France’s plans to prevent technological risks are delayed

But, risk managers and experts point out that delays are not a surprise because of the complexity of the task faced by the large number of public sector entities and private companies involved in the process.

France’s Ministry of Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development released a report in February in which it said that, out of 420 Plans for the Prevention of Technological Risks, or PPRTs (the acronym for Plan de Prévention des Risques Technologiques), that have to be implemented by industrial sites around the country, only 281 had been completed by the end of 2009.

The number is considerably less than the 80% completion ratio that minister Jean-Louis Borloo had set as a target for the year.

The number of plans approved by the competent authorities, the final step of the process, was a meagre 30. The ministry has stated that it expects 40% of all the plans, or 168, to be approved by the end of the year, and it wants the approval of 80% of the total before the end of 2011.

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PPRTs were made mandatory for industrial sites classified in France as ‘high level Seveso’, named after the European directive that determines the obligation of member states to identify and deal with industrial sites that present major risks.

The European directive 96/82/CE, also known as the Seveso Directive, was approved in June 1982 and updated in December 1996. It was nicknamed after the industrial accident that released a toxic cloud that contaminated four Italian communities, one of them called Seveso, in July 1976.

MISSED DEADLINES

In France, the Bachelot Law, approved by the Parliament in July 2003, set up a number of tougher risk management rules and practices for such sites, including the PPRTs.

The law was drafted after the accident at the AZF chemical plant, near Toulouse, that killed 30 people who lived close to the site.

The first deadline for the approval of PPRTs was the end of July 2008. But, the sheer complexity of the task has forced the entities involved to miss the date.

The elaboration of the plans demand not only a detailed mapping of the risks involved and the strategies to mitigate them, but also extensive negotiations with the public sector and the inhabitants of the regions neighbouring the Seveso sites.

Many of the people who live near the sites need to be relocated as the result of the plans, and properties have to be expropriated, which increases the complexity of the process, according to experts.

Paul-Vincent Valtat, the Chairman of the Environment, Health and Safety committee at Association pour le Management des Risques et des Assurances de l’Entreprise, AMRAE, the French risk management association, notes that the plans are ambitious initiatives that bring together a number of heterogeneous players that have to learn how to work with each other.

“It is the first time that different parties involved in the risk management process are encompassed by the same legislation,” he said.

Among the government entities involved are environment agencies and urban planning local bodies that have to take care of the relocation of inhabitants and the use to be made of areas close to the sites. The risk management departments of several private companies are also involved in the process.

“Cooperation is in place, there is a working relationship going on between the parties, but it is just a complicated subject,” remarked Mr. Valtat, who is also the Safety Director at Paris-based Port Autonome de Paris.

The whole democratic process of giving voice to all those involved, the comprehensive consultation process required, and the need to publicise the process for the sake of transparency all add to the complex job of identifying major industrial risks and deciding what to do about them, he pointed out. “I’m not surprised at all that it is taking some time for the plans to be completed,” Mr. Valtat said.

“The plans cannot be hurried because they often imply serious consequences for the people affected by them,” said Bénédicte Huot de Luze, the Scientific Director at AMRAE.

The relocation and the payment of compensation to people living in risky areas is an especially sensitive issue, she noted. This justifies that the processes take their due course, she continued.

Compensation, in this case, has to be agreed between the companies, the central government and local administrations and this entails further negotiations, the experts said.

Some rather difficult issues have to be dealt with too, Mr. Valtat pointed out. For example, not only houses, but also metro stations and other public transportation infrastructure have been built around industrial sites in areas that are now included within the radius of risk. “Those are important structures for the people who work in the sites, and it is necessary to decide what to do with them,” he remarked.

Jean-Pierre Galland, an expert at École des Ponts Paris Tech, an engineering school based