In 1988, Owen Furuseth and Mark Johnson studied neighbourhood attitudes toward a sanitary landfill site in North Carolina, USA. Surveying residents who lived within 4800 m of the site, they found a strong measure of satisfaction among them regarding the operation of the facility. Since this study was published, there have been no known studies that have attempted to utilize the same approach to investigate the perceptions of nearby residents regarding the impacts of landfills in their community, especially those whose siting process they unsuccessfully opposed. Following the same approach used by Furuseth and Johnson, this study investigated the perceptions of nearby residents regarding the impacts of Halton landfill in Ontario, Canada. It reports that although the residents fought against the siting of the facility, once it had been in operation for a few years, they were only 'a little concerned' about most of the anticipated effects, which had formed the basis for their fears and opposition during the proposal stage. Similar to the results obtained by Furuseth and Johnson, operational, traffic and psychological impacts posed the least concerns to the residents, while environmental and economic impacts posed the highest concerns. Also, some of the impacts as perceived by residents appear to be influenced by distance. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
