John M. Halstead - Socioeconomic Impact Management: Design and Implementation

Socioeconomic Impact Management

The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development: Methods for Assessment, F. Larry Leistritz and Steven H. Murdock

Nuclear Waste: Socioeconomic Dimensions, Steven H. Murdock, F. Larry Leistritz, and Rita Hamm

Guide to Social Assessment: A Framework for Assessing Social Change, Kristi Branch, Douglas A. Hooper, James Thompson, and James Creighton

Social Impact Assessment and Monitoring: A Croes-Disciplinary Guide to the Literature, Michael J. Carley and Eduardo Bustelo

Public Involvement and Social Impact Assessment, Gregory A. Daneke, Margot W. Garcia, and Jerome Delli Priscoli

Integrated Impact Assessment, edited by Frederick A. Rossini and Alan L. Porter

Applied Social Science for Environmental Planning, edited by William Millsap

Social Impact Analysis and Development Planning in the Third World, edited by William Derman and Scott Whiteford

Nuclear Power: Assessing and Managing Hazardous Technology , edited by Martin J. Pasqualetti and K. David Pijawka

* Science, Technology, and the Issues of the Eighties: Policy Outlook, edited by Albert H. Teich and Ray Thornton

*Available in hardcover and paperback.

Socioeconomic Impact Management: Design and Implementation
John M. Halstead, Robert A. Chase, Steve H. Murdock, and F. Larry Leistritz

The authors of this book present a comprehensive analysis of impact management for such large-scale resource and industrial development projects as power plants, mines, and nuclear waste disposal facilities. An overall framework for designing an impact management program is presented and specific recommendations for implementing management measures are provided. This book is unique in that it provides a conceptual framework for choosing among alternative approaches in designing a management system, as well as offering practical guidance for implementing such systems.

John M. Halstead is a research assistant in the Department of Agricultural Economics at North Dakota State University, where Robert A. Chase is a research associate. Steve H. Murdock is head of the Department of Rural Sociology at Texas A&M University. F. Larry Leistritz is professor of agricultural economics at North Dakota State University and is author with Steve Murdock of The Socioeconomic Impact of Resource Development (Westview 1981).

Design and Implementation

John M. Halstead, Robert A. Chase, Steve H. Murdock, and F. Larry Leistritz

First published 1984 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1984 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-051866

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28784-9 (hbk)

Large-scale industrial and resource development projects are affecting many areas in the United States and other nations. Some of the types of projects having substantial effects on nearby communities include energy resource development in many of the western states and Canadian provinces, water projects in the northwestern and southwestern United States, offshore petroleum development in the North Sea and Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, metal mining and smelting in Australia, and power plant construction in New Zealand. These developments present both opportunities and problems for the areas where they are located. While resource and industrial development projects often offer the benefits of new jobs and provide a stimulus to the local economy, they also may lead to rapid population growthfrequently creating problems that many rural communities are not prepared to effectively manage.

nThe economic, demographic, public service, fiscal, and social effects ( socioeconomic impacts) of large-scale development projects have been extensively examined by both researchers and decision-makers in recent years. A growing number of these analyses and case studies provide insights concerning the effects of such activities on communities located near project sites. A common theme that emerges from such analyses is that, in the absence of detailed local planning and access to financial and technical assistance from external sources (e.g., the developer or federal, state, or similar levels of government), large projects will frequently create substantial problems for their host communities. Among the most pervasive of these community problems are a lack of adequate housing to meet the needs of the incoming project workers and their dependents, and inadequate public sector revenues to support the provision of needed services.

Such impacts can lead to several problems for the larger society as well. First, the basic principles underlying society's conceptions of social and economic justice and equity may be severely challenged because socioeconomic impacts may be inequitably distributed such that some segments of society (e.g., the elderly, residents of rural areas) are forced to bear an inordinate share of the costs of large-scale projects. Second, inadequate housing, public services, and similar infrastructure problems nay lead to increased rates of labor absenteeism and turnover, decreased worker productivity, and thus to increased development costs. Finally, because of the actual or perceived inequity in the distribution of project-related costs and benefits, residents in areas near the project site may actively oppose the project. If such opposition becomes an accepted strategy for citizens in reacting to proposed projects, it may become nearly impossible to establish projects that have some objectionable characteristics but are essential to the continued operation of developed industrial societies, or it may lead to the location of such sites in politically expedient but technically undesirable (e.g., less safe or more expensive) locations. Thus, the need is readily apparent to examine those measures which can be employed to alter the effects of project development on nearby communities, reducing those effects which are generally viewed as undesirable and enhancing those changes which are deemed beneficial.

Despite a growing consensus that socioeconomic impacts are important and must be addressed, however, the processes for effectively coping with such project effects have received only limited attention in the literature. Even though the characteristics of the socioeconomic changes resulting from large-scale projects and methods for projecting such effects have been the subject of numerous analyses, the mechanisms which can be employed to influence the socioeconomic impacts of large-scale projects have received only cursory treatment. Those reviews of "impact mitigation" which have appeared typically discuss only a few selected types of impact management measures or review only a few selected cases where developers or communities have taken an active role in influencing project outcomes. Thus, such studies have seldom attempted to draw, and have even failed to provide reviews that are in an appropriate form to allow the formulation of, the generalizations essential to establishing a scientific approach to impact management. In addition, such analyses have tended to be theoretically uninformed, providing no systematic framework to delineate and evaluate alternative mitigation approaches and the interrelationships between alternative approaches.