Boundaries of analysis: an inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam controversy

Book · Thu Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1976

OSTI ID:7135659

Feiveson, H A; Sinden, F W; Socolow, R H ^[1]

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1. 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

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290300* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Environment
Health
& Safety
510500 -- Environment
Terrestrial-- Site Resource & Use Studies-- (-1989)
520500 -- Environment
Aquatic-- Site Resource & Use Studies-- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
COMMUNITIES
CONSTRUCTION
CONTROL
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
DAMS
DELAWARE RIVER
DOCUMENT TYPES
ELECTRIC POWER
ENERGY SOURCES
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS
PLANNING
POWER
POWER GENERATION
RIVERS
SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
STREAMS
SURFACE WATERS
WATER RESOURCES