Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
Author
Jennifer Weeks
Advice - and Consent?
The Department of Energy's
Site-Specific Advisory Boards
by
Jennifer Weeks
INTRODUCTION
Measured by its cost, complexity, or duration, U.S. nuclear weapons production created the largest environmental cleanup project in history. For 40 years, the United States built nuclear weapons at facilities spread across 30 states and one territory, without effectively managing wastes or hazardous materials. The Department of Energy (DOE), which manages the weapons complex, expects to spend up to $250 billion through the year 2070 to clean up the resulting contamination, plus substantial "stewardship" funds for centuries afterward.1
Policy makers and social scientists have long debated how to engage the public in decisions about "technically intensive" issues that involve large scientific uncertainties, asymmetrical risks and benefits, differing perceptions of risk, and disagreement among experts.2 The search for solutions has produced a broad literature on the relationship between risk policy making and the democratic process in the United States and other countries.3 While topics in this field range from siting hazardous waste facilities to regulating genetically modified foods, nuclear issues pose unique challenges for democratic governance. The issues are so politically, technically, and morally complex that it is difficult to inform and mobilize the public. Many people feel unqualified to render opinions and cede authority to what Brian Balogh calls the "proministrative state": narrow communities of professional experts in agencies with the power to set policy agendas.4 The long lead times required to design and build large-scale systems such as nuclear reactors lock in early choices, creating programmatic momentum that often precludes mid-course corrections.5 Executive and legislative oversight of nuclear programs is generally weak and inconsistent.6 Courts typically show great deference to programs alleged to be key to national security.7 Information about nuclear policy decisions is often classified or restricted, and citizens have limited oversight and enforcement authority over nuclear issues.8
Despite these obstacles, U.S. nuclear policy decisions have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent decades. In the 1970s, interest groups won some ability to monitor federal regulation of nuclear power, and state and local governments became involved in decisions about siting and managing nuclear reactors.9 The end of the Cold War spurred official releases of selected information about nuclear weapons and materials production. However, growing awareness of nuclear issues has not always increased public involvement in policy decisions. This is partly because nuclear decisions currently have low salience for the public and many policy makers: no nuclear power reactors have been ordered in the United States since 1978, and concern about nuclear war dropped off sharply with the breakup of the Soviet Union.10 But for those who are concerned about nuclear issues, technical complexity, restricted information, and insulated bureaucracies still impede meaningful participation in policy decisions.
This paper examines public participation in the cleanup of the nuclear weapons complex, focusing on the role of citizen advisory boards at the largest and most polluted sites. DOE has taken many steps over the past decades to improve relations with stakeholders, and chartering what it calls Site-Specific Advisory Boards (SSABs) was one of its most visible initiatives. Beyond the nuclear sphere, the SSAB case has implications for public involvement in other complex environmental programs such as siting hazardous waste facilities and cleaning up non-military Superfund sites. In particular, this case illustrates the importance of making major, sustained investments in public participation programs, especially when agencies need to earn public trust and confidence. It also calls into question the utility of consensus-based mechanisms for addressing highly contentious policy problems.
OVERVIEW OF THE CLEANUP PROGRAM
The weapons production complex was built in the 1940s and 1950s, and at its peak encompassed sixteen major sites and many smaller facilities across the country. The largest sites, such as Hanford in Washington State and Savannah River in South Carolina, are vast complexes housing nuclear reactors, chemical processing buildings, materials storage areas, and fabrication plants. Some are in isolated rural areas, while others are located near major cities.
Producing nuclear weapons involves mining, milling, and refining uranium; enriching it to increase its fissile content; fabricating reactor fuel and irradiation targets; operating reactors; chemically separating weapons materials from spent reactor fuel; fabricating weapons parts; assembling, disassembling, and maintaining nuclear weapons; and weapons research, development, and testing. Waste streams from U.S. nuclear weapons production include:
Weapons production sites have spilled liquid high-level waste into soil and ground water, buried radioactive and toxic waste in shallow trenches, released radioactive dust into the air, and discharged hazardous materials such as mercury and PCBs into rivers and streams. Many sites have contaminated land, air, and water supplies outside their boundaries.12
Conditions in the weapons complex received little national attention until 1986, when the Chernobyl accident raised concerns about several DOE reactors with somewhat similar designs. Government and media investigations revealed widespread environmental and safety problems at aging weapons plants. In 1989 Energy Secretary James Watkins released a five-year cleanup plan and vowed to work more closely with states and the public, but translating this pledge into a credible plan took DOE nearly a decade.13 The Department was slow to prepare meaningful cost estimates for the cleanup and involve the public in decisions. By 1994 DOE was spending over $6 billion annually (roughly EPA's entire budget) on cleanup activities, but the program was widely viewed as disorganized and wasteful, or as one key Senator put it, "a grand and glorious mess."14 Pressure to set priorities and renegotiate environmental compliance agreements with states and EPA spurred DOE to improve public involvement in cleanup decisions, so that it could agree with stakeholders on a workable program. Then-Secretary Hazel O'Leary and her advisors also hoped to make the Department more open and accessible.
