Public involvement in chemical demilitarization

This paper discusses implications for public involvement of a study that Battelle completed last year for the Department of the Army. The study was conducted in communities located near the eight sites in the continental United States where the nation`s stockpile of chemical weapons is stored. The Army completed a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Chemical Weapons Disposal several years ago; however, plans for on-site incineration have encountered delay and escalating costs. Public opposition and delay in obtaining the required State environmental permits are widely regarded as contributing to this delay and increased cost. The Battelle study was designed to identify and analyze the nature of community concerns about the risks of incineration and other technologies and to make recommendations about ways in which the Army could work with the communities. The paper discusses three key findings: (1) across all sites, community residents` concerns were broader than issues related solely to the selection of a particular technology; (2) Army managers` views were different from many residents; (3) in the absence of a process to address their concerns, community residents tried to influence program decisions through government representatives, State permitting process, and the courts. Five primary implications are discussed: (1) publicmore » input is a given-- project proponents and program managers must decide whether they will guide the input process or be controlled by it; (2) public involvement must be linked to the decisions that are being made about a project or program; (3) public involvement programs must be designed to address the scope of issues that the public views as important; (4) public involvement must be established early and include the range of group perspectives on the issues; (5) public involvement is most productively viewed as an issues broker between an agency/project proponent and various parties potentially affected by a proposed project.« less