Introduction

Everybody needs good neighbours, and in the eyes of most, the Ramsay Street idyll does not include a waste facility. Siting, planning and operating these facilities in most areas is guaranteed to generate community concern. Health, the local environment and quality of life are issues which come up time and again when communities speak out. Planning processes for siting or extending waste facilities can become a battleground. Communities can feel marginalised and unheard as waste planners, regulators and operators are perceived to rush through what is seen as the best waste management option.

How best then to deal with such community concerns? What approaches and strategies can be used? The two approaches that tend to be used are community consultation and public relations strategies. However, no two communities are identical, and so any form of mechanical community consultation and public relations are almost bound to fail. These don’t address the key difficulties of diverse communities or understand that what works for one community will not necessarily work for another.

Authorities are better equipped to focus on the ‘hard’ scientific and technical facts, and so often fail to address the complexities of individual areas. The ‘soft’ value issues about fairness, transparency and trust that communities raise during waste facility siting and planning processes are often left unanswered.

One increasingly popular way to solve this problem is to carry out a health impact assessment.

Health Impact Assessment

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is the key systematic approach to identifying and assessing the health and wellbeing impacts of all types of development. Its aim is to minimise the negative and maximise the positive health effects of proposed developments on nearby communities.  

It has roots in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and works with an explicitly stated value framework that emphasises democracy, equity, sustainability and the ethical use of evidence.  It therefore uses a range of evidence sources including public health, epidemiology and toxicology as well as public and other stakeholders' perceptions and experiences.

HIA builds on EIA methodology and extends it by involving all key stakeholders, particularly communities, in the actual assessment process. In this way the ‘hard’ scientific facts are addressed alongside the ‘soft’ values and perceived concerns. By airing and taking account of the key perspectives, concerns and conflicts that emerge during the planning process, HIA provides a forum for information and analysis to communities, planners and decision-makers. What’s more, this is all done in a way that is timely, relevant and highly credible.

HIA argues that the scientific and technical aspects of assessment are just one part of the process. The other, equally important part is to engage and create a dialogue with all key stakeholders. Information dissemination and discussion is vital, and so it’s important to build relationships in which an atmosphere of trust can flourish.

This dialogue and relationship building does not stop with the impact assessment but carries on beyond it to ensure that community concerns are allayed over the short and long terms. This is only possible when a relationship of mutual trust and respect develops between communities, operators, planners and regulators.