Click the video above to learn more about risk management in cleanup.
Of the many issues involved in environmental cleanup, none is more challenging or contentious than evaluating, addressing, and managing risk.
From a technical standpoint, remediating sites like U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) weapons facilities is highly complex, with varying risks to workers undertaking the job. Compounding the challenge is that the costs associated with one action versus another could differ by millions (or even hundreds of millions) of dollars, where increased costs may or may not sufficiently lower the projected risks to human health and the environment.
Addressing risk, however, is not simply a technical, data-driven analysis; how people in a site’s community feel about the facts is just as important as the facts themselves in managing risk in cleanup projects.
For cleanups to garner the support of the local governments and other community members surrounding the site, the parties must agree on technical risks as well as perceptions of risk — e.g., will the community accept the given risk and can the risk that results from
contamination being left at the facility support the future use?
As ECA reported in the Guide to Successful Environmental Cleanup:
“Too often, risk is presented as a technical question, but rarely are issues resolved based solely on risk. Compounding the challenge is that the first thing a community is often presented with is risk, and it should not be. Federal facilities are not islands; they are connected to host and frontline communities, and in many cases are the economic
foundations of those communities. For that reason, examining environmental cleanups too narrowly through the lens of risk can be limiting.”
Education is essential
In terms of education, many elected officials, community activists, economic development leaders and others at DOE sites are extremely conversant about site issues. Such expertise in technical, policy and economic transition issues does not arise overnight;
it is the result of significant effort on behalf of DOE, regulators, and the cleanup contractor to educate the community about the issues that come together as part of the closure project.
There is no formula for how best to educate members of the community and local governments, but DOE and the regulators need to exert whatever time and effort it takes to educate the affected entities about the issues involved in site cleanups. Part of these ongoing educational discussions must include the recognition by DOE that perceptions of risks posed
do not always align with technical risks.
Communication is
critical
A central commonality among a vast number of the
disputes at DOE facilities over the past 30 years, particularly disputes resulting in congressional intervention, concerned differing notions of risk. At most cleanups, the most technically and politically difficult and divisive issues involved the differences between technical and scientific risk, the nature and source of the risk, and the type and extent of risk one is willing to assume.
As shown at these sites, for environmental cleanups to proceed the agency charged with cleaning up the site and the agencies regulating the cleanup must agree
on numerous issues regarding risk — e.g., what risk level is achievable and politically acceptable, and what level of cleanup will ensure the agreed-to risk meets regulatory requirements.
Additionally, communicating technical risk and risk communication are not necessarily synonymous.
Trying to ferret out the root cause of the dispute at the Mound site in Ohio over the remedial goals for a landfill, for example, was a complex matter. The dispute concerned whether a hazardous waste landfill would negatively affect a private party’s attempt to reindustrialize vast portions of the former
weapons facility.
A DOE official familiar with the challenges at Mound
commented at the time that part of the reason the parties became polarized stemmed from the challenges DOE faced in communicating risk. DOE posited that if it had done a better job of communicating the technical and scientific risks resulting from leaving the landfill in place, the parties may not have reached an impasse nor needed Congress to get involved.
DOE may have been correct. However, if in communicating risk DOE focused solely on the technical and scientific aspects of risk, then a central part of risk communication would have been missed.
Risk communication is difficult and cannot be reduced to formulas, rules or
checklists. Yet, in order to develop appropriate communication mechanisms one has to understand the fundamentals of risk communication.
What do nuclear power plants, toxic waste dumps, and pesticide residues have in common? In all three cases, the risk is:
- Coerced rather than voluntary (in home gardens where the risk is voluntary, pesticides are often overused);
- Industrial rather than natural (natural deposits of heavy metals generate far less concern than the same materials in a Superfund site);
- Dreaded rather than not dreaded (cancer, radiation, and waste are all powerful stigmata of dread);
- Unknowable rather than
knowable (the experts endlessly debate the risks and only experts can detect where it is);
- Controlled by others rather than controlled by those at risk (think about the difference between driving a car and riding in an airplane);
- In the hands of the untrustworthy rather than
trustworthy sources (who believes what they are told by nuclear, waste and pesticide industries?); and
- Managed in ways that are unresponsive rather than responsive (think about secrecy versus openness, courtesy versus discourtesy, compassion versus contempt).
In environmental cleanups, not all issues are known at the beginning. The process at DOE sites can be one of action and investigation at the same time, thus necessitating a degree of flexibility. Successful cleanups require consistent communication while integrating changes and improvements into the
planning process.
DOE successfully worked with the communities around Rocky Flats, for example, to achieve cleanup that met the community’s needs and vision. The Rocky Flats cleanup was marked by seven years of debate over soil cleanup levels that DOE and the regulators adopted but that the affected communities and their residents opposed. In both cases, the conceptual vision was largely shared, but the detailed cleanup levels and associated risks, which again in
both cases necessitated long-term controls, were vigorously debated.
The successful end result – the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge – was made possible in large part to continual, meaningful communication and engagement with the community to evaluate the risks at the site and to manage risks for its future use.
To read more about risk management in cleanup, check out the Guide to Successful Environmental Cleanup by visiting www.energyca.org.