Heterotopia and Actor-Network Theory: Visualizing the Normalization of Remediated Landscapes

Heterotopia and the Ordering of Place

Much of the research that identifies spaces as heterotopia is informed by Foucault’s 1967 essay Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. Central to Foucault’s discussion in this work is the assertion that heterotopia are places

which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. (Foucault, 1986, p. 24)

As many scholars have noted, the explanation of heterotopia Foucault advances in this text holds both possibilities and problems (Genocchio, 1996; Johnson, 2006; Topinka, 2010). On one hand, the term offers a potential line of inquiry to locate alternative sites and spaces of contest (Hetherington, 1997; Saindon, 2010; Wesselman, 2013; Wright, 2005). Yet some have questioned the merits of such an approach.

Among all the attempts to apply and make sense of the concept, there is a persistent association with spaces of resistance and transgression. Yet, curiously, this link is often asserted with little substantiation. (Johnson, 2006, p. 81)

These scholarly shortcomings, however, should not be traced to an ill-informed use of the concept but rather can be associated with Foucault’s ambiguous and often contradictory definition and description of heterotopia in Of Other Spaces. Topinka (2010), for example, labeled Foucault’s definition as “unwieldly,” noting that “Foucault does not offer a succinct or unproblematic definition of heterotopias” (p. 57). The term’s obscurity also results from Foucault’s use of various contrasting examples. As Wesselman (2013) argued, “when reconsidering Of Other Spaces critically, the concept becomes problematic, since some of its features seem to diverge” (p. 21). For instance, Foucault defines heterotopias as sites of deviation, and includes prisons and psychiatric hospitals as representative examples. Yet he also designates such sites of leisure and pleasure as honeymoon trips and cinemas as heterotopia. Commenting on the challenges presented by the wide range of examples and descriptions, Wesselman (2013) contended that

the diversity of Foucault’s descriptions and examples thus simply makes it impossible to speak of heterotopia as a (single) “type” of space with a recognizable and stable set of features. (p. 22)

As a result of the definitional challenges found in the essay, some have suggested that the term’s value rests not in attempting to identify sites that constitute heterotopia but rather in understanding the way certain locations may operate as a site of difference.

Only little can be gained by saying that a space is (or isn’t) a heterotopia; the concept becomes more productive when looking at how a space (structurally and spatially) works as a heterotopia. Rather than use the term to simplify and reduce actual spaces, heterotopias should be taken as heterogeneous pluralities with elements that can be diverse and different in nature—and Foucault’s concept serves to analyze which of those engender otherness, and how. (Wesselman, 2013, p. 25)

The potential of the concept rests not in further adding to what Johnson (2006) has labeled as the “dazzling variety of spaces” (p. 81) that serve as illustrations of heterotopias but rather using the concept to shed light on the means by which the production of a space can represent, contest, and invert prevailing orders.

Subsequently, a study of heterotopia entails an analysis of spatial practice, specifically in terms of the means by which the constituent parts and material objects emplaced within a site can foster alternative ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and being. Drawing from the work of Lefebvre, Ackerman (2003) explained that “Spatial practice is revealed through the study of spatial ordering and the instruments that maintain (or defeat) that order” (p. 89). And while Ackerman noted that the process of writing and the resulting symbolic artifacts such as blueprints and other architectural plans have a role in such ordering, so too do the material objects and their arrangement and placement within a site.

Social order is partly maintained by the predictable and regular distribution of objects in space. Rarely subject to conscious reflection, the situation of objects in their assigned place, and the impulse to re-situate them properly when they fall out of position, testifies to a common sense idea that there is a place for everything and everything in its place. (Edensor, 2005, pp. 311-312)

Heterotopias work by enabling an out-of-placeness, when the configuration of objects invokes a sense of incongruity which allows for the prevailing order and practices that are maintained by the conventional arrangement of space to become challenged and inverted.