Public Participation in the Cleanup Program
Many actors have interests in the cleanup, including state and local governments, civic leaders, Federal agencies, Indian tribes, site workers, and environmental and peace organizations. Their priorities vary and often conflict. DOE's agency culture compounds the challenge of addressing stakeholder concerns. The department is widely viewed as arrogant, unaccountable, and resistant to change. Reform initiatives (such as O'Leary's emphasis on openness) often are seen within the bureaucracy as transitory measures to be waited out rather than implemented.15
This posture stems in part from secrecy and a lack of oversight. Throughout the Cold War, nuclear weapons production was shielded from public view due to national security concerns, allowing site managers to evade compliance with federal environmental laws.16 Production facilities were not licensed or inspected by outside agencies, and contractors were evaluated mainly on their ability to fulfill production targets.17 After years of DOE assurances that weapons sites were safe, many communities learned in the 1980s that their drinking water had been contaminated for years, or that they had been exposed to radioactive air emissions and toxic spills.18 Moreover, after DOE signed consent agreements with states and EPA that set cleanup schedules, agency officials admitted knowingly making unrealistic commitments in order to maintain weapons production and avoid prosecution for environmental violations.19
In sum, through the early 1990s DOE failed key tests for earning social trust: competence (by mismanaging risk in the weapons complex), impartiality (by putting priority on weapons production over health, safety and the environment), and fairness (by disregarding local concerns and due process in decision making).20 As a result stakeholders had little faith in the department. As Table 1 illustrates, even presumably pro-nuclear actors had modest confidence in DOE at best, while environmental and anti-nuclear advocates were almost uniformly distrustful.
The main avenues for participation in early cleanup decisions were hearings and public comment sessions. These channels are generally seen as insufficient for substantive participation in complex policy decisions, and the DOE cleanup was no exception.21 Stakeholders had trouble getting information, were not consulted early in the policy process, and could not tell whether their comments affected agency decisions.22 Critics called DOE environmental impact statements "post hoc rationalizations of decisions already made."23
Several reviews of the cleanup program recommended creating local advisory boards to broaden public input and make decisions more transparent.24 In response DOE chartered a dozen SSABs at some of the largest and most polluted sites in the weapons complex. Beyond requesting "a clear articulation of stakeholder principles, priorities, and values," DOE gave the boards wide scope to define their individual missions, such as planning future site use or setting cleanup priorities.25 Table 2 provides information on sites with SSABs.
Source: DOE/EM, Status Report on Paths to Closure, and DOE, Office of Defense Programs, Fiscal Year 2000 Stockpile Stewardship Plan (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, March 1999).
ASSESSING THE SSABS
Evaluating public participation methods is a slippery process: limited empirical research exists on the subject, and success is often in the eye of the beholder.26 Analysts generally call for using both process and outcome tests, such as whether participants are broadly representative of the affected public; whether participation genuinely impacts policy decisions; and whether the process commits resources to participation that are commensurate with the decisions at hand.27
Stakeholders in the weapons complex cleanup clearly care about both processes and outcomes. In a recent survey, a range of stakeholders agreed broadly on seven measures of successful public participation in the cleanup program:
In general, public stakeholders seek a thorough cleanup based on standards that reflect community concerns and envisioned future site uses. They want DOE to fund the program adequately, manage contractors effectively, and deal promptly with wastes that pose serious health and safety threats, but do not want to rush the cleanup program to meet artificial political deadlines. Procedurally, they want the Department to provide detailed information on cleanup choices and to factor stakeholder views into decisions.29
DOE's central interest is getting the job done. Public participation may lead to better policy, but it is expressly meant to legitimize decisions so that DOE can carry out its plans without being blocked by lawsuits or protests. This is a practical concern: stakeholders have forced DOE to change its environmental practices through lobbying, advocacy, and lawsuits.30 However, it puts a burden on the department to demonstrate that it takes public views seriously and that public participation programs are not simply vehicles for engineering consent.
