Limitations and Assumptions

The greatest limitation in this study is an intentional choice to develop it as an exploratory study and not attempt a higher degree of explanatory or causal relationship building. This choice had knock-on effects that shaped the overall structure of the study, as well as, a targeted application of the ACF, and specific choices of data selection as well as data collection. A more rigorous study could have been developed to attempt to form and

support specific hypothesis, however the overall value of a looser exploratory study was determined to be better suited to the present gap in literature as well as the case itself.

Two additional limitations go hand in hand: selection and researcher bias. The selection bias comes in the form of case selection. The author of this study is a past and current resident of St. Louis City and County, and the presence of this waste is one of the largest environmental governance issues in the region. Likewise, because the content analysis methodology in this case relies on the judgment and interpretation of the researcher, the possibility of significant researcher bias exists. This was mitigated by combining the plan-text reading with the deeper thematic analysis. It could be further mitigated through repetition with different researchers.

Another limitation comes from missing data. There are not consistent records of the verbal public comments left during the official public hearings in each subcase decision. The responsiveness summary of several of the RODs stated that a transcript of the hearings was created but these transcripts were unable to be located in the reviews of the administrative record. This paper’s focus on the written comments forms a bias towards more dispassionate, orderly comments written in advance and submitted as opposed to what may be more

impassioned extemporaneous comments. This bias may have skewed the results of the public analysis. It could also explain the tendency of the Westlake comments to be terser, the ability to quickly email or leave a comment in 2018 online, may have served a similar role to the public hearings of 1993 and 2005. The decreased barrier to leaving a comment could be due to more wide spread access to information and an easier submission process. This could also reflect broader system changes including polarization within American politics.

Another limitation is the lack of interviews in this research project. This paper’s reliance on documents and government records, albeit with comments authored by private individuals, presents some issues of validity. This paper’s strategy focusing on the content of

these comments and decisions, was designed to meet the realities of the case and create a structure to explore the relationships between subcases. It could have been bolstered by an additional mode of inquiry particularly. Ultimately it was determined that those potential benefits don’t outweigh the potential detriments detailed in subsection 5.2: validity issues from the three-decade time span between subcases, issues of accessing decision makers and repeatability issues by not having comparable sources for each case.

Another real limitation of this case study was the time and resources available for this study. A longer, more robust and funded study could include a review of all the ROD’s in each subcase as well as extend the process to look at the pre-CERCLA remediation work.

Applying this study’s methodology to include the SLDS decisions and look at the smaller decisions in the three subcases could offer additional insights and avoid some of the compromises made in this study to prioritize the multi-dimensional approach detailed in subsection 5.1. This decision, while made in the spirit of this explorative study, was in essence a compromise between a longitudinal and cross-sectional approach.

These time and resource limitations also limited of the scale of this study. With more time and resources, this project could shift from a small-N approach to an intermediate-N approach. Instead of studying three subcases within the St. Louis Sites, it could examine the St. Louis Sites as well as other Superfund sites. This intermediate N approach could either explore other nuclear waste sites in different regions or look at non-nuclear superfund sites in St. Louis. Either approach could create opportunities to explore the role of public opinion in Superfund programs across different contexts or different levels of security and openness.

Potential alternative approaches to examine public opinion in the decision-making processes of these subcases could be to address politics or political pressure on these subcases. Pressure from elected politicians could be seen as a potential manifestation of public opinion attempting to intervene in the closed subsystem of the Superfund program.

Another approach following the same logic could look at the role of the media in these cases as potential manifestation of public opinion. Beyond public opinion, alternative approaches could be structured within the ACF, by looking at changes in governing coalitions,

socioeconomic changes or the impact form other subsystems.

Assumptions.

This project assumes a basic level of trust that the government follow its own rules:

collecting and recording public comments. Likewise, this study assumes that these decision-making processes are free from undue external or illegal influence. Throughout this study there was no discernable evidence of any graft or corruption. However, the presence of that type of influence could significantly diminish the role public acceptance or other key criteria might play.

This paper is also based on an assumption that these public comments are to some extent a reflection of people’s actual opinion and therefore part of public opinion. This assumption is essentially that people are not intentionally deceptive in these comments.

While this type of deception could be a possibility, the effect would be limited, since – it is also assumed that – the lead agency administrators are taking these comments as honest accounts of people’s thoughts and opinions on the case.

Together these limitations and assumptions highlight future areas of study within environmental governance in general, the Superfund program and the St. Louis site in

particular just as much as they may reflect deficiencies in this study. This study is the product of these choices, compromises, in an attempt to address the questions at the heart of this study and add a level of meaningful understanding to this case.