Additional insight into how heterotopias challenge existing practices and promote new orders by way of this out-of-placeness can be gained by turning to other works of Foucault, most notably the opening of The Order of Things. Most pertinent to this elaboration is the mention by Foucault, of a passage in Borges,

a passage that quotes a “certain Chinese encyclopedia” in which it is written that “animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.” (Foucault, 1994, p. xv)

In The Order of Things, Foucault remarked about his humorous response to the list, a reaction fostered not just because of the “oddity of the unusual juxtapositions” that constitute the list but also due to the “fact that the common ground on which such meetings are possible has itself been destroyed” (p. xvi). He added, “What is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible” (p. xvi). Prompting Foucault’s response to the list is the emergence of a conceptual space that does not afford a conventional means to readily order the seemingly incompatible list. Heterotopias are thus, according to Genocchio (1996), instances when “the juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements is so incongruous and disruptive to our normal sense of order that we are unable to realize such perversity within a coherent and familiar domain” (p. 37). This unfamiliarity moves us toward generating new conceptual domains so as to make sense of the alternative order. It is this act of invention by the reader or the visitor to a heterotopic space that adds a needed dimension to Foucault’s concept. As Sandin (2008) explains,

But a mere recognition of heterotopia does not, in comparison to strategies that focus on the multiplicity of actors that continuously co-produce spaces, show the mechanisms active in spatial negotiation, violation, and privatization. (p. 84)

So while heterotopia may alert us to the way that the configuration of objects within a space moves us toward consideration of new orders and practices, it may not, without some supplemental method, allow us to fully understand the way a reorientation to such an alternative space and practice occurs. In this regard, interest in such alternative spaces must move beyond the solely material and spatial elements that find themselves uniquely configured to ways to identify those actors and instruments that afford heterogeneous and seemingly incongruous material configurations to be understood as stable and ordered. Such a consideration shifts the concern of heterotopias toward conceptual and network space and to the possibilities presented by ANT.

The Places and Orders of Toxicity and Waste

Landfills and contaminated landscapes have become an unavoidable effect of industrial society, yet the spatial practices associated with addressing these by-products have largely resulted in a social consciousness marked by absence and invisibility. Waste and toxic materials are most often removed to landfills distant from populated and residential areas. Such distancing, as part of the overall practice of waste disposal, has contributed to the “tendency for individuals to experience waste in a fleeting, almost ethereal manner,” which in turn “translates into a societal failure to truly experience and therefore acknowledge waste” (Coverly, McDonagh, O’Malley, & Patterson, 2008, p. 291). As Hird (2013) has similarly argued, “Waste is an ironic testimony to a desire to forget. Landfills, in other words, make their appearance on and in the landscape as a material enactment of forgetting” (p. 106). And locating landfills and toxic environments near what Bullard describes as “sacrifice zones,” places quite distanced from the majority of the public, fosters a sense of absence and invisibility. By locating toxic environments in such places, the “US public culture can more readily forget the costs of toxic pollution because they—the waste and the people disproportionately affected by the waste—appear hidden” (Pezzullo, 2007, p. 121).

Yet those locations that have drawn the attention of environmental justice advocates, where sites of waste disposal or of toxic pollution are juxtaposed with places of home and play, contest the social and spatial practice of absence and invisibility. In turn, these spatial configurations illustrate how waste disposal and toxicity are at times embedded in heterotopic spatial orders and the means by which such orders are conveyed as accepted practice. For example, those living along the Mississippi River in the region of Louisiana called “Cancer Alley,” a location marked by a spatial configuration which finds petrochemical refineries juxtaposed with schools, residential housing, and playgrounds, must call on some means to orient themselves to dwelling in such a space, an orientation that involves a need to trust the various mechanisms and actors that coproduce an understanding that such a configuration is safe. As Kasperson and Kasperson (2005) note, a lack of social trust can result, especially in situations of risk, from neglecting to involve and value the participation of all stakeholders. Yet the generation of trust extends beyond the risk institution’s relationship and concern for the public it is charged with protecting. Trust is also dependent on the perception of bias, given that a public expects that those overseeing public safety “must be able to conduct its activities uncompromised by any hidden agenda or undue influence by particular interests” (Kasperson & Kasperson, 2005, p. 23). And trust is also a product of technical competence, the belief that the “agency has the requisite expertise and information to carry out its mission and to protect human health and safety” (Kasperson & Kasperson, 2005, p. 23). And the relation between trust and technical competence is especially important to alleviating public concern due to the complexity of many contemporary spaces of risk. A public is often incapable of fully understanding the scientific and technical processes involved in managing the hazards, leaving trust in those agents charged with public safety as one of the most viable forms of public action. Drawing on the work of Luhmann, Möllering (2001) explains that “the trick of trust is that it reduces social complexity through generalization within system” (p. 409).