Many analysts argue that the traditional "decide, announce, defend" approach to policy making is poorly suited to high-risk issues such as the cleanup program that involve diverse interests. Instead they recommend deliberative processes that bring together citizens, experts and decision makers to find mutually acceptable solutions.31 Citizen advisory committees (CACs) have been widely used to this end by government agencies and private industry.32 Effective CACs promote joint deliberation, broaden the scope of advice to decision makers, and build relationships among stakeholders and between the public and decision makers. They foster greater mutual learning than one-time events such as public hearings, and are more inclusive than regulatory negotiations, which typically involve well-organized national interest groups.33 On the negative side, if CACs are not selected carefully, they may over- or under-represent various perspectives or may not be accountable to the public that they are supposed to represent. Although they can pose major time demands, CACs typically do not have power to make decisions, nor are sponsors required to take their advice.34
From DOE's perspective, the SSABs appear to be working reasonably well. Agency officials point to the SSABs as an example of effective cooperation with stakeholders.35 SSAB recommendations adopted by the Department include:
From stakeholders' perspective the picture is mixed. Surveys conducted for DOE in 1996 and 1997 by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) indicated that the boards were doing reasonably well on process issues, such as facilitating joint deliberation by stakeholders and DOE officials. In terms of outcomes, however, only bare majorities thought SSABs were improving DOE actions or increasing public trust and confidence in DOE, and most respondents did not believe DOE gave careful consideration to SSAB input. The surveys also found low public awareness of SSAB activities.37 Table 3 provides key survey findings.
Table 3: SSAB Evaluation Survey Results, 1996-1997
DOE commissioned surveys in 1996 and 1997 to assess performance of the SSABs. A "long survey" was administered to SSAB members and to DOE officials and contractors who worked closely with SSABs; a "short survey" was administered to DOE headquarters staff associated with the SSAB program and to members of the public who had attended SSAB meetings. The latter group was not presumed to be familiar with SSAB internal processes and procedures, and thus was not asked to address questions in these areas.
The surveys examined SSAB performance relative to six goals developed by a DOE steering committee, each of which was broken down into a number of specific items. For each item, DOE asked respondents whether they strongly agreed; agreed; disagreed; strongly disagreed; or did not know whether the SSABs were attaining the stated objective.
This summary presents combined responses to each of the six programmatic goals and selected responses on specific items where respondents found the SSABs to be significantly falling short of expectations. Figures provided here represent the number of respondents who strongly agreed or agreed with each statement. DOE defined levels of success or effectiveness as follows:
To augment its survey data, PNNL conducted a qualitative assessment in 1998-99.38 The study identified six factors that shaped the quality of board discourse and activities:
States are spending far more money on maintaining the nuclear stockpile than post-Cold War threats merit, when it should be pursuing deep reductions in nuclear arsenals and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.45 But boards at sites with ongoing military missions advise only on cleanup issues, not on current production activities, and so are not even authorized to address what one critic characterizes as "continued burial of newly-generated 'good' waste in much the same place and context as the old 'bad' waste,"46 let alone broader questions about the size and role of the nuclear arsenal and the need for their site's specific activities in its support.
The economic impact of DOE contracts also tends to polarize SSAB discussions at active production sites. DOE is consolidating the weapons complex to support a smaller post-Cold War nuclear arsenal, and has cut thousands of jobs in recent years. Changing employment levels affect local tax bases and demand for public services, so local officials have incentives to help sites retain DOE contracts and win new missions.47 Some observers argue that SSABs at active production sites have been captured by advocates who use the boards to maintain good relations with DOE.48 Board members assert that they provide tough advice to the Department, although some acknowledge that they are perceived as being too supportive of DOE priorities.49
Geography sometimes creates frictions as well. Researchers have observed a "halo effect" in which stakeholders who live near weapons sites are more receptive to continued nuclear activities (due to factors such as familiarity with operations at the weapons sites, knowledge about site activities, and local economic benefits) than others who live farther away.50 But pollution at weapons production sites often has regional impacts, so many stakeholders have interests in cleanup decisions. For example, earlier this year DOE canceled a planned radioactive waste incinerator at the Idaho National Laboratory - which had generated little local opposition beyond Idaho's small community of activists - in response to heated protests in the resort community of Jackson, Wyoming, 150 miles from the site.51
In sum, there is a tension at active production sites between two SSAB organizing principles: broad representation and consensus. Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), DOE is required to seek boards whose member represent the full range of views in their communities. Further, as a 1993 report on advisory groups in the cleanup program observed,
"The importance of broad representation has been raised by so many interviewees and others that it can be considered a universally acceptable principle. Balance keeps any given point of view from dominating and helps assure representation of all the important issues to be brought to the table." 52
In addition to ensuring full representation of community views, PNNL observed that broad diversity within board memberships appeared to help keep boards from polarizing into opposing factions.53 The National Research Council similarly argues that "Particularly for government regulatory agencies that have limited public trust, it is usually wiser to err on the side of too broad rather than too narrow participation."54
On the other hand, conflicts among stakeholders over cleanup priorities and continued nuclear weapons activities have made it difficult for some boards to function effectively. One might argue that since environmentalists and anti-nuclear advocates represent a minority perspective at some sites, it is not essential to have them represented on SSABs. But DOE's critics are legally and politically sophisticated and technically knowledgeable, so it would be both impractical and inequitable to proceed without considering their views. DOE has not excluded activists - indeed, some were centrally involved in establishing the boards - but it has not worked hard to retain these critical views on the more divided SSABs.
