A company has announced that it wishes to build a large factory near your community. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this new influence on your community. Do you support or oppose the factory? Explain your position.

The impending appearance of a large factory at a presumably quiet and undisturbed community would indeed be big news and that news, on the whole, would be positively received.

For one, it would generate employment among the residents. Another benefit would be a healthy injection of new income for the town coffers. The municipal taxes and permit fees for a large business concern would be a welcome infusion of money. A third, intangible but still a significant benefit, would be a feeling of development and having arrived. Strange as it may sound, many small communities suffer from a sense of isolation and backwardness. No longer would the residents feel their community is nondescript.

There would however be disadvantages. Usually, a site is chosen on the basis of the availability of inputs for the intended product from the community and its environs. For example, a fish cannery would drain fish from the local community. A refinery would process locally mined ores. There is therefore the danger of the depletion of whatever local resource is used. Then there is the question of proper waste disposal. Few undeveloped communities are in any position to control the use of community resources and are usually at the mercy of the factory.

I would be opposed to allowing a factory into my community for money is not the final measure of quality of life. However, most people would disagree. I can just see how in the name of progress all disadvantages would be swept under the rug.