For example, in writing about the role of expertise in environmental disputes, Pellizonni (2011) argues that “experts are credible, authoritative, charismatic: they influence opinions through trust investments more than arguments . . . ” so “questioning experts, thus, means questioning their trustworthiness and representativeness” (p. 767). Miller (2003) also raises the importance of placing trust in individuals in relation to public participation, drawing from the classical traits associated with ethos to suggest that “We trust those in whom we sense goodwill (eunoia), those with moral qualities (arête), and those whose knowledge can be applied to our practical problems (phronesis)” (p. 202). Yet such individual, human traits, while important to trust and to the public’s ability to dispute scientific claims, are often made invisible by the scientific community through its desire for scientific objectivity. As Miller explains, in the scientific process ethos and trust are not to be found in the character traits of an isolated individual but rather in the mechanisms and processes, both human and nonhuman that make up technical situations. As Miller (2003) further explains, ethos becomes dislodged from being a purely human attribute in the scientific process “by treating expert opinion as data and detaching it, to the extent possible, from the character that authorizes it” (p. 184).

Gross (1994), in his work on the rhetoric of science, takes a similar path, exploring the way that society establishes moral orders through what he refers to as a rhetoric of accommodation. Drawing from the work of Gusfield, Gross uses the example of the ethics of drunk driving to illustrate how the formation of a moral order in which the driver is cast as the primary moral actor neglects the larger network of actors involved in accidents that result from intoxication.

A reasonable approach to automobile safety, then, might involve distribution of moral and legal responsibility among the manufacturer of automobiles, the builders of roads, the manufacturers and purveyors of alcohol, governmental authorities, and the individual driver. (Gross, 1994, p. 14)

As with Miller, Gross also prompts us to consider the formation of ethos and trust as more than just the result of an isolated actor. And while not explicitly referring to ANT, Gross does offer a preliminary path by which to understand the larger network of actors involved in the morality of drunk driving. In the case of the drunk driving, “it is the cultural consensus in the United States that the individual driver is the primary agent” (Gross, 1994, p. 14). And associating the driver as the sole actor is a rhetorical act, what Gross (1994) labels as a “metonymic shift, one in which one aspect of causation is made to stand for the whole” (p. 14).

Disciplinary conventions and the complexity of systems may shape the visibility of agents charged with alleviating risk, yet one way to make present the range of agents and actions involved in managing risk situations is through systems and network analysis, particularly ANT (Helbing, 2012). Law (2009), in explaining ANT, lists the following as its characteristics:

There is semiotic relationality (it’s a network whose elements define and shape one another), heterogeneity (there are different kinds of actors, human and otherwise), and materiality (stuff is there aplenty, not just the social). There is an insistence on process and its precariousness (all elements need to play their part moment by moment or it all comes unstuck). . . . And crucially, it is a study of how the network works: how it holds together; how it shapes its components . . . (p. 146)

The task of the researcher drawing from ANT is to locate the different types of elements within a network in order to understand how those elements shape and define each other. ANT directs attention toward

precarious relations, the making of the bits and pieces in those relations, a logic of translation, a concern with materials of different kinds, with how it is that everything hangs together if it does . . . (Law, 2009, p. 145)

