The Haulbowline case is in the process of being resolved at the moment. There are some economic and political methods that are being planned in order to resolve the issue the most logical way. The Irish Government will be subjected to heavy fines from the EU in order to accelerate the clean up process and make a lesson out of neglecting behavior (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; O’Riordan 2010). Yet for the past two years the clean up only dealt with a small portion of overall toxic waste stored on the island. So far, more than 50 million Euro were spent on employing the German laboratory to export waste in order to further reprocess it and modify its composition. Overall projected costs of the project exceed 300 million Euro (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a). It is possible to discuss this case from a point of view of utopia, or dystopia, yet this paper will address some potential policy and economic resolutions for this case. If we look at the case of utopia, the Haulbowline Island will have to be cleaned and the toxic waste extracted in the least amount of time possible. This means extra money paid to the German laboratory and hence an increase in taxes from the citizens. The associated policy that will result from the Haulbowlie case most likely will be a set of “direct regulations” (Daly and Farley 2004). The idea of “direct regulation” associated with fines that represent a powerful tool used by the stable governments in order to address crisis situations. For example, ban certain waste from being deposited in an unprotected soil and build special containers for it. (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; Daly and Farley 2004). The Haulbowline case might produce an effective outcome for new policies regarding the steel production factories to emerge.
The case of dystopia implies the reluctance of the Government to deal with the waste site at all. This attitude proved to be useless given the Irish Government was trying to convince the local population in the absence of pollution since 2008 (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; O’Riordan 2010). It is already 2010, yet the local population and involved environmentalists are not satisfied with the slow clean up and reluctant attitude of the Government towards this case. This way, this paper will focus on practical applications this case might apply in terms of both economics and policy decision-making. At the moment, the EU is claiming that the Irish State breached the “Waste Management Directive 75/442/EEC” which states the need for licensing of all sites that carry any types of post-production waste (O’Riordan 2010). There is a hope for European Union to push for the “command and control” policies, which encompass “direct regulations”, i.e. heavy fines for the Irish Government since it failed to resolve the issue quickly enough (Daly and Farley 2004; Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a). These policies are the result of an extreme situation associated with health concerns rather than a planned action. Further use of these policies may apply to the already existing steel-production factories in order to control for their emissions and waste generation (Daly and Farley 2004).
The Haulbowline case presents a learning experience for both governments and factories to apply prior planning and prediction methods that would address the issues of future potential externalities to account for before starting a project. In the Haulbowline case there was no consideration of the externalities, rather just for the overall benefits of the production on the market (Bein and Rintoul 1999; Daly and Farley 2004). There has to always be a consideration of internalizing the externalities either through the Pigouvian taxes or “command and control tools” such as fines resulting from improper waste storage (Daly and Farley 2004; Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a). When the steel- producing factory was established before the WWII, economists at that time focused on the benefits of the process, not the externalities. Pigovian taxes at that time could crudely account for the internalization of potential externalities, yet for the Haulbowline case they will be applied to the Government and not to the original company that owned the site and went bankrupt (Daly and Farley 2004). The Haulbowline case serves a good lesson once again for the EU regulations to specify Pigouvian taxes per each individual industrial production branch.
As for the policies that regulate economic activities, we have already mentioned the “command and control tools” that include fines to reduce the levels of industrial pollution overall. These regulations gradually eliminate the issue of excess waste aggregation since there are strict limitations imposed on the level of allowed waste storage levels and methods to store the waste. In case of the Haulbowline Island, the toxic waste was stored both underground and above the ground, which allowed for toxic exposure of the whole island and consequently, the local population (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; O’Riordan 2010). Once the fine is applied and the Government is forced to accelerate the clean up process, there will be a need for policies to monitor the progress of waste removal and the condition of the island later on. This way, the environmental policies associated with regulations will be applied globally to monitor pollution levels (Daly and Farley 2004). Thus, an incentive in a form of a tax or a fine will be introduced in order to keep the industrial waste under control (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; Daly and Farley 2004).
These policies will be a strong incentive to accelerate the case with the Haulbowline waste clean up. They will also be a major push for health studies within the surrounding regions in order to establish either a presence or absence of the connection between the waste storage methods and the cancer rate of the local populations. So far, the Irish Government looked more into the “cap and contain” method (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; O’Riordan 2010) in order to block the assumed toxicity from being exposed to the environment. Technically, the lagoons, which were organized on the island in order to store the toxic waste, were covered in order to protect further emission of toxic waste. This approach did not take into consideration underground leachate that might expose the Cork harbor to heavy contamination (Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a). This solution does not comply with the strict EU regulations and will most certainly pose a target for the command and control policies. Most probably, the EU will issue additional fines based on the inappropriate solution implemented by the Ministry of the Environment (Daly and Farley 2004; Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a; O’Riordan 2010).
Conclusively, the Haulbowline case shows a direct connection between the policy formulation and its effect on the economical tools such as fines and taxation methods. Also, the outcomes of this case can range from dystopia to utopia depending on the practical applications that are applied for the effective clean up strategy. For example, the “capping” method belongs more in the dystopia definition of the Haulbowline case. The Government proved itself extremely slow in producing viable solutions for the Haulbowline waste issue, which brings us back to the EU regulations and the need to effectively stimulate the Irish Government by fines and taxes in order to achieve effective outcome such as clean up and adequate policies for preventing such cases in other steel-producing factories. So far, the future will prove successful once the health study is carried out at the Haulbowline Island, proper “command and control policies” are imposed and the clean up is significantly accelerated.
References
Bandara, R. 2006. Role of Environmental Economics in Sustainable Solid Waste
Management. Presented at: Regional Guidelines for Sustainable Management of
Municipal Solid Waste. Sri Lanka
Bein, P. and Rintoul, D. 1999. Shadow pricing greenhouse gases. In, Proceedings of the
Third Biennial Conference of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics. Nature, Wealth and the Human Economy in the Next Millennium. URL: [consulted on 12/17/2010]
Daly, H. E. and Farley, J. C. 2004. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications.
Washington, D.C: Island Press
Farrell, K. 2007. Living with the living systems: The co-evolution of values and
valuation. In, The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology. 14:14-26
Friends of the Irish Environment 2009a.Industrial Contamination at the Former Site of
the Irish Steel Plant at Haulbowline Island, County Cork. URL:
[consulted on 12/18/2010]
Heinzerling, L. and Ackerman, F. 2002. Pricing the Priceless. Cost-benefit Analysis of
Environmental Protection. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute
Leontief, W. 1986. Chapter 11: Environmental repercussions and the
economic structure: An input-output approach (1970). In, Input Output Economics. 2 ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morgan, P. 2008 Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
Haulbowline Documentation. Peer Review Report. URL: [consulted on 12/16/2010]
O’Riordan, S. 2010. Petition brings toxic dump fight to Europe. In, Irish Examiner. URL:
[consulted on 12/18/2010]
Pearce, D., Atkinson, G. and Mourato, S. 2006. Cost-Benefit Analysis and the
Environment. Recent Developments. OECD Publishing
UNEP. 2010. Limitations of Cost-Benefit analysis. United Nations Environment
Program. In, Manual on Compliance with and Enforcement of Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
[consulted on 12/12/10]
