Understanding Environmental Impacts on Vulnerable Populations through Psycho-Social Impact Assessment

International Association for Impact Assessment

The leading global network on impact assessment

Presenter: Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D.

Moderator: Bridget John (bridget@iaia.org)

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Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D.Ramapo College of New Jersey

IAIA Webinar, July 19, 2017

Understanding

Impacts on

Vulnerable

Populations

through

Psycho-Social

Impact

Assessment

Culture of Contamination

• Modernity marked by a global pattern of victim production

• Growth economics financed through externalities• Easy to pollute/hard to clean up

• Easy to degrade/hard to restore

• Easy to disrupt health/hard to regain it

• Risk acceptable if someone else suffers consequences

• Few involuntarily bear burden for others

• Such victimization not rare but routine

• Yet minimally recognized

What is P-SIA?

Part of field of Social Impact Assessment, P-SIA tool for examining how realized event or proposed project affects:

• quality of life

• psycho-social wellbeing and

• ability to enjoy ones’

• home,

• property

• the environment

• relationships

Examine environmental stressors in light of coping ability, relating cause and effect

What is P-SIA Used For?

• P-SIA is a tool for documenting the effects on people due to significant adverse changes to their environmental context

• Retrospective P-SIA examines the impacts of events in progress or that already occurred, documenting the harm done, the causes and suggesting how to restore victims’ lives

• Anticipatory P-SIA assesses potential harm from a proposed change so that decision makers can be informed in deciding whether to permit the change and require mitigation

Human-Caused Events that might be Assessed

Retroactive Impacts

• Pollution incidents

• Industrial accidents

• Nuclear accidents

• Technological Disasters

• Climate Change events

• Conflict

Anticipatory Impacts

• Siting gas or oil

pipelines and facilities

• Building a waste

incinerator

• Erecting a dam

• Developing hazardous

industrial facilities

Scope of Webinar

• Define P-SIA as new emergent area of Impact Assessment

• Address gap in assessing “evictimization”

• Describe my own practice

• Inspire listeners to conduct P-SIA in wide range of situations

• Model use of grounded theory

• Suggest feasible, valid and reliable method for study

• Provide concrete case study(ies)

Rarely Assessed/Given Weight

• Lack explicit mandate

• Not found in SIAs

• Rarely issue for adjudication

• Not scoped for EIS

• Agencies lack trained staff

• Disciplinary blinders

• Not even done to assess disproportionate impacts to vulnerable groups

Administrative Rationale:• NIMBY

• irrational fears

• community benefits

• communication strategies

• Trivial Public Participation

• Regulatory threat

P-SI routinely overlooked or

minimized

PEOPLE FORCED TO

MOBILIZE TO SELF-ASSESS

AND SELF-ADDRESS IMPACTS!

How P-SIA Became my Mission

• 1970 began Ph.D. same year as NEPA

• Became Environmental Psychologist

• 1974 RCNJ interdisciplinary ES

• 1979 Merion Blue Grass adjudicatory hearing

• 1979 Love Canal

• 1980 Turi Landfill ---expert role

• 1981 Ayers v Jackson Twp. (convergence)

• Toxic Torts and administrative permit hearings for hazardous facilities

Broadening Contexts

• High Level Nuclear Waste Disposal 1980s

• Geologic Radon

• Nuclear Disaster (TMI, Chernobyl, Kyshtym ‘57, Fukushima)

• EJ (Triana, Alabama to Indian Point)

• Indigenous peoples (Hawaii, Exxon Valdez, San Xavier, uranium)

• Cross Cultural impacts ---Cultures of Contamination

• Terrorism Impacts---Study of Lower Manhattan in wake of WTCD

• Climate change---Aral Sea

• Ph. D. students

• Orange Environment, Inc.

Sharing Findings

Questions?