Law’s explanation of ANT can be seen as parallel to the notions of heterotopia. While heterotopia consist of various material and spatial elements, those objects that are most immediately visible, ANT affords the opportunity to identify those other elements that constitute a heterotopia and that may not be immediately visible in Euclidean space. Encountering a risk environment by way of ANT thus entails more than encountering the material properties of the site or even understanding the extent of risk the environment presents by way of any available discursive construction of the toxicity. Instead, such an encounter engenders an effort to look for connections among the assorted spatial, material, symbolic, and network bits and pieces in order to make explicit the extent to which everything holds together and alleviates a sense of risk and trust. From the perspective of ANT,

risk is neither a property of the human or nonhuman world but arises from the interactions between them and is performed by the complex ensembles they constitute. A condition of risk exists when the performance of an ensemble varies or deviates from that intended so as to result in unwanted, deleterious consequences. A key concern here is to provide an account of these dynamics and to explain how conditions of risk arise and might be ameliorated. (Healy, 2004, pp. 284-285)

Subsequently, trust, or the understanding that a space poses little risk, becomes generated by way of the performance of an ensemble. While he explains ANT in relation to the way it generates power, Latour’s (2005) comments can readily be applied to the performance of trust:

Power, like society, is the final result of a process and not a reservoir, a stock, or a capital that will automatically provide an explanation. Power and domination have to be produced, made up, composed. (p. 64)

Yet identifying the various actors and associations involved in generating a stable for now space of risk faces some challenges. Law (2002) acknowledges such problems when attempting to visualize the networks behind complex, contemporary processes and institutions: “There is not enough room for everything . . . complicated things come in simple packages; they are black boxed . . . ” (p. 95). Thus, while agencies involved in managing and ameliorating risk strive to generate trust and extol the promise of transparency as a means to establish their credibility, the complexity of the network needed to contain and stabilize risky spaces often prevents disclosing all of the elements involved. Subsequently, we have a limited view of the construction of space, particularly in terms of what allows a remediated space to be cast as safe and stable.

Encountering Weldon Spring

After crossing the Missouri River driving west on Interstate 64, one starts to reach the outer Northwestern ring of suburban St Louis. On the southern side of the interstate sits the Weldon Spring Conservation Area, roughly 8400 acres of mixed forest, pasture, and wetlands. With numerous hiking trails, fishing ponds, lakes, and access to the Missouri River, the Conservation Area provides residents of the populated St. Louis metropolitan area an opportunity for many familiar forms of outdoor recreation, including the opportunity to hike to the highest location in St. Charles County. But, the perch from this vantage point comes not from a natural geographic formation but rather a 75-foot high concrete containment cell housing 1.13 million cubic meters of radioactive and toxic waste including asbestos, contaminated building materials and soil, and treated raffinate sludge, all remnants from a military weapons production facility that once stood on the location. This containment cell is a part of the Weldon Spring Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act site, a remediated superfund location. The contamination of Weldon Spring can be traced back to the 1940s and the government’s acquisition of what was at the time private and incorporated land in an effort to establish the Weldon Spring Ordinance Works. During the 1940s, the Ordinance Works produced dinitrotoluene and trinitrotoluene for use during World War II. During the 1950s, the site was transformed into the Weldon Spring Uranium Feed Materials Plant, where the Atomic Energy Commission produced uranium metals for the country’s nuclear arsenal. The residual toxic materials from the uranium processing and trinitrotoluene production were stored on site in a large quarry and various pits. Given the lack of oversight during the processing and production, the soil, groundwater, and many buildings used to manufacture the weapons became contaminated as well. In 1985, the DOE took control of the property and began cleanup and remediation activities with the contaminated soil, building materials, and weapons toxic by-products now housed beneath the containment cell.

