State and local governments in the United States are increasingly being called upon to deal with the problems associated with defense downsizing and environmental damage caused by the military. What is unknown to many people is that the government pollutes as much as, if not more than, any large corporation. Of the 116 federal facilities on the EPA's "hit list" of most polluted sites in the United States in the early 1990s, 95 were military installations. The military is responsible for cleaning up its abandoned bases before the public can use the property. Moreover, the cleanup will cost tens of billions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers. In The Greening of Pentagon Brownfields, Kenneth N. Hansen explores how states and localities have increased their institutional capacities to deal with the unanticipated consequences of federal downsizing and pollution at military bases in the 1990s. His rigorous methodology—including analysis of personal interviews, comparative case studies, government documents, base conversion surveys, and data from the Congressional Budget Office—makes this project both a useful model for other research studies and an indispensable contemporary history.