Theory: Elements Of Psycho-Social Impact

Lifestyle

LifestrainLifescape

“Theory of Environmental Turbulence”

Edelstein 2004

LIFESCAPE: Understanding of Daily Life

r

Edelstein 2004

LIFESTYLE: Normal Activity Patterns Change Due

to Adjustments and Adaptations due to Turbulence

Direct Impacts:

Edelstein 2004

Immersed in new cumulative surround

Changed behavior

•Adjust daily life to new conditions

•Alter habits

•Loss of Normalcy

•Avoid use of water

•Limit access to home and

property

• Wear pollution mask

• Time Spent on dealing with crisis

• Ill health driven changes

Meaning of changes

• Temporary or permanent

• Forced on you

LIFESTRAIN: Stress Resulting from Turbulence

Changed Relational Dynamics

• Relational network inadequate

• Turn to experts is disabling

• Environmental stigma

• Enabling responses

• Forced into new roles and actions

• Community conflict

• Outsiders don’t understand

• Environmental Injustice

• Limbo

Coping Challenges

• Perception: incubation, discovery,

announcement, acceptance

• Shift to perpetually abnormal

• Stress and coping impacts

• Exceed coping resources

• New reality-culture shock

• Changed psychological well being

• Anticipatory fears

• Psychological and social dysfunction

• Affected by exposure AND response

Lifecycle x Impact

Age Lifestyle Lifescape Lifestrain Stigma Relations

Child

Teen

Young Adult

Parent

Elder

Questions?

Social Process in Eco-Historical Context

• Psycho-social impacts occur at all levels of social process

• Levels are nested, interactive and interdependent

• Dynamics at any one level influence all

• Any level of process is influenced by other levels

Societal/Public/Commons/Global

Individual/

Private/LocalHistorical

Dynamics

Levels

of

Social

Process

Ecological Dynamics

Edelstein 2004

Qualitative Method

• Focus on those most adversely impacted

• Detailed tour and document review

• Tailored interview format for carefully selected samples

• Family interviews and unrelated group interviews

• Stimulus to conversation, not strict template

• Longitudinal Analysis: transcript read as narrative

• Cross Sectional Analysis: Thematic Content Analysis

• If warranted, controlled quantitative study added

• Convergence across key “grounded” theory, observations, documents and literature

Lifestyle

(behavior)

Lifescape

(cognition)

Lifestrain

(emotions)

Baseline Reconstructed Reconstructed Reconstructed

Current

Frame

Assessed Assessed Assessed

Future Frame Projected Projected Projected

x XRetrospective Study Design

Questions?

Alberta, Ca.: Gas Extraction and Transmission

• 2010 Shell proposed “Waterton 68”gas well near Waterton National Park in southern Alberta

• Residents and recreationalists intervened against the well and had P-SI listed as issue for adjudication

• September 2010 I submitted pre-filed testimony, 175-page “Anticipated Psycho-Social Impacts To Proximate Residents and Recreationalists From the Shell Waterton 68 Project”

• Testified before Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board (ERCB) October 2010

Cite case to Edelstein 2010b

All photographs by author

Google Earth

Wilderness Industrial Eco-Historical Landscape

• “Address threats to residents’ quality of life and psycho-social well being, defined in terms of adverse cognitive, behavioral and emotional changes that can be expected if the proposed well is approved”

• Impacts of existing gas facilities in same area basis for projecting likely consequences from Waterton 68 Google Earth

Study

Method:

1. Two days of very

detailed guided tours

of area, August 2010

2. Five intensive

interviews held with

total of 16 proximate

residents, most in the

EPZ

3. Group interview with

recreationalists

Risk Personality

• Warning signs everywhere:

• H2S • deadly at 500 ppm.

• Lesser levels of exposure short run somatic symptoms ranging from nausea and headaches to eye and lung irritation

• SO2 also present in flared gas fields • deadly at 1,000-2,000 ppm of prolonged exposure

• very dangerous after 500 ppm prolonged exposure

• Lesser amounts cause irritation of eyes, ears, nose and throat.

• Other hazardous chemicals occur or are used in a gas field

Milestone Event for Acceptance of Risk: 2007 Pipeline Rupture:

• 2007 Shell called likelihood of pipeline rupture “remote”

• One month later rupture

• Major turning point for accepting risk of H2S event

• Breakdown of Shell’s emergency response plan

• EPZ and event modeling wrong, gas at S. Backus without Shell knowing

• Residents exposed at rupture site, gathering wood and in home

• Failed notification in EPZ, no information available

• “They called and said it was safe to return to our place. Well, we never got

the first phone call that we should not be there!”