There may be a considerable middle ground in some cleanup communities that is not fully represented by either side in this admittedly simplistic scheme of nuclear advocates versus nuclear critics. A recent study on brownfields redevelopment notes that actors with strong material interests are most likely to participate in environmental remediation decisions, but they do not represent the entire interested public:
"Clearly, those interested in potentially large payoffs anticipated from site re-use are legitimate members of the public, and thus merit representation in any public involvement process. At the same time, however, there may well be a public that, despite its silence, has concerns about health and larger quality-of-life issues. This is a public that is less able to maintain sustained interest in the site compared to the powerful federal, state, and city agencies that . . . have dominated the debate."55
Targeting SSAB Advice
The core function of citizens' advisory committees is to make decision makers aware of local priorities and values that are relevant to policy decisions. Some SSABs may be diverging from this role. PNNL observed in 1999 that the Savannah River, Idaho, and Oak Ridge boards had focused, or were perceived as having focused, on technical issues rather than broader principles and value questions.56 DOE's guidance for the SSABs provides few specifics on what boards should do, but notes, "Experience shows that local boards have the greatest impact when they are able to focus their efforts on major policy issues."57 Former Fernald SSAB chair John Applegate recommends that boards address broad issues such as future site use: The use to which a Superfund site will be put after remediation is a fundamental determinant of the site's residual risks and hence of the legal remediation goals for the protection of human health and the environment. Future use, however, depends heavily on local expectations for the current character and development of the area, because plans for residential development will hardly work if no one will live there, and industries will not flock to a poorly placed industrial park. Future use, then, was a good subject for the Fernald SSAB. In contrast, fine-tuning excavation plans or treatment techniques can swallow up the time and energy of SSAB members without addressing the overall goals of remediation that most concern the general public.58 This distinction between broad goals and specific technical questions bears directly on the SSABs' mission. Applegate asserts that the central purpose of citizens advisory boards is to make decisions more inclusive and transparent.59 Another study describes stakeholder input into environmental decisions as a form of "social peer review" that confers societal approval and legitimacy on decisions.60
Conversely, the natural tendency for many DOE officials and stakeholders is to focus on technical questions. Many communities near weapons production sites include high numbers of citizens with advanced scientific and technical degrees who work for DOE and its contractors, and who participate in cleanup discussions because they understand the issues and have direct stakes in the decisions.61 Additionally, many site officials tend to discuss cleanup decisions in technical terms and to use statistical risk calculations that are not meaningful to lay audiences.62 However, an excessively technical focus may intimidate or overwhelm SSAB members who are not scientists or engineers and preventing them from playing major roles in board deliberations.
Maintaining a strong voice for non-technical members is likely to produce broader-based recommendations. Many scholars and practitioners argue that lay public attitudes towards risk - while distinctly different from expert views - incorporate key questions, such as the competence and trustworthiness of the relevant authorities, as well as potentially useful knowledge about local conditions.63 This is not to suggest a neat division between technical and policy issues. As Sheila Jasanoff notes, the boundary between scientific and policy components of regulatory decisions is blurry: scientific judgments reflect policy concerns, and policy choices are influenced by scientific understanding.64 Indeed, the SSABs are meant to help stakeholders assess technical questions related to cleanup decisions. However, as PNNL warned, Devolution of the local SSABs into technical advisory boards is counter to DOE's intent: in establishing the advisory boards, DOE sought to obtain help from a broad range of affected publics in developing policies that would be acceptable to these publics, in addition to being technically sound.65 Deciding how much power to vest in technical experts versus lay advisors is a highly charged question for DOE and is bound up with the issue of public trust and confidence in the Department.66 For years, experts validated the practices that contaminated the weapons complex. Nuclear weapons were produced within a closed system that downplayed environment, safety and health issues. DOE and its predecessors indemnified contractors from paying legal claims for environmental damages, and sometimes rewarded them with millions of dollars in bonuses.67 This process "normalized deviance," much as NASA's decision making structure allowed danger signs to be disregarded in the lead up to the Challenger space shuttle launch.68 One point of creating SSABs was to show that DOE no longer relied solely on advice from in-house experts.