In addition to hosting the highest place in St. Charles County, the Weldon Spring site is also home to an interpretive center, which contains numerous artifacts and exhibits that document the transformation of the location and the subsequent contributions of the work at Weldon Spring to the nation’s defense during World War II and the Cold War. The site is also home to the restored landscape of Howell Prairie, an example of conventional remediation practices and a place where visitors can encounter some of the flora native to this area of Missouri. In addition to the cultural heritage and biological experience, Weldon Spring also offers recreational activities by way of the Hamburg Trail, which meanders through the center of the site. The Hamburg Trail also connects to a number of other local paths such as the Bush Trail and the Katy Trail that run along the banks of the Missouri River, further extending the opportunity for various leisure activities. The juxtaposition of these various places generates an initial sense of displacement given that the heterotopic quality of Weldon Spring. Spaces of leisure, tourism, and recreation are not typically juxtaposed with toxic waste facilities. As a result, trust in the safety of such a place and that such a configuration of what may initially appear as disharmonious objects is indeed safe becomes a primary means of reorientation and social ordering.

One of the means to establish the visitor’s trust in the safety and stability of the site rests in the visual and written discourse available in the interpretive center. The discourse pertaining to the containment cell prominently emphasizes the performance of the containment cell. For example, visitors are told of the performance features of the containment cell, learning that “the disposal cell constructed at the Weldon Spring site has been designed to deter the migration of contaminants and to remain stable for 1,000 years” (OLM, 2015a). Moreover, the cell, as conveyed to visitors, consists of “exposed surfaces engineered to resist long-term erosion potential and a precipitation event greater than has occurred in the recorded history of the region” (OLM, 2015a). These statements draw attention to the performance of the cell, specifically describing the cell’s ability to remain stable and to control the waste.

And the performance of this trust becomes further evident when considering the visitor’s physical encounter and proximity to the contained waste. For example, the pathway from the interpretive center to the containment cell positions the visitor directly at the bottom of the cell. From this position, the size of the cell, which stands 75-feet high and extends across 45 acres, dominates the visitor’s gaze and field of view. The direct bodily encounter with toxicity, especially in terms of the volume of waste contained within the cell, contradicts the primary spatial practice of waste disposal in which distance and absence are fundamental spatial principles. Adding to the sense of being out of place is the statement at the interpretative center which clearly outlines the standard safe practices related to radioactive waste disposal: “There are three concepts in basic radiation protection. They are: Time, Distance, & Shielding” (OLM, 2015d). When distance, and in effect absence, is the primary means of protecting the body from the harmful effects of toxic waste, the essential concern of the public is to ensure that the waste is sufficiently removed and kept far away. But, when such a spatial practice becomes inverted so that the distance is negligible and the waste becomes highly present, then the practices of alleviating risk and orienting the public toward safety and trust turn to the process of shielding. Subsequently, a significant amount of the written and visual discourse within the interpretive center conveys the extent to which the containment cell shields the public from any harm.

Walking to the top of the disposal cell and standing on the platform at the peak you will receive less exposure to radiation than you would receive standing in your own backyard. The cover of the disposal cell consists of multiple layers, including the clay radon barrier, geosynthetic liners, sand, and crushed limestone rock surface layers. By its nature such crushed rock emits lower background radiation levels than soil. The combination of reduced radon emissions and lower background emissions from the crushed limestone rock result in lower overall radiation emissions on the cell surface than the average levels in clean soil in the St. Louis Area. (OLM, 2015d)

Even when standing atop a pile of contained radioactive waste, visitors are exposed to negligible risk, with Weldon Spring portrayed as safer than the everyday space these same visitors encounter. What invokes a sense of trust in placing one’s body in the heterotopic spatial configuration of Weldon Spring are those material elements that constitute the cell. The low level of radiation a visitor encounters is a product of the natural action of the nonhuman materials that constitute the containment cell cover.

