Management of social effects in oil-shale boomtowns

Conference · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:6240839

Wernette, D

Concern with energy developments in rural sparsely populated areas has concentrated on two types of impacts: the increased employment of local workers, and the social and fiscal problems caused by rapid population growth due to in-migrant workers. Little work has been done to date to estimate the effectiveness of measures to manage these impacts to the benefit of the local population. Sensitivity analysis with a county-level computer simulation model is used to estimate the effectiveness of four growth management measures in this study. Two scenarios of oil-shale development in northwestern Colorado are used as the context for these measures. The two measures to increase local employment focus on training local workers in relevant skills, and on increasing the commuting of workers from adjacent counties. Neither of these measures has large effects on local employment because of the limited pool of local labor. The two measures to control population growth focus on reducing secondary local employment growth and lowering the average size of in-migrant workers' households. Neither of these measures produce large reductions in the rate of population growth. The construction of a new community appears more promising as an impact mitigation measure. These findings are limited in validity to very high growth scenarios for very isolated, sparsely populated areas. These growth management measures should be of greater value for lower growth scenarios and for more densely populated areas of the country.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab., IL (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-31109-ENG-38
• OSTI ID: 6240839
• Report Number(s): CONF-8209104-1; ON: DE83007961
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290200 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
294004 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Oil Shales & Tar Sands
530100* -- Environmental-Social Aspects of Energy Technologies-- Social & Economic Studies-- (-1989)
BOOM TOWNS
COLORADO
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ECONOMIC IMPACT
EMPLOYMENT
ENERGY SOURCE DEVELOPMENT
FEDERAL REGION VIII
INDUSTRY
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
MANAGEMENT
NORTH AMERICA
OIL SHALE INDUSTRY
PERSONNEL
POPULATION DYNAMICS
RURAL AREAS
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
SIMULATION
SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
TRAINING
USA