 fuel oil per ton of lawn grass with 65% moisture. Various environmental impacts that can result from collection, shipping, and the lost energy opportunity values appeared to exceed the environmental benefits of recycling the material values of combustible MSW components.