Lab 5: Suitability Analysis

Kettleman Hills

The Kettleman Hills polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disposal facility is only one of ten in the nation. PCBs are highly toxic and have found to be carcinogenic in animals. Furthermore, the EPA suspects them to be cancer-causing in humans. In a 2010 report, the EPA found that the Kettleman Hills facility was improperly disposing of PCB materials—local air, soils, biota, and vegetation samples exceeded legal PCB levels by 2 to 400 times. For this reason, lawmakers have been hesitant to allow the facility to expand until further PCB research has been conducted. GIS and suitability analysis can be very helpful in objectifying whether the Kettleman Hills facility can be safely expanded given certain safety requirements.

A key concern among the Kettleman community is that an abnormally high rate of birth defects is linked to groundwater contamination from the PCB facility. I could analyze the problem with ARCGIS by performing a buffer analysis on the town’s aquifer to see if the facility is nearby existing water supplies. The region could incorporate slope (in relation to runoff), water table height, distance from aquifers, distance from population centers, and vegetation type, and soil permeability into a suitability analysis of the region surrounding the facility.

Each variable could also be individually weighted to reflect higher importance. The proposed expansion area around the Kettleman Hills facility could then be evaluated based on this suitability analysis.The Kettleman Hills facility suitability analysis could then be compared to other potential PCB disposal sites. These potential locations should be subjected to the same analysis to keep the figures consistent and to determine whether or not another area is more suitable. One difficult factor to measure is that the Kettleman PCB facility is only 3 miles from Kettleman city—a popular stop on CA Interstate 5. Although few residents live in the community, many people depend on its water.

In order to analyze the total effect of the PCB facility, Kettleman satellite images from before the facility was opened could be compared to Kettleman satellite images after the facility was opened. The vegetation cover could be made into polygons in each period and the change in land cover could be analyzed. This may prove to be useful in the case that some plants are especially susceptible to PCB contamination. If this method is effective, it would also show the range of PCB contamination.

GIS can help lawmakers make better decisions by summarizing scientific data in a condense and visual way. Although more complex layers can be at work, GIS helps identify and objectify the most immediate and pressing concerns. The above image is an example of results that could be reproduced for the Kettleman site.

Quiz #1: Marijuana

The above map depicts 12 schools and 13 churches that are currently within the 1000 foot buffer.


I am in favor of the proposed medical marijuana ordinance. Although few dispensaries are located 1000 feet away from areas where children congregate, restrictions should cap where no development can occur. As many Los Angeles residents have found, the growth of these stores from 2007-2009 years was extremely rapid. The ban would serve to prevent these stores from percolating into urban clusters.


A brief google search of ‘medical marijuana dispensaries’ shows that thirty one dispensaries exist within Los Angeles city alone. This suggests that even if some dispensaries are forced to close under the ordinance, patients that need medical marijuana have many other substitutes. The one thousand foot buffer from schools, churches, and other areas when children aggregate would also serve to relocate them from urban centers. In accordance with the ordinance goals, this would have the likely effect of reducing recreational pot use.

Lab 4: Digitizing

Lab 3: Geocoding

In this week’s lab, I investigated the spatial relationship between the headquarters of green businesses (i.e. alternative energy companies and environmental consultants) and green finance companies. I hypothesized that green businesses would tend to develop in clusters around these finance centers. For example, northern California has a high concentration of green jobs compared to the rest of the state because of many venture capital firms that are willing to finance them in the Palo Alto/Silicon Valley area. I was expecting to find similar results in Los Angeles.

I used ESRI’s web service data service to obtain the local street information as well as a world street map. Using a list of companies interested in the UCLA green jobs career fair, I researched the addresses for forty direct providers of environmental services/products and ten companies that provided capital for clean technologies. These addresses were then plotted using ArcMap. The red stars represent environmental service/product providers and the green triangles represent finance companies.

My results show that the companies that finance green projects are based in a tightly knit clusters in Santa Monica. While this may be a result of a small sample size, I think it could also be caused by existing financial firms in the region as well as the region's environmentally conscious demographics. In contrast, the headquarters of the direct providers of environmental goods and services are much more geographically diverse. However, the vast majority of these businesses are found east of Los Angeles’ downtown. This likely reflects the fact that current buyers of green products/services are located in high income communities.

ArcMap's geocoding tools were useful in this analysis because it helped visualize spatial data quickly and seamlessly.

My data table can be found here.

Lab 2: Water Treatment Plant

Water

Lab 1: ArcGIS Review