The cell cover consists of a collection of rocks, sloped at roughly a 45° angle. All the rocks are uniform in size, and all share the same tone of grey, with speckles of occasional black on some individual rocks serving as the only point of differentiation. No form of plant or animal life is visible on the cell. The material aspect of the cell, the uniformity of color and shape and the absence of life, are direct attributes of its performance. The lack of any topsoil maintains the stability of the cell and prevents erosion and any intrusion and subsequent seepage of any contaminants. As the information provided in the interpretive center explains:

The cover systems armor the top of the cell protecting it from erosion, infiltration, bio intrusion, etc. It consists of multiple layers including (from bottom to top) an infiltration/radon barrier of clay, a geosynthetic liner, a gravel drain, sand filter, and a mixture of cobbles. (OLM, 2015b)

In this description, protection is assigned to the material, with the nonhuman agents cast as acting in military terms. The materials that constitute the cover provide armor and a shield to prevent infiltrators and intruders. And the foes come not in the form of human actors but rather the wide range of nonhuman actors such as earthquakes, rain, wind, and the various biological processes of everyday natural existence. Yet the visibility of these protective materials runs counter to a spatial practice in remediated sites, where effort is placed on restoring the space to a sense of the pristine. This spatial practice and social ordering have come under scrutiny, with scholars noting how “restoration can be used to obscure or justify environmentally damaging practices” (Eden, Tunstall, & Tapsell, 1999, p. 152). For example, coal companies in Southern Appalachia have practiced what Light (2000) characterizes as malicious reclamation, arguing that the practice of mountaintop removal is justified because the reclaimed land offers the level topography needed to promote economic development in the otherwise mountainous terrain. Yet in the case of Weldon Spring, an encounter with the practices of remediation results in an encounter with the materials specifically charged with public safety. In this case, scientific principles, as manifest through material actors, become a visible component of the restored space.

Placed in juxtaposition with Howell Prairie, the absence of life on the containment cell generates one of the primary disorders and unusual combinations of place and elements encountered by the visitor. Howell Prairie is a place of rebirth, a theme especially noted in the site’s explanation of the prairie’s origin.

An area known as Howell’s Prairie was part of the historical range of prairies in St. Charles County and resided in the same location as the present day Weldon Spring Site. After site remediation, the Department of Energy restored the site to a native prairie habitat, which was deemed the ideal solution. This offered long-term protection around the disposal cell due to the deep root systems that hold soil in place and resist erosion. The 150-acre prairie at the Weldon Spring Site was named Howell Prairie in keeping with the history of the land. (OLM, 2015c)

In terms of remediation and reclamation, the Prairie can be cast as working in conventional ways, as an example of the possibility to restore the environment to its pristine and natural past in an effort to obscure the environmental damage that has occurred from the previous weapons production at the site. The potential for rebirth and reestablishing the natural affords the public with the perception that those practices that have contaminated the land can be rectified and controlled and, in the end, be seen as having no impact on the future use of the landscape. Trust in terms of public safety results from the perceived absence of any trace of contamination and from the prevailing cultural assumptions that grant the scientific process credibility. As a spatial practice, the Prairie offers visitors, given the practice of remediation and restoration, the opportunity to witness the potential of science and technology to make reparations to the land. In this regard, the effects from contamination are merely temporary, a scar on the landscape until human agency can rectify things and return order. Yet to fully understand the workings of the site, it is important to move beyond a symbolic interpretation and to consider the material elements and actor of Howell Prairie. The absence of life in the cell is a direct product of the material agency that constitutes this specific component of the site. Likewise, the life-affirming material of Howell Prairie is also directly involved in maintaining the permanence and stability of the site’s safety.

