Environmental Policy

Dr. Hugh Gorman, Associate Professor
Department of Social Sciences
Michigan Technological University

Education

Ph.D., History and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 1996.
M.S., Social History, Carnegie Mellon University, 1992.
M.A., Professional Writing, Carnegie Mellon University, 1985.
B.S., Electric Power Eng’g, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1979.

Research and Teaching Interests

Trained as a historian, Dr. Gorman studies the changing interaction between policy, technology, and society's use of the physical environment, with his main goal being to use history to inform and improve current decision making processes. Several of his research projects have involved conflicts over the use of water, including: oil pollution from tankers, pipelines, and refineries; the contamination of aquifers by oil field brines; industrial discharges into the Ohio River; the connection between pollution control and water diversion into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal; a comparison of the Superfund and “Area of Concern” processes for the Torch Lake watershed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; a history of the Houston Ship Channel; and the strengths and weaknesses of septic system regulations in counties bordering the Great Lakes.

At Michigan Tech, Gorman teaches “Environmental Decision Making,” “Science, Technology, and Society,” and “U.S. Environmental History.”

Related Activities

Chair, paper session, “Contesting Water Purity,” Society for the History of Technology, 2004 Annual Meeting.
Guest Editor, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Special issue, “Taking a Historical Perspective,” Forthcoming
Co-organizer, conference, July 17-18, 2003, “Monitoring the Environment: Scales, Methods, and Systems in Historical Perspective,”

Selected Publications

Hugh S. Gorman, “The Houston Ship Channel and the Changing Landscape of Industrial Pollution" in Joseph Pratt and Martin V. Melosi, ed., An Environmental History of Houston (University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming 2005).

Hugh S. Gorman, “Urban Areas, Environmental Decision Making, and Uses of History to Inform Public Choices” in Martin V. Melosi and Philip V. Scarpino, ed., Public History and the Environment (Krieger, 2004).

Hugh S. Gorman and Barry D. Solomon, “The Origins and Practice of Emissions Trading,” Journal of Policy History 14 no. 3 (2002): 293-320.

Hugh S. Gorman, Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Control, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry (Akron: University of Akron Press, 2001).

Hugh S. Gorman, “Conflicting Goals: Superfund, Risk Assessment, and Community Participation in Decision Making,” Environmental Practice 3 (March 2001): 27-37.

Hugh S. Gorman, “Efficiency, Environmental Quality, and Oil Field Brines: The Success and Failure of Pollution Control by Self-Regulation.” Business History Review 73 (Winter 1999): 601-640.