• Shelter in place doubted

• Post-release study not clarify or correct lapses

• Residents doubt Shell’s ability to detect, notify and protect residents

• Shrinking EPZ lesson obligations for warning

Mt. Backus North

(+7 Gates; Screwdriver River Valley)

Intensive proximity and cumulative exposure

Wilderness interrupted

In EPZ

Subject to Direct Impacts

Close to Incident

Evacuated

Mt. Backus South/Beaver Mines

Gas issues seemed far away

Wilderness uninterrupted

Expectations intact

Mostly out of EPZ

Shielded from direct impacts

Far from incident

Not Evacuated

Great Equalizers:

2007 pipeline rupture and cumulative Waterton 68

z Geographic Divide

North/South of Mt Backus Anticipatory Fear

• Anticipatory fears based on Nov 2007 leak

• Observe consequences for their saturated neighbors North of Mt Backus

• Anticipated expansion

5-6 more wells

Residents inundated with

cumulative impact beyond

coping ability

Gas Wells

pipelines

tests

failures

releases

remediation

Demands for

participation

Adaptive at great psycho-social

cost

Health Lifescape Impacts

All believed Waterton 68 threaten immediate death, impairment and injury and contribute to long term and latent complications

”The health issues are greater than what Shell lets on. And maybe we are affected already? According to experts who came for the last hearing, small effects over time affect memory and things in the body we are not aware of. And what if you were right by a leak when it happens and got more of full strength of H2S?”

Disabled

Respondents reported powerlessness, loss of control, no clear way forward, no way to know what to do:

• “We are being forced into action by somebody else’s agenda; we do not get help from government….At times I feel we should just move.”

• “And they say that the things that affect our safety are things like the bears. And we knew that before we bought our places. We do what we need to be safe from the environment that was here when we got here. But we can’t do anything about sour gas in the air.”

• “We want to continue as a business, and even if we want to stay here, it is so depressing. I do not know how we could move because no one will buy the property surrounded by 7 wells. Or if you move now, or wait, or how do you even deal with this? It sort of ruins our whole reason for being here in terms of peacefulness and a retreat lifestyle of serenity.”

Inversion of Home

All had carefully searched for tranquil location with access to scenic nature:

“It took me half my life to find this place. I had been all over

Canada and did not find a nicer area to live in. After that I spend

twenty years building this place up. You don’t want to leave.”

Now Lost motivation for home:

“Just look at the house. Tom worked on the house before, but now he hasn’t touched it for many years.”

Environment

Gas spoils contact with nature:

“I used to hike there every day and now I hardly do. When I am out in the wilderness, I like to think that I am the first person to walk in this place. My thinking is that it is not affected by too many people or traffic in the wilderness. But when I come over the ridge and there is a well site, I am jerked back into reality and I have lost the experience.”

“I don’t enjoy nature any less than I used to, but there are less spots to enjoy it. It used to be you just had to go out back and things would be quiet. I work with nature. But not in the middle off a gas field where you now hear howling pumps.”

Anticipatory Fears after Pipeline Rupture

• “Now it increased your sensitivity. When out there, if I go for a quad ride, I go down the road and in back of my mind it is not just being out in a beautiful area doing something I want to do, but this pipeline is right there beside me! And it is same for the well sites. You go through them and you are more concerned. At 6-12 you have to go 20 feet from the compressor to go through the valley. …Always in the back of my mind, I think, what do I do if something goes wrong? When you go past 6-12 and something goes wrong, you are not coming back out of there. Cell phones don’t work and there is nowhere to call.”

• “When I take off with my friend to go horseback riding, you kind of think about it, but you don’t think about it. But when the blowout happened, it tells me “this is real; it is really going to happen someday.” So when we go off riding, it goes through my mind.”

Livelihood

• Dilemma for Eco-tourism business:

“I can’t see telling guests that there is a possibility that they might have to shelter or evacuate because of H2S. I would not go to a place that I was told that. So how do I deal with it?...And we are not sure how they will be safe if a release happens.”