While the material, symbolic, and spatial elements within Weldon Spring may be seen as attempting to instill a sense of trust and security within the visiting public, various other actors and associations involved in the ordering of the site and the subsequent ordering of the public’s safety are not immediately apparent. The cell has been both constructed and designed, physically made and imaginatively conceptualized, by way of a range of associated human and nonhuman actors. According to engineering documents, four identifiable processes, siting, waste, barriers, and constructability, are involved in the design and construction of the cell along with regulatory compliance and the existing level of knowledge and confidence in this knowledge. The siting, which includes a range of actors and performances intended to test the soil for permeability and stability, is a process intended to ensure that the containment cell is positioned on the most suitable location within the reclaimed space. Additionally, the waste to be held in the cell must be properly acted on so that its agency can be diminished and controlled. Spatial and social order thus results from the performance of those actors and the related practices involved in treating the waste so as to make it less agentive and subsequently more stable. Additionally, trust emerges by way of the performance of those actors, and the processes and tools shaping these actors, placing the waste within the cell so as to limit the possibility of its movement and any leachate. Beyond those actors, associations, and performances related to the siting of the cell and the handling of the waste, trust is also generated by the collection of actors, including materials used in the barriers such as geosynthetics and their manufacturing and design, involved in the construction of the barrier to be used to contain the waste and to shield the visitor from any contamination.

Regulations such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act and the National Environmental Policy Act also serve as central actors affecting each of the various processes and in turn play a significant part in shaping trust. The impact of such regulations on the various other actors within the network of Weldon Spring becomes evident when considering that the waste contained in the cell fosters different practices and performances. Radioactive waste will be placed within the cell but so will asbestos and other nonradioactive, industrial waste. Subsequently, those actors involved in designing and constructing the cell, placing the waste, and treating the toxins are shaped by different regulatory agents.

The principal technical challenge for designing disposal cell for the Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project (WSSRAP) will be to reconcile the seemingly contradictory requirements for a low-level radioactive waste cell with those of a hazardous waste cell under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). For instance, the design of a cell for the WSSRAP may adopt the longevity standard from the Uranium Kill Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA) as an applicable or relevant and appropriate requirement (ARAR). (Reith, Gonzales, Wesely, & Caldwell, 1991)

A growing list of regulatory procedures and the agencies establishing and overseeing these regulations now become a part of the network, adding further agents and elements involved in ordering the space so as to foster public trust. And beyond the regulatory agents, other disciplinary processes also serve as actors to shape other agents’ behaviors. For instance, the use of MVE, or modified value engineering, which “allows the use of the opinions of a panel of experts, in a rational decision-tree procedure to establish the preferred design alternative” (Tom & Sircar, 1994, p. 1465), played an essential role in formulating and acting on design decisions. As explained by Tom and Sircar (1994), such a process, by way of scientific mechanisms, is designed to foster trust and stability in the network: “This {MVE} greatly reduces the subjectivity of the decision making and the impact an individual may have in the selection of the design alternative” (p. 1465). Decision making and trust thus moves beyond the individual and becomes an associative enterprise.

So while visitors are provided with a direct encounter with some of the material agents that keep them secure and free from radiation and are told of the performative capacities of these agents in an effort to establish the needed sense of trust in such a novel spatial configuration, the other actors and associations within the network that take part in the design, production, and oversight of the materials used in the cell, including the various engineers, managers, technicians, regulations, and other specialists, are publicly absent. Moreover, the various processes that are constituted by human and nonhuman actors, such as design studies, knowledge of materials and their properties, access to materials, and institutional charges and budgets are also publicly unavailable to visitors to Weldon Spring.

Conclusion

Landfills, as Hird (2013) suggests, are “ubiquitous places of forgetting . . . places out of sight and out of mind . . . made possible through legislative decision, regulative decree, risk models, community accession and engineering practice” (p. 107). Yet as the analysis of Weldon Spring illustrates, landfills and what we do with waste can become present and visible when emplaced in what are considered to be heterotopic spatial configurations. Given the volume of waste produced in contemporary society, it seems possible that the distinctions between spaces of waste and spaces of residence and play, spaces previously set apart, will increasingly become juxtaposed. Central to reorienting a public’s response to such configurations is the element of trust, generated largely, as the Weldon Spring case suggests, by the performance of material objects and the technical competence of those human agents who design, build, and monitor these objects. A focus on the material and those immediately visible objects within such spaces, however, can direct attention away from the extensive and complex network needed to produce the space and ensure public safety. A study of space, as Lefebvre (1991) argues, “must be expected to shift from things in space to the actual production of space” (p. 37). When considering the production of space,

mediations and mediators have to be taken into consideration: the action of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations. Social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information. Such objects are thus not only things but also relations. (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 77)

