Drawing on data gathered from personal interviews conducted at multiple sites within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, this article explores four key factors that affect site progress toward coming into environmental compliance. These factors are (a) the degree of environmental difficulty, (b) stakeholder relationships, (c) organizational transformation, and (d) politics. The Fernald, Ohio, site is then presented as a case that reveals the importance of these factors in explaining a site’s successful progress toward environmental compliance. There are two outstanding features of the Fernald cleanup effort: (a) the extent to which the site has been able to work effectively with stakeholders and (b) the comprehensiveness of the site’s successful organizational transformation.
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