• Artist’s distraction:

“When I paint, I forget about Shell. After a 3 week hearing,

I have to come down or up from the hearing.

It will take awhile.”

• A cattle farmer’s reality:

“During the pipeline break of 2007, we had cattle issues in 08. Because of it, we lost more cows and more calves. Losses were very high for what we normally get. Several calves were lost at birth. That seldom happens. We literally live with our cows when they are calving. And we lost several cows and several were dry that year. ”

Trust

• Residents have been dispelled on ideas that government is protective, decisions are rational and people are treated fairly

“It definitely changed how I feel about Alberta. I learned quite a lot about how things are done. I know the regulation and the lack of it. We have certain rights, but they are very limited.”

• Likewise, they do not trust Shell

“Shell donated $50,000 to Pincher a week after the pipeline rupture. Was it a coincidence? It is a little too coincidental for me. Then the company says it will contribute to this and this. They cover their bases. It is good PR going for them. News releases.”

Adverse Lifestyle Impacts

• Life captured by gas development process

• Direct impacts from odors, dust, traffic, noise (blaring 2 way radios), intrusion, visual and light impact;

• Leaks surprisingly common

• Call in Gas smells

• No longer want to hike or ride or paint

• Residents de facto monitors

• Hearings “Stacked deck” and stress

• Settle lose control

• Demands to participate in

stressful meetings with gas

companies

“Since 2006, when Shell first presented

their Waterton 68 proposals to us, we

have met with Shell representatives 50

times and with our neighbors to discuss

Shell’s proposals 22 times. In addition,

we have attended 7 meetings of the

Shell Waterton Advisory Group (WAG)

to obtain information pertinent to our

situation. We seem to be Shell’s

unrewarded volunteers. All of these

meetings take time – time we would

rather be spending in other ways.”

• Shell is just one extraction/pipeline

company

Adverse Lifestrain

• Need to actively cope with increasing stress

• Forced to make undesired and potentially unhealthy adjustments and adaptations

• Place additional stress on family relationships;

Push some couples apart and others closer

• Community conflicts • Shell major employer

• Shift site, affects someone else

• Continued exposures to noxious and unhealthy conditions

• Worry over livelihood, retirement and property

• Diminished quality of health, life and enjoyment associated with residency in the region

• Fear of outsiders, strangers; workers seen as unsafe

Environmental Stigma

• Sour gas potential of lethal or serious injury

• Severely noxious and unpleasant nuisances

• Loss of privacy and tranquility

• Harm reputation of the area

• Ability to attract eco-tourists and recreationalists

• Value and market interest in property

• Residents stuck in place

• Block retirement

• Not leave property to children

Recreationalists

• Castle Crown renowned for ecotourism

• Recreationalists moving through the region

• Presence of numerous camps in the region 300+

• Concerns over loss of wilderness value and active use

• Recreational population cannot be notified or protected if gas release

• Residents also hike, ride, chase down cows and hunt

• Saw two cyclists heading toward Castle Crown

Cumulative Impact: Overwhelming of Place

Recommendations and Response

• P-SI significant basis for permit denial

• Steps to mitigate P-SI impacts from existing facilities necessary to win approval for further gas development

• Cumulative assessment of all anticipated facilities required

• Citizen’s attested to accuracy of my testimony

• Results infuriated ERCB administrative judges

• Punished me by denying fees

• Discourage future community interventions

• ERCB subsequently replaced

Conclusion

• Issues seen in Alberta are universal

• With fracking, gas and oil extraction has expanded across globe

• Case illustrates use of method and theory

• Outcome of the case illustrates resistance to P-SIA by regulators who do not want to empower citizens to block projects

• It is time to broaden practice of P-SIA and give it influence

• Document and predict adverse consequences of environmental turbulence

Thank You!

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Questions?

Relevant Books by M.R. Edelstein

• Edelstein, Michael R, Astrid Cerny and Abror Gadaev. 2012. Disaster by Design: The Aral Sea and Its Lessons for Sustainability. Vol. 20 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy. London: Emerald.

• Edelstein, Michael R., Maria Tysiachniouk, Ph.D. and Lyudmila V. Smirnova, Ph.D. (Eds.). 2007. Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S. Vol. 14 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy. New York, NY: Elsevier.

