Aspects of Rift Valley faulting and volcanicity in North Tanzania: report of a Geologists’ Association Field Meeting in 2008

The African Rift Valleys results from Neogene-Recent breakup up the African Plate due to continental extension. Compared with the western sector, in the eastern or Gregory Rift Valley the fracturing is accompanied by a large amount of volcanic activity and, in northern Tanzania, the volcanic rocks are relatively young compared with those in Ethiopia and Kenya where the products of the earliest stages of mantle melting are buried beneath older, more-extensive volcanic formations. The volcanic rocks vary from Pliocene and early Pleistocene intraplate basalts and trachytes to late Pleistocene/Holocene nephelinites and carbonatites.     

Granville Solvents: growth and remediation of a chemical recycling facility in a small Ohio town

Granville Solvents Inc. (GSI) operated for years on the Raccoon Creek flood plain in the central Ohio town of Granville, handling bulk quantities of fuels and solvents. The site is adjacent to Granville’s public water supply. The water wells of the village draw from a substantial buried-valley aquifer, which is vulnerable to surface influences and contaminants. GSI received a 3-year Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Part A permit without any siting evaluation because of its grandfather status, and was able to expand its operations greatly. During the expansion, continued negotiations involving permit applications and modifications were conducted; with continued disregard for site contamination. Although a Part B permit was never granted, GSI operated for 6 years under RCRA. Today the site is a Superfund operation and more than five million dollars have been spent on cleanup and maintenance of contaminated soil and groundwater. After 15 years of cleanup, the active remediation has been suspended for the present; however, management of the site for the protection of the adjacent well field is likely to continue well into the future.     

Beyond environmental impact: articulating the “intangibles” in a resource conflict

Environmental planning is an arena of policy making in which formal public deliberation is among the most extensive. At the same time, environmental disputes can also be among the most resistant to resolution, often becoming entangled in issues that some describe as “intangible”. The discourse is largely structured by regulatory frameworks, such as environmental impact assessment laws and procedures, which focus primarily on operational rights (what one can or cannot do where and when) and tangible impacts on the physical or natural environment. A comparative case study of mariculture in Hawai‘i reveals that a large measure of public concerns focused on collective choice rights (who has a right to make which decisions on behalf of whom) and the more intangible impacts to the social or cultural environment. These concerns are often nested in a historic context that has implications for the social processes that they create. The findings from this study imply a need for more structured or systematic ways to deliberate issues of collective choice rights alongside operational rights within the larger process of environmental planning.