National Academies Press: OpenBook

Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

Chapter: Focusing Private-Sector Action on Public Hazards

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Suggested Citation:"Focusing Private-Sector Action on Public Hazards." National Academy of Engineering. 1986. Hazards: Technology and Fairness. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/650.
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Page 185
Suggested Citation:"Focusing Private-Sector Action on Public Hazards." National Academy of Engineering. 1986. Hazards: Technology and Fairness. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/650.
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Page 186

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

FOCUSING PRIVATE-SECTOR ACTION ON PUBLIC HAZARDS 185 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. Focusing Private-Sector Action on Public Hazards John A. Klacsmann Hazards equity means that those who caused the hazard should share proportionate responsibility for removing it—that those who knowingly accepted the risk of permitting a hazard to exist and those who chose to ignore the risk have a responsibility to provide support for its elimination. Those who received short-term benefits must pay for long-term risk management. Equity is the key to understanding how most companies view their responsibilities with respect to hazardous waste. Companies will step up to their responsibilities if • they believe that doing so will ameliorate the situation, • their perceived share of responsibility for removing a hazard is proportionate to their contribution to it, • others are acting in the same way, • their commitment is not open-ended, • they will not be subjected to retroactive liabilities, and • their own survival is not at stake. Companies will accept a responsible role based not solely on economics but also on the broader social responsibilities that American society is imposing upon them. The principle that ''good citizenship is good business" reigns where the company has long-term goals and commitments. The trauma safety record of the U.S. chemical industry is a good example of not just a willingness, but a commitment to eliminate hazards in what is, in

FOCUSING PRIVATE-SECTOR ACTION ON PUBLIC HAZARDS 186 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. essence, a hazardous activity. Based on 1983 statistics, the National Safety Council found that of all U.S. industries, the chemical industry had the lowest rates of incidence for cases involving deaths or days away from work. Experience in working with the representatives of responsible parties at waste sites shows that they act with the same selflessness and self-interest that display themselves in all human endeavors, but also with a great sense of responsibility. From their actions can be inferred a commitment to rational resolution of the problems associated with hazardous waste cleanup. Responsible parties are even willing to accept a measure of injustice as long as others share in the settlement proportionately. Most corporate managers are willing to work toward a settlement that embodies significant elements of the principles of equity previously outlined. Today's corporate managers have a difficult time accepting the cost burdens imposed by the well-intended but unfortunate actions of their predecessors, because to do so may affect their perceived management performance. Yet these managers do face up to such unpalatable situations and attempt to take constructive steps. Where a single company has responsibility for a hazardous waste site, in large measure the site is cleaned up promptly and effectively. As the number of responsible parties for a site increases, a company's concern about fairness in the allocation of cleanup costs also increases. In situations where local governments have owned, operated, or encouraged dumping at municipal waste disposal sites, the private responsible parties want local governments also to pay for their share of the liability and display an equal sense of commitment to cleanup. Moreover, the companies believe that the land developers and residents who knowingly bought property adjacent to these sites bear a measure of responsibility that ought to be weighed in determining appropriate cleanup actions. The issue of hazards equity is easier to describe than to deal with in real life —whether it be in the halls of Congress, the courts, regulatory agencies, or corporate boardrooms. Yet hazards equity has been for at least 15 years a major issue for environmental policymaking in the United States. Leaders from different sides of the policymaking arena have come to believe that a consensus- based, or coalition-based, approach to the question of equity may well hold the key to achieving significant new progress on the tough environmental problems facing the nation. It was this common belief that led to the establishment of Clean Sites Inc. (CSI)—a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution created to help accelerate the cleanup of hazardous waste by stimulating voluntary action by private parties. In dealing with the problem of hazardous waste cleanup—perhaps the nation's most important environmental problem—CSI faces a number of particularly vexing questions.

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"In the burgeoning literature on technological hazards, this volume is one of the best," states Choice in a three-part approach, it addresses the moral, scientific, social, and commercial questions inherent in hazards management. Part I discusses how best to regulate hazards arising from chronic, low-level exposures and from low-probability events when science is unable to assign causes or estimate consequences of such hazards; Part II examines fairness in the distribution of risks and benefits of potentially hazardous technologies; and Part III presents practical lessons and cautions about managing hazardous technologies. Together, the three sections put hazard management into perspective, providing a broad spectrum of views and information.

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