This lay-expert division is gradually eroding. Some environmental and anti-nuclear organizations have recruited their own experts, including dissenters from DOE as well as independent analysts.69 Under a 1998 legal settlement, DOE is creating a $6.25 million fund to support independent citizen monitoring of scientific and technical issues associated with the cleanup program, which will provide data beyond DOE's control to NGOs and communities.70 Whether these analyses will affect policy decisions remains to be seen: some stakeholders assert that DOE lacks credible processes for internal peer review of scientific and technical projects and tends to ignore, reject, or discredit critical views.71
Several critics argued to the author that SSABs spent much of their time on relatively minor issues while failing to address questions of major public concern.72 Every board has its own priorities, but some SSAB topics appear tangential to the cleanup program - for example, DOE's role in promoting continuing education on nuclear issues for Idaho elementary and secondary school teachers, or the wording of South Carolina's annual warning document on possible health threats from eating fish contaminated by radioactivity in the Savannah River.73 These issues may be locally important, but they suggest that some sites rely on the SSABs as all-purpose outreach tools, or that boards feel obligated to take on issues beyond cleanup because site officials are not doing so.
DOE Support and Responsiveness
DOE follow-through with SSABs has been weak in many respects. The Department has failed to give SSABs adequate direction or support. Its hands-off approach has let some boards drift, and DOE's guidance for forming SSABs provides little information on how to run the boards or handle problems. DOE should not run the SSABs, but it has a responsibility to empower them so that they can perform their jobs effectively.
The Defense Department, which supports over 300 Restoration Advisory Boards (RABs) at military bases that are closing or realigning, has taken a more structured approach.74 DOD's RAB Resource Book offers guidance on issues from conducting meetings to performing community outreach, as well as suggestions on addressing potential roadblocks (e.g., "How do I handle individuals who dominate the meetings?") and sample agendas, recruiting posters, and fact sheets from operating RABs across the country. DOD also provides training curricula on cleanup-related problems and maintains an Internet bulletin board on base cleanup issues.75
Public outreach is another challenge. Some SSABs choose members as representatives of specific interest groups, while others choose members to represent general interests such as minorities or the business community but not specific organizations. The latter method may yield boards that are more broadly representative of the public interest, but members of population-based panels lack clear ties to specific constituencies, which undercuts their ability to do effective outreach.76 DOE does not appear to have developed any minimum standards for public outreach, and the content of SSAB publications and Internet home pages varies widely.77
DOE's use of the SSABs is inconsistent. For example, the Department frequently fails to consult with SSABs early in the decision process. Public participation and risk communication experts stress the need to seek public views at the outset so that they can be integrated into policy decisions.78 Members of some SSABs assert that DOE often fails to seek their advice, ignores SSAB input, or accepts recommendations but fails to act on them.79 SSABs rely to a large extent on DOE and contractors for information about cleanup issues, and some boards complain about its timeliness and quality.80 According to PNNL, DOE site officials' attitudes toward the SSABs "range across a spectrum from reluctant acceptance that begrudges the diversion of resources from technical activity to enthusiastic support that places a high value on the board's discussions and recommendations."81 DOE's decentralized structure sometimes means that local officials have no control over issues of concern to SSABs. In other instances, however, the imperative to get work done outweighs stakeholder concerns. Even the most cohesive boards have sometimes been frustrated by DOE's non-responsiveness on major issues (see Box 1).
BOX 1: SSAB Concerns at Hanford and Rocky Flats Hanford Tank Wastes: The largest and most expensive cleanup project in the weapons complex is the Hanford "tank farms," 177 buried tanks filled with 54 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes. Many have leaked, threatening groundwater supplies and the Columbia River. DOE has spent about $3.5 billion to treat tank wastes since 1989, but has met repeated failures and delays. In part because it lacked technical skills to handle the project, DOE endorsed the idea of privatizing the project in 1995. In 1998 it selected British Nuclear Fuels, Limited (BNFL) to build a facility and immobilize at least 10 percent of the tank wastes in glass logs by 2017 at an estimated cost of $6.9 billion.a The move to privatization was controversial. Stakeholders and regulators argued that by assuming major liability for program risks, DOE had reduced BNFL's performance incentive; that privatization would cost more and stretch out the tank waste project beyond existing milestones in the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) between DOE, EPA and Washington state; and that DOE had done little contingency planning for problems executing the BNFL contract.b The Hanford Advisory Board (HAB) was initially open to the concept of privatization but raised concerns including technical feasibility, cost effectiveness, and the need for fallback options. It urged DOE not to weaken compliance with the TPA and complained of insufficient access to key decision documents and assumptions. When DOE endorsed privatization in 1995, the HAB refused to support the plan in light of DOE's failure to ensure effective public involvement in the decision process or to show how it had incorporated HAB advice in its decision.c As the contract moved forward the HAB pressed DOE to add milestones to the TPA to hold the project accountable, and to plan for funding shortfalls.d In April 2000, BNFL formally submitted a $15.2 billion proposal to DOE. