FINAL PROJECT
As part of your Final Project in this course, you need to choose an environmental dispute that will serve as a case study. This dispute should include some negotiation that can be explored and described.
The final project should be no more than 3,000 words long. Approximately half of the paper will provide the background for the case. The background will provide the decision-making context out of which the dispute arose and then describe the role of negotiation. The second half of the case study will provide an analysis of the negotiation where you will describe, from a theoretical perspective, what happened in the negotiation and why. Why did the negotiation work well? Why didn’t it? What could have been done differently? What was possible given the circumstances of the negotiation? How did what happened compare with (conform to or refute) the theories we have explored in this course?
The environmental dispute I chose is:
For the final project, I selected the environmental case that involved the EPA Region 3 and the U.S. Navy over alleged violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) at the Washington Navy Yard and Anacostia Naval Station in Washington, D.C. The case involved in 1995 was brought to light by the District of Columbia and EPA Region 3 against the Navy Yard during a site evaluation inspection conducted for compliance purposes.
Since the inspection revealed series of violations of RCRA Subtitle C hazardous waste management and Subtitle I underground storage tank (UST) provisions, including record keeping, reporting, corrosion protection, closure, corrective action, and training requirements[1], therefore the agency issued administrative complaints, but also sought civil penalties. Unfortunately, when the parties met, none of them could not reach agreement over some of the issues. The involvement of an Administrative Law Judge from EPA acting like a third party mediation was necessary to bring the disputants together throughout a myriad of negotiations to be able to break the deadlock between the two parties.
