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HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITY SITING: COMMUNITY, FIRM, AND 139 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. and the offering of compensation. Efforts to communicate with the affected public will be constrained by our limited ability to transfer risk information. Equity will be centrally concerned with risk sharing and the process by which risk allocation occurs. Substantial distrust of the institutions responsible for siting facilities and overseeing safety will occur. Finally, ample institutional opportunities will exist by which host area publics and officials can resist the location of a facility in the region. An Ethical Base for Siting Because hazardous waste facilities involve the imposition of uncertain and feared risks upon certain people for the general benefit of society, siting is inherently and centrally an ethical problem. Improved approaches that have potential for winning public trust must therefore build upon ethical principles. Five such principles are as follows: Principle 1: The general well-being of society requires that some individuals will have to bear risks on behalf of others. Principle 2: Wherever reasonable, such risks should be avoided rather than mitigated or ameliorated through compensation. Principle 3: Reasonably unavoidable risks should be shared, not concentrated, in the population of beneficiaries. Principle 4: The imposition of risk should be made as voluntary as reasonably achievable within the constraints of deploying sites in a timely manner, and the burden of proof for site suitability should be on the developer. Principle 5: Reasonably unavoidable risks should be accompanied by compensating benefits. These principles provide a sound ethical base for siting strategies. Principle 1 makes clear that, from all we know, the location of hazardous waste facilities cannot be made a voluntary activity if conducted in a socially responsible way (thereby prohibiting, for example, locational opportunism). It also recognizes that the benefits of associated technological products and activity (for example, chemical products and nuclear medicine) for society outweigh the risk associated with well-designed waste management programs. Principle 2, arguing from the widely accepted duty to avoid human harm, states the obligation (within technological and economic restraints) to avoid risks rather than to mitigate them (as through insurance, for example) or compensate for them once they have occurred. Principle 3 recognizes that distributional equity depends upon broad sharing of the