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson denounced the cost escalation and said that DOE would recompete the contract, but DOE had no ready fallback option and had defended the private financing structure to the HAB just weeks before BNFL issued its proposal. HAB members sharply criticized the department for the prolonged delay in treating tank wastes and questioned the credibility of its pledges to fix the program.e Board member Tom Carpenter said, "I don't think it will be any different five years from now as long as DOE is in charge."f Soil cleanup levels at Rocky Flats: The Rocky Flats site, which produced plutonium components for nuclear weapons, is heavily contaminated with plutonium and enriched uranium. Cleanup of Rocky Flats is governed by a 1996 Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement (RFCA) between DOE, EPA, and Colorado, which, inter alia, sets interim ceilings for radioactive materials in soil after cleanup. When the agreement was announced, the proposed radionuclide soil action level (RSAL) of 651 picocuries per gram of soil was higher than many observers expected and significantly higher than levels DOE had agreed to at other cleanup sites. In contrast, the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board (RFCAB) recommended ultimately cleaning up Rocky Flats to 0.04 picocuries/gram, the natural background level for the region, as the technology to do so became available.g RFCAB members and other stakeholders felt that DOE had not involved the public in developing the target or explained adequately the assumptions it had used to reach its target level. The RFCAB called on DOE to fund an independent scientific review of the issue.h After some resistance, DOE agreed and provided $500,000 in funding. The RFCAB hired Risk Assessment Corporation (RAC), a firm experienced in conducting health and safety studies at nuclear weapons production sites. After an 18-month study, RAC found that achieving an effective dose equivalent of 15 millirem/year (the agreed target for the site) would require cleaning up to a standard of approximately 35 picocuries/gram, significantly lower than the levels specified in the existing cleanup agreement.i DOE is currently evaluating RAC's findings and methodologies before responding. Changing the RFCA would require agreement between DOE, EPA and Colorado, and no decision is expected before the end of 2000. According to RAC president John Till, adopting the lower soil action level would not necessarily extend Rocky Flats cleanup significantly beyond the target completion date of 2006.j Stakeholders have not agreed on a final use for Rocky Flats, which could affect the likelihood of future exposures, but the site is 16 miles from downtown Denver and development has encroached to within one mile of its border. Persuading DOE to fund the independent soil analysis was a major initiative by the RFCAB, which set up a separate oversight panel to manage the RAC contract and inform stakeholders on the progress of the study. Board members were frustrated with DOE over the high soil action level in the cleanup agreement, but gave the department credit for funding the external review. DOE could gain further credibility with stakeholders if it agrees to adjust RSAL levels based on RAC's findings. On the other hand, in the words of one RFCAB member, "If they run roughshod over this recommendation, they'll have a lot of unhappy people to deal with."k |
Judging SSAB Effectiveness
The SSABs' bottom-line goals are improving cleanup decisions and increasing public trust and confidence in DOE. One logical metric for SSAB impact on cleanup decisions would be the frequency with which DOE has taken SSAB advice. According to a close observer at DOE, however, the Department does not track the fate of SSAB recommendations complex-wide.82 Without such data there is little on which to base judgment except anecdotal evidence.
DOD management of RABs again offers a contrast. DOD publishes annual reports to Congress on the RABs and has been collecting information on RAB activities and expenditures since FY 1996. In FY98, DOD collected data on RAB member representation categories, activities, types of advice provided (although not yet on the number of recommendations accepted), and funding levels and trends. DOD also has assessed best practices in its cleanup program, including activities related to working with stakeholders.83
The lack of similar information on SSABs not only makes it hard to measure their impact, but may also undercut DOE's efforts to win public trust and confidence. If DOE cannot demonstrate to stakeholders that it takes SSAB recommendations seriously and has acted on a significant fraction of them, board members are likely to become demoralized and to question why they should take on the substantial workloads entailed with service on the boards. DOE also risks strengthening critics' belief that the SSABs are public-relations tools.
Available data indicate that the SSABs have reduced DOE's credibility deficit modestly at best. Only a bare majority of respondents to PNNL's 1996 and 1997 surveys believed that the SSABs were promoting increased trust and confidence in DOE, and more recent accounts of conflict and resignations from some SSABs suggest that improvement has been uneven. Where greater trust exists, it appears to be based on material dependence rather than on positive perceptions of DOE. Stakeholders who are relatively more trusting of the department, or less worried about environmental and health risks from the weapons sites, typically are current or former site employees or live in areas that are heavily economically dependent on the sites.84 One survey of residents at Savannah River observes, "The [Savannah River Site] residents' primary perceived need is economic security. That is, the SRS residents are more trusting of the site if it continues to bring their community economic reward."85 Such trust is a weak reed, since it may disappear if the DOE funding stream shuts off. Some observers argue that earning public trust should not even be a stated goal of the SSAB program, since it conveys an "instrumental, and potentially manipulative, use of trust."86
STRENGTHENING THE SSABs
A DOE advisory committee observed in 1993 that public involvement mechanisms may weaken rather than strengthen public trust and confidence, depending on whether these initiatives fulfill their promise.87 To maximize the SSABs' contribution to the cleanup program, DOE needs to act at several levels. This paper has highlighted a number of areas in which DOE can provide the boards with better support and work with them more effectively. In addition, the Department and SSAB members should rethink the program's emphasis on consensus decision making and consider additional ways to broaden public involvement in cleanup decisions.
