A hunger strike, a lawsuit, a nudge from the governor – even sitting down with the opposition – the things people will do for clean water! It's an old and sorry story. A corporation comes into a community,
fouls the air and water with chemicals that residents suspect may be
carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, or poisons, and then pulls out,
leaving behind a depleted economy and environment. Or – a variation on
the theme – the company sticks around, and local interests compromise
their concerns over environmental hazards to protect jobs.
What
options are available to communities? One option is to raise holy
grassroots hell. Another is to work the legal and regulatory systems
for all they're worth. There's an emerging, less conventional strategy
as well: sit down and work out a solution that's satisfactory to all.
Call it citizen diplomacy. Or rather, all-parties diplomacy, for the
corporation has to be ready to come to the table, too.
The sagas
of shrimp fisher Diane Wilson, Houston-based lawyer Jim Blackburn, and
the Taiwan-headquartered chemical company Formosa Plastics provide a
dramatic story of how a problem corporation can become a corporate good
citizen. It's a story that can be told from many angles – as a tale of
personal heroism (Diane Wilson literally put her life on the line), as
an activists' how-to (Wilson and Blackburn pincered Formosa
brilliantly), or as a business story about a compelling corporate
transformation (Formosa's proactive environmental and sustainability
policies, once virtually nonexistent, are now at the forefront of the
chemical industry.)
The story begins about a decade ago, when
Formosa Plastics proposed a $1.2 billion expansion of its facility in
the impoverished coastal community of Point Comfort, Texas. The company
wanted to vertically integrate the production of chlorine, ethylene,
and ethylene dichloride, all feedstocks in the manufacture of polyvinyl
chloride. These chemicals were troublesome in their own right – some
were suspected carcinogens, and some have since emerged as possible
endocrine disrupters. But these were not the only problems: metals and
salt were also being discharged into the nearby Lavaca Bay.
Protecting the Bay
“I
couldn't bear what they were doing,” says Diane Wilson, whose family
had been fishing the bay for four generations. “I was watching them
systematically kill the bay.”
Wilson, the shrimp fisher,
joined forces with attorney Blackburn, and together they launched a
two-pronged assault on Formosa Plastics' expansion plans.
Wilson's
contribution was the most dramatic. Over the next half-decade, she went
on four hunger strikes, two of them over 30 days and dangerous enough
to land her in the hospital. Her shrimp boat was sabotaged twice. She
was picketed by 300 Formosa hirelings. A mysterious helicopter hovered
over her house, and someone in it shot her dog. Her mother-in-law was
shot at, too – this time the shooter missed. Wilson even tried to sink
her own boat in protest and was forcibly prevented from doing so.
In
the face of all this, Wilson persisted, persuaded that “the legal
system is business's game board” and that aggressive grassroots protest
is the only way to make real headway. Meanwhile, Blackburn was
skillfully working to block the expansion through the legal system.
Crossing the commitment boundary
Eventually
their efforts paid off. In 1992, Blackburn signed an agreement under
which Formosa consented to the formation of a three-person arbitration
panel consisting of Blackburn, a Formosa manager, and an independent
third party. The panel was given binding authority over a broad range
of occupational safety and environmental compliance matters – quite a
remarkable step in its own right, for a corporation to give an outside
group the final say in anything. The panel arranged for a facility
audit that resulted in over 800 recommendations, all of which Formosa
agreed to be bound by.
Wilson signed a separate agreement two
years later. This compact focused on wastewater discharges. Formosa
agreed to strive for zero discharges, and the panel was given the task
of evaluating zero-discharge strategies. That study concluded in 1997
and recommended reverse osmosis. Meanwhile, effluent discharges have
been reduced by one-third.
These measures – significant as they
are – are only the beginning. In 1997, Wilson, Blackburn, and Formosa
signed a sustainable development agreement that had two main goals.
First, push for zero emissions across the whole plant. Second, in the
words of Jim Blackburn, “establish a long-term collaboration between
the company, the community, and the ecosystem.” The objective, he
reports, is to “look at where the plastics industry may be headed in
the 21st century.”
That's quite a shift. A decade ago, Formosa
Plastics was largely indifferent to environmental issues; now its
stance toward sustainability places it at or near the head of the
chemical industry.
What produced the transformation? According
to Blackburn, “Formosa started to realize that many of the questions we
were asking, they should have been asking themselves. They realized
that working with us could produce real competitive benefits.”