Of particular importance to understanding the construction of trust with respect to Weldon Spring is the recognition of the network and pathways that allow for the exchange of information. The importance of these pathways is not lost on OLM, given that its mission includes efforts to make information accessible to a variety of internal and external stakeholders. These records and the resulting exchange and availability of information facilitate the work of the agency, and the accessibility of these records and information can also advance public knowledge and public trust.

Yet the extensive number of actors and agencies involved in the network that produces and maintains such heterotopic waste spaces as Weldon Spring raises specific challenges to fostering an effective practice to manage all the information pertaining to the site. The difficulty of successfully managing records and information becomes clearly apparent in a 2005 report generated by the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (2017), an organization that “promotes and facilitates public participation in the oversight of environmental activities at federal facilities, private Superfund sites, and Brownfields.” The study sought to “identify key conditions for sustaining public enquiry over the long term in the management of DOE sites” (Hersh & Strauss, 2005, p. 10), including Weldon Spring.

An overarching finding among many of the evaluations of [long-term stewardship] LTS is that developing the necessary data management system is crucial to the success of LTS. Failure could result in delay and/or increase the costs of site closure and transfer, and compromise the ability to protect human health and the environment. Without the appropriate data about residual hazards, it will be difficult to conduct responsible long- term stewardship activities and make future decisions that adequately protect human health and the environment. (Hersh & Strauss, 2005, p. 45)

The report identifies categories of data needed to ensure site stability and trust in the overall space, including information pertaining to the past cleanup efforts and the regulatory processes guiding these efforts.

Site managers, regulators, cities and towns, transferees and community stakeholders will all need detailed information about the location and nature of residual hazards, the process that generated them and the engineered and institutional controls that are part of the remedy. This information must serve multiple audiences, ranging from technicians and regulators to non-technical community members. (Hersh & Strauss, 2005, p. 46)

While some information pertaining to the engineering processes that guided the remediation of Weldon Spring is available, other information relevant to the site’s performance is not part of the network. As the Center for Public Environmental Oversight report concluded, “at DOE sites, from the beginning of weapons production, records were not managed or recorded with an eye towards the future” (Hersh & Strauss, 2005, p. 49). And the lack of concern for maintaining the information is evident in Weldon Spring. “At Weldon Spring, we were able to access information generated in the past decade; older information was not available or was only available through community groups” (Hersh & Strauss, 2005, p. 52). The lack of such information raises questions as to the extent to which a public can become knowledgeable and informed of the agency’s practices. And the inaccessibility of information and the gaps in the data management network directly affect the production of the heterotopia.

The ensemble charged with public safety and site stability depends on the associations among the various actors, associations, and subsequent actions which are based largely on the availability and sharing of information. As OLM acknowledges: “Agency- and past and present contractor- and subcontractor-held federal records are important documents of DOE actions and decisions” (OLM, 2004, p. 12). The value of these records rests in their ability to “provide information about, or evidence of, the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the government” (OLM, 2004, p. 3). Subsequently, generating public trust in those heterotopic spaces that attempt to offer reorientations to waste requires more than just public accessibility to the various material objects and the immediately available symbolic resources that suggest the space is safe. If knowledge is central to reorienting a public toward accepting the configuration of waste present in sites, such as Weldon Spring, then a public must become aware of the extensive array of actors involved in remediating the site and the challenges such a complex network presents to the production of a remediated space. An awareness of the network production of spaces can make visible any gaps in the pathways and shared information among the various actors, omissions that may invoke valid skepticism as to the ability to trust the network charged with public safety and the maintenance of such spaces.