A quantitative methodology for indexing environmental sensitivity and pollution potential

A methodology for rating the suitability of sites for the location of industrial facilities is formulated and applied to the case of a coal-fired power plant location. The methodology comprises two major interlinked components: the environmental plant location indexing component, which involves the identification, scaling and weighting of environmental sensitivity factors; and the impact analysis component, which involves the superimposition of the pollution generation impacts of an industrial facility on spatially gridded zones of various environmental sensitivities. For each rectangular areal unit defined by a square grid, the Unit Pollution Potential Index is determined by the severity and distribution of key environmental sensitivity factors and the coverage of superimposed pollutant effects as determined by contaminant fate and transport models. For any alternative site of a planned facility, the summation of the unit indices over the area of influence of the facility provides the quantitative Pollution Index, which can be used as a basis for comparison of alternative sites for planned facilities. For this paper, this methodology is applied to the hypothetical case of the siting of a coal-fired power plant in the northeastern region of the United States, in which three alternative sites are considered. The three sites: A, B and C yielded indices of 47.83, 47.91 and 47.6, respectively, indicating that site C is the most suitable for siting the power plant.