Operational Improvements
DOE is moving in the right direction with the SSABs but needs to do more before it can justifiably call the program a success. For example, it should strive at least to match the Defense Department's program for public involvement in cleanups at military bases in terms of resources invested and the scope of its assessment and evaluation efforts. Sustained involvement by senior officials also is essential to overcome DOE's production culture and bureaucratic divisions.88
DOE's new emphasis on public participation and accountability has not permeated throughout the Department, particularly at active weapons production sites. For some SSABs this has meant resistance or inertia from site officials. DOE's initial pledges in 1993-95 to democratize cleanup decisions have gradually yielded to a more instrumental emphasis on getting the mission done and a tendency to ignore SSAB advice when it conflicts with agency plans. Beyond commissioning the PNNL studies, DOE has done little to systematically evaluate the SSABs. Given that the weapons complex cleanup is the largest environmental restoration program in the federal budget; that working effectively with stakeholders is central to implementing cleanup plans; and that successful SSABs have saved the department billions of dollars, DOE is allocating scant resources to working with the SSABs.89
Steps DOE could take to improve SSAB operations and increase their impact include:
Addressing Fundamental Stakeholder Conflicts
DOE must acknowledge and address the underlying tension between cleanup and ongoing operations at active sites if it hopes to convince all members of those communities that their input matters. Simply inviting the conflicting interests to serve on advisory boards and urging them to seek consensus has not worked. The contrast between more and less cohesive SSABs echoes Jane Mansbridge's distinction between unitary and adversary democracies. Mansbridge posits that adversary democracies assume that members' interests conflict, and consequently focus on equal protection of interests, typically through mechanisms such as majority rule and secret ballots. In contrast, unitary democracies assume that members can define a common good that serves all interests; they emphasize equality of status, face-to-face contact, and consensus decisions.91 Attempting to apply unitary procedures in a setting where interests are not uniform and relationships are not based on mutual respect is likely to fail:
"The principles of consensus and face-to-face democracy, which can help maintain the unity of smaller unitary groups, can actually make it difficult in larger and more adversary groups for the shy and those without effective social contacts to protect their interests in the organization. After interests have begun to conflict in major ways, a combination of referenda, representation, and either majority rule or an emphasis on proportional outcomes will protect individual interests more equally than face-to-face assemblies and consensus."92
As Mansbridge observed in Vermont town meetings, procedures that call for consensus and face-to-face decisions intensify the tensions that arise when interests conflict, which can make some people less likely to participate.93 This pattern echoes several activists' statements to the author that they resigned from SSABs in part because their positions were not respected and the experience was too stressful. It also is consonant with PNNL's observation of polarization and basic disagreements between the opposing factions of the Pantex SSAB. Mansbridge suggests that organizations learn to shift back and forth between unitary and adversary decision processes depending on the degree of conflict that characterizes the issue at hand. Such flexibility may be too much to ask of SSABs, most of which remain committed to seeking consensus despite its difficulties.94
Another approach would be involving people and interests that may not be fully represented on SSABs. As a first step, DOE needs a better understanding of community views and participation at each site. The U.S. Army faces a challenge similar to the weapons complex cleanup in its mission to dispose of 30,000 tons of stockpiled chemical weapons. Like DOE, the Army is pursuing competing public goals (in this case, arms control versus environmental protection), and has faced protests and legal challenges from stakeholders who do not believe the current plan manages risks adequately.95 In 1998 the Army commissioned an independent survey of more than 8,000 stakeholders in communities where chemical weapons are stored and will be destroyed, to improve its understanding of who participates, factors that shape local perceptions, and relevant social, demographic, and media contexts.96 DOE should sponsor similar analysis to identify areas where significant community views are not being addressed.
When proposed policies are especially contentious, DOE should conduct targeted outreach to learn specific constituencies' views, followed by facilitated community meetings or other open fora to discuss tradeoffs. Such events would in all likelihood be more contentious than SSAB meetings, but as Cary Coglianese argues, the result could well be more valuable: Often what decision makers need is conflict to illuminate the policy decision most fully. The full articulation of opposing views may provide more useful information on which to construct better public policy than the truncated discussion that can develop when consensus is the goal.97
DOE should use mechanisms that maximize opportunities for people to express their views, such as list servers and online discussions administered through local SSAB web pages.98 Periodic referenda on major issues would help to hold the boards accountable to their communities.
