Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

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HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 127 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES 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. be taken as evidence of the high risk and confirmatory to the validity of the individual's perception. Other taxonomic work on hazards is no more encouraging. The Clark University taxonomy (Hohenemser et al., 1983) classifies hazards by 12 biophysical attributes, resulting in 5 major factors and a taxonomy of 7 major classes. Although hazardous nonradioactive wastes are not included, radioactive wastes score in the "multiple extreme hazards," sharing company with such other notable hazards as nuclear war (radiation), nuclear tests (fallout), nerve gas (accidents), pesticides (toxic effects), and recombinant DNA (Hohenemser et al., 1983, Table 3, p. 381). Since the taxonomy has proved successful in predicting public response, it suggests that the high concern over radioactive (and probably other hazardous) wastes is rooted in "real" properties of the hazards and is unlikely to disappear under the impact of fuller and more accurate information. In their taxonomy of 162 technological controversies, von Winterfeldt and Edwards (1984) recognize 3 major classes: food/drug/consumer products, industrial development, and technological mysteries and value threats. Contrary to the assumption held by some that siting a hazardous waste disposal facility is akin to locating other large-scale facilities (such as dams, airports, or the Alaskan pipeline), it is apparent that hazardous waste facilities fall into the class of "technological mysteries and value threats." This group contains the most dramatic controversies, involving the potential for disaster or possessing dread side effects that threaten social values. The debate in such controversies oscillates between factual disagreements and value disputes, receives widespread media coverage, and involves a broad spectrum of "stakeholders." In considering appropriate tools for resolution of this class of controversies, von Winterfeldt and Edwards conclude that compensation, bargaining, and negotiation will, because of the shifting debate and the presence of moral considerations, be less effective than for other controversies. They call for the creation of institutional mechanisms that involve stakeholders committed to resolution of the issues (von Winterfeldt and Edwards, 1984, pp. 67–68). All this suggests that perceived risk is a central problem in siting of hazardous waste facilities, that public perceptions are rooted in "objective" characteristics of the risks, that the risk issues interact with related value conflicts, and that the underlying attitudes are likely to be persistent and difficult to change. Equity and the Ethics of Risk Imposition Inequity, it is widely held, is a key underlying problem for the siting of hazardous waste facilities. Indeed, for many it is the problem. Consider the 

HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 128 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES 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. following from the 1981 policy statement of the National Governors' Association: Once a site is identified, the community objects to being the dumping ground for the state or region. It opposes the proposed facility because the benefits will flow to the owner, operator, waste-generating industries, and the public at- large (which fears "midnight" dumping), while the risks will be concentrated locally—in their community [National Governors' Association, 1981, p. 134]. Despite the wealth of allusion to locational. equity, searching treatments of either component are quite rare. The current empirical understanding of the distribution of likely impact from a hazardous waste facility at a particular site is quite limited. Reasons for this limited knowledge include the relatively underdeveloped state of theory supporting analytic approaches to social impact assessment, the lack of comparative analysis using common methodology, the limited siting experience in recent years and the fact that some facilities will be first-of-a-kind, and the highly site-specific nature of social impacts. In one of the few thorough, empirical analyses of equity at a hazardous waste site, Kates and Braine (1983) painted a complex picture of gains and losses over more than a dozen locations stretching across the entire United States, including Puerto Rico. The gains and losses associated with the siting of a nuclear service center in western New York included benefits for certain corporations, government institutions, and local residents; losses for others; and mixed balance sheets for still others (Figure 6). This experience suggests that considerations relevant to impact distributions for hazardous waste sites are: • The "special" impacts associated with the perceived risk and social conflict arising at hazardous waste sites may exceed the more "conventional" impacts customarily associated with locating large industrial facilities in rural communities. • The most serious socioeconomic risks are also the most likely to be poorly understood. • Many socioeconomic risks (and perhaps health risks) will become apparent only during the siting process or over the long term, and a number of them will be essentially irreversible. • Many socioeconomic risks, especially those associated with special effects, will prove extremely resistant to quantification as a basis for calculating compensation. • The residents of rural communities are among the most vulnerable members of society (Kasperson and Rubin, 1983; Murdock et al., 1983; Seley, 1983; National Research Council, 1984). In regard to the normative principle for assessing the fairness of impact distribution, it is widely assumed that the principle should be the equaliza 

HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 129 GOVERNMENTAL PERSPECTIVES 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. tion of (that is, the concordance between) harms and benefits. This is not, however, the only choice of a principle of social justice or perhaps even the most compelling one. It can be argued, for example, that preferred distributions should promote aggregate utility for the nation, increase utility without making anyone worse off, place burdens upon those best able to bear them, avoid those who have borne past risks for society, or distribute goods and harms according to some principle of merit (a large list of candidate principles is available in Kasperson et al., 1983). Figure 6 The geographical distribution of gains and losses associated with the Western New York Service Center, 1960–1978. SOURCE: From Kates and Braine (1983, p. 114). In the case of hazardous waste siting, equalizing the distribution of harms and benefits may not be achievable in any real sense. The high perceived risk and the intense associated fear together with the small number of sites (why have we been victimized?) simply overwhelm any prospect of restoring the original conditions through the enlargement of benefits. Distrust that bene