Citizen participation in managing the risks of chemical releases
The purpose of this paper is to show the extent to which an industrial association in east Harris County, Texas, is voluntarily involving citizens in managing the risks of chemical releases. In response to a rule in the Clean Air Act of 1990, industrial associations around the US are managing risks of so-called worst case and other scenarios. All the rule requires is that the risk management plans for these scenarios be made public in some way, for example, by putting them in a public library. However, on their own initiatives, these associations are involving citizens to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, the east Harris County project is not unique in that regard. Rather, it provides some measure of how some chemical companies are empowering citizens as part of the planning process for how to meet the rule. This behavior stands in contrast to the way in which these chemical companies operated as recently as ten years ago. At that time they did not pursue questions about sharing power with citizens. There were no questions and certainly no answers about citizens' role in management decisions about chemical releases. However, in the present situation, companies are committed to following through on the rule requiring risk management plans, that is, to preventing chemical accidents and to reducing risks by ways which citizens suggest and help implement. To substantiate the foregoing claim, this paper will not only review the Risk Management Program (RMP) rule of 1996, but also the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) of 1986. The paper will go on to describe what companies are doing in the east Harris County project relative to what much the same companies did about ten years ago. Finally, the paper will describe the two phases of the release of risk management plans that had taken place by the time of writing of this paper.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Houston, Clear Lake, TX (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20002272
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608-; TRN: IM200002%%272
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Air and Waste 92nd Annual Meeting and Exhibition, St. Louis, MO (US), 06/20/1999--06/24/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating Systems: Windows 3.1, '95, '98 and NT; Macintosh; and UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Air and Waste 92nd annual meeting and exhibition proceedings, [9500] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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