• Edelstein, Michael R. 2004. Contaminated Communities: Coping with Residential Toxic Exposure (Second Edition). Boulder, Co.: Westview Press/Perseus Books.

• Edelstein, Michael R. and William Makofske. 1998. Radon’s Deadly Daughters: Science, Environmental Policy and the Politics of Risk. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Edelstein, Michael R. 1988. Contaminated Communities: The Social and Psychological Impacts of Residential Toxic Exposure. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press.

Relevant Articles by M. R. Edelstein

• Hoover, Elizabeth; Renauld Mia; Edelstein Michael R. and Brown, Phil. 2015. “Social Science Collaboration with Environmental Health” Environmental Health Perspectives, 123: 1100-1106. November. http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1409283.

• Edelstein, Michael R. 2014.“When Recreancy Becomes the Norm: Emergency Response Planning and the Case of Tar Sands Upgrading in the Alberta Industrial Heartland,” pp. 119-175, in Susan Maret, (Ed.), William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research in Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 119. London: Emerald Group.

• Edelstein, Michael R. 2011. “Privacy and Secrecy: Public Reserve as a Frame for Examining the BP Gulf Oil Disaster” pp. 23-52 in S. Maret (Ed.). Government Secrecy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy: Volume 19. Evergreen Publishers.

• Edelstein, Michael R. 2003. “Weight and Weightlessness: Professional versus Paradigmatic Issues in Weighing the Psycho-Social Impacts of Proposed Environmentally Hazardous Facilities in the Administrative Law Process.” In Rabel Burdge (Ed.), The Practice of Social Impact Assessment: Special Issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 21(3) September, pp. 195-303.

• Michael R. Edelstein, 2001. “Crying Over Spoiled Milk: Contamination, Visibility and Expectation in Environmental Stigma," pp. 41-68 in James Flynn, Paul Slovic, and Howard Kunreuther (Eds.). Risk, Media, and Stigma. London: EarthScan.

• Michael R. Edelstein, 2000. “‘Outsiders Just Don’t Understand’: Personalization of Risk and the Boundary between Modernity and Postmodernity,” pp. 123-142 in Maurie Cohen (Ed.) Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science and Environmental Decision-Making. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Relevant Consultant Reports by M.R. Edelstein

• Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. 2012. Rebuttal to Respondents' Testimony on the Environmental Justice Contention, submitted to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the Matter of Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (Indian Point Nuclear Generating Units 2 and 3). Prepared on Behalf of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. for the Environmental Justice Issue. June 27.

• Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. 2011. Environmental Justice Impacts From Proposed Relicensing Of The Indian Point Nuclear Power Complex: A Focus On Sing Sing Prison. Testimony submitted to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the Matter of Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (Indian Point Nuclear Generating Units 2 and 3). Prepared on Behalf of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. for the Environmental Justice Issue, October 5.

• Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. 2010b. "Anticipated Psycho-Social Impacts To Proximate Residents and Recreationalists from the Shell Waterton 68 Project.” Prefiled testimony to the Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board, October.

• Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. 2010. “Habits of the Heartland: Home/Farmland vs. Industrial Zone: An Evaluation of the Emergency Response Plan for the Proposed TOTAL Upgrader,” Prefiled testimony to the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board, May 10.

• Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. 1988. "The Psychosocial Impacts of the Proposed SCRF #6 of the CECOS Hazardous Waste Disposal facility." Prefiled testimony on behalf of the "The Concerned Citizens Organizations." to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation regarding the Application of CECOS International for the sixth expansion of the Secure Chemical Residue Facility, Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Other Referenced Material

• Jorling, T. 1990. Decision of the Commissioner. Application of CECOS International, Inc., for a certificate of environmental safety and permit to construct a hazardous waste management facility, Secure Chemical Residue Facility No. 6, in the Town of Niagara, New York, March 13.

• Lyng, et al. v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, et. al., No. 86-1013 (October Term, 1987, U.S. Supreme Court).

• United States Supreme Court. 1983. METROPOLITAN EDISON v. PEOPLE VS. NUCLEAR ENERGY, No. 81-2399, April 19.