The purpose of this explanatory case study is to understand the sense that community members made of how and why environmental conflict manifested in the wake of the Piney Point cascading disaster. It found that intentional avoidance of local news caused community members to be unaware of the risks beforehand, of the responses in the aftermath, and of the threats that remain. The study leverages a unique opportunity to fill a gap in the research by examining a contemporary cascading disaster as it generated environmental conflict. This dissertation centers on the perceptions of directly affected community members in the Tampa Bay area a year after the onset of the disaster and incorporates semi-structured interviews, document and media
analysis, conflict mapping, and social network analysis. Cascading disaster is defined as an extreme event in which a nonlinear sequence of physical, social, or economic disruptions occurs over time and generates secondary events of strong impact