Among
those advantages, Blackburn cites a vastly improved record of
regulatory compliance and early certification to ISO 14001 (the
international environmental-management standard). And, says Blackburn,
the company has developed a greater willingness to be proactive and
courageous in tackling new challenges.
For Wilson, the key to success lies in what she, following Gandhi's lead, calls “soul power.”
“You
have to follow your vision and maintain your integrity,” she says.
“Once you cross the commitment boundary, miracles start to happen. ”
And how do you know when you've got it right? “When you call smell your
fear, you're on the right track.”
In the transformation of
Formosa Plastics, Wilson and Blackburn, soul and savvy, made a powerful
combination. Of course, as Blackburn points out, Formosa had to be
willing to come to the table.
New York City looks upstream
From
across the country comes a very different kind of success story. This
time the interloper wasn't a corporation; it was New York City, which
derives most of its water from the Catskill watershed area about 100
miles north of the city.
At the beginning of the decade, the
city was facing the prospect of having to filter its water supply to
comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. This “end-of-pipe” solution
was both ecologically and financially costly. New York City was facing
the prospect of building a filtering system at a cost of between $5
billion and $8 billion, with an additional $200-$500 million in annual
operating costs.
So the city looked upstream – literally – and
drafted regulations that would reduce the pesticides, parasites,
phosphorus, and other contaminants flowing into the city's reservoirs.
These regulations were impressive in one regard only – their striking
disregard for the economic and quality-of-life needs of the upstate
communities. Major new restrictions on the farms and towns of the
Catskill region would be needed. Watershed residents, many of whom were
dairy farmers, formed a Coalition of Watershed Towns and prepared to go
to war.
It never happened, thanks to cool heads and
collaborative thinking. Upstate watershed farmers through a series of
“kitchen-table dialogues,” developed a proposal for what came to be
known as Whole Farm Planning: Participating farmers implement measures
that control farm-pollutant runoff and waste by decreasing pesticide
use and building riparian buffers. In return, they receive technical
and financial support from New York City. The city benefits by getting
clean water at a far lower cost than it would have through filtering.
Close to 90 percent of farms in the watershed area have joined the
program.
The farmers were happy, but it was trickier to deal
with the municipal sources of contamination, like storm water runoff
and septic systems. Traditional small town development tends to cluster
near waterways, and many of these streams and rivers feed into New
York's massive watershed.
By 1992-1993, a courtroom battle
between upstaters and downstaters seemed inevitable. That is, until the
upstate Catskill Center for Conservation and Development joined forces
with city groups to seek a mediated solution. “We brought high-profile
people from the city to meet informally with local leaders,” says
Deborah Meyer DeWan, who at the time was a Catskill Center employee.
“Gradually this started to infiltrate the formal process.”
Then, new appointees to top posts in New York City and the state government urged a more conciliatory stance.
The
parties eventually hammered out a complex, 1,800-page watershed
protection agreement under which the city would pay the towns for the
additional expenses they incur as a result of ensuring the quality of
the watershed area. The city also would help fund economic development
that preserves the rural character of the area. In return, the towns
agreed to abide by water quality regulations and take economic
development plans through an environmental review process.
Not for the hot tub
There
are a lot of morals in these stories, and not necessarily the ones
you'd expect. John Ehrmann, president of the nonprofit Meridian
Institute – which mediates sustainable development issues – points
out that the setting still defines the terms of negotiation, including
such things as the existing legal/regulatory system and, more
fundamentally still, the infamous M- and P- words – money and power.
“This
isn't hot-tub stuff,” cautions Ehrmann. Collaborative decision-making
wouldn't move forward without these verities hovering in the background
– and sometimes, in the foreground.
In addition, stakeholder
dispute resolution can follow any of several models. The Formosa
agreement took place without proactive intervention from the state. The
Catskill watershed agreement probably wouldn't have happened without
the active intervention of the governor.
Whatever the model,
there are some commonalities. At their heart is the realization by all
parties that they're better off working collaboratively than in
opposition. When that view is shared, three factors will largely
determine the outcome, according to Ehrmann: “the political context,
specific negotiation dynamics, and group process.” All three have to be
favorable.
Finally, it turns out that collaborative
decision-making really serves a dual purpose. Not only does it help
resolve specific issues, it also infuses new creativity and
participation into a democracy that is badly in need of both.
Carl Frankel is a YES! contributing editor and author of the recent book, In Earth's Company: Business, Environment, and the Challenge of Sustainability (New Society Press, 1998).
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