Boundaries of analysis: an inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam controversy
- eds.
This is a study of what happens to technical analyses in the real world of politics. The Tocks Island Dam project proposed construction of a dam on the Delaware River at Tocks Island, five miles north of the Delaware Water Gap. Planned and developed in the early 1960's, it was initially considered a model of water resource planning. But it soon became the target of an extended controversy involving a tangle of interconnected concerns - floods and droughts, energy, growth, congestion, recreation, and the uprooting of people and communities. Numerous participants - economists, scientists, planners, technologists, bureaucrats and environmentalists - measured, modeled and studied the Tocks Island proposal. The results were a weighty legacy of technical and economic analyses - and a decade of political stalemate regarding the fate of the dam. These analyses, to a substantial degree, masked the value conflicts at stake in the controversy; they concealed the real political and human issues of who would win and who would lose if the Tocks Island project were undertaken. And, the studies were infected by rigid categories of thought and divisions of bureaucratic responsibilities. This collection of original essays tells the story of the Tocks Island controversy, with a fresh perspective on the environmental issues at stake. Its contributors consider the political decision-making process throughout the controversy and show how economic and technological analyses affected those decisions. Viewed as a whole, the essays show that systematic analysis and an explicit concern for human values need not be mutually exclusive pursuits.
- OSTI ID:
- 7135659
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
POLICY AND ECONOMY
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
DAMS
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
WATER RESOURCES
PLANNING
COMMUNITIES
CONSTRUCTION
CONTROL
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
DELAWARE RIVER
ELECTRIC POWER
ENERGY SOURCES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS
POWER GENERATION
DOCUMENT TYPES
POWER
RIVERS
STREAMS
SURFACE WATERS
290300* - Energy Planning & Policy- Environment
Health
& Safety
510500 - Environment
Terrestrial- Site Resource & Use Studies- (-1989)
520500 - Environment
Aquatic- Site Resource & Use Studies- (-1989)