Delegating power to SSABs
Over the longer term, if SSABs can be made more representative, DOE leaders should consider giving the boards some degree of formal authority over cleanup decisions - for example, power to codetermine policies, veto official proposals (possibly subject to an appeal to senior DOE officials), or shut down activities that they believe are unsafe. Citizens advisory committees rarely have such authority, but many analysts identify it as an attribute of an ideal participation policy that would significantly improve public trust in the sponsor.99 Survey research indicates that giving local communities monitoring and enforcement power can significantly increase their willingness to accept hazardous facilities such as nuclear waste sites.100 For example, Oak Ridge, Tennessee demanded such authority in 1985 as a condition for hosting a proposed storage facility for spent civilian nuclear fuel, and more recently 70 percent of respondents in a survey around Savannah River believed that they should have the power to close down facilities that they thought were not being operated properly.101 Site officials would probably take SSABs more seriously if the boards could block cleanup decisions, and stakeholders might perceive the boards as worth the time required to serve on them.
Keeping participation in perspective
The most effective participation processes in the world cannot substitute for competent execution of the cleanup program. DOE has turned some remediated sites over to local communities, and is making progress at others, but most of the sites with SSABs involve much bigger costs and technical challenges. The Department lacks many of the technical and managerial skills needed to address major cleanup tasks such as treating the Hanford tank wastes, as evidenced in independent reviews of the cleanup program.102 For example, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently reprimanded the department for failing to deal in a timely way with large quantities of radioactive materials that pose major safety threats.103 According to the National Research Council, many sites in the weapons complex will remain contaminated even after cleanup, but DOE's plans for managing these so-called "legacy" waste sites are not adequately defined or funded, and may not prevent residual contamination from threatening public health.104 Together with the fact that public participation is a relatively new corporate value overlaid on DOE's production culture, these challenges are a recipe for stakeholder frustration at the largest and most polluted sites. As a recent study of citizen responses to nuclear contamination at Hanford and Russia's Mayak complex observes,The strong democracy expectations of citizens and interest group representatives and local, state, and tribal governments in the Hanford area have met with a weak and embattled federal agency that does not seem able to map out and maintain a reasonable course to environmental remediation and public health safety, despite the availability of enormous financial resources.105
CONCLUSION AND ISSUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Judging by the SSAB experience, public participation in nuclear decisions a decade after the end of the Cold War is nominally accepted but still very difficult in practice. In principle, the SSABs give stakeholders an ongoing role in cleanup decisions and require site officials to answer their questions and provide information. Most observers agree that establishing the boards was a positive step, and that some SSABs - particularly the Fernald board - have significantly improved cleanup decisions. This level of public oversight is a major change from the conditions that existed in the nuclear weapons complex through the mid-1980s.
However, many factors that have long impeded public participation in nuclear decisions still characterize the cleanup program. Technical complexity and the scope of work at most sites challenge boards to stay focused and involve members without technical backgrounds. Major cleanup projects such as treating Hanford's tank wastes require large investments over multi-year time frames, prompting decision makers to commit to technologies that may not be fully proven, and to underfund backup options until the chosen route fails. Classification does not appear to have significantly hampered SSABs' access to information, but other stakeholder groups and federal agencies continue to have trouble obtaining environment, health and safety information from nuclear weapons production sites.106 Privatization of cleanup activities has reduced public access to information, because contractors can treat it as proprietary or are not required to report it in unified formats as federal agencies typically would.107
The SSAB record suggests that consensus may not be a realistic basis for policy decisions when stakeholders differ on fundamental underlying issues, such as U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Experience at active weapons production sites indicates that this model may generate more heat than light, and may discourage groups that hold important views from participating.108 This does not mean that SSABs are not useful: as Coglianese argues, in many cases it is the deliberative process, not a consensus requirement, that improves policy decisions.109
The pronounced conflicts among some stakeholders in the cleanup program complicate DOE's outreach task, since it is far from obvious that majority rule will provide broader input in communities where many stakeholders have interests tied to DOE. Further research on ways to promote public participation in instances where stakeholders are deeply divided on fundamental values would be useful. Another issue for further study is how activist groups affect participation by the general public. The Army-commissioned survey on participation at chemical weapons sites suggests that high activist involvement may make the public less likely to participate for a variety of reasons, but this theory should be tested in other issue areas.110 Finally, while some observers argue that DOE and other military agencies are capable of becoming leaders in both environmental protection and public participation, this vision is far from realization.111 Many legal and administrative steps are readily identifiable, such as increasing external regulation of activities at DOE nuclear sites
Weeks, Jennifer. “Advice -and Consent? The Department of Energy's Site-Specific Advisory Boards.” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, September 1, 2000
