The June 2002 Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

With New York City facing mounting waste disposal problems in the wake of the closure of its massive Fresh Kills landfill, Mayor Bloomberg has promoted garbage incinerators as a solution.

In March, with environmentalists heavily criticizing Bloomberg's incineration plans, the mayor dismissed the critics, saying that with technological improvements, there was "no pollution" with incineration.

Later, asked if he would agree to site an incinerator in his neighborhood, Bloomberg offered a somewhat different perspective:

"If you were to put an incinerator on Park Avenue, you would drive away the revenue base that supports this city," he said.

"The fact of the matter is that where you tend to site things -- unfortunately -- it tends to be in areas that are also in proximity to people who are just starting their ways up the economic ladder," he added.

By May, however, Bloomberg was backing away from his incinerator plans, though he continued to insist the burn technology was safe.

"The technology is there," he said on his weekly radio program, "but the politics are such that it would be phenomenally difficult to site incinerators in the New York City area, and other places don't want to have it either."

Source: David Seifman, "Mike Pushes Incinerators -- But Not in His Back Yard," New York Post, March 26, 2002; Diane Cardwell, "Mayor Drops Incinerator Plan," New York Times, May 18, 2002.

Thanks to Neil Tangri for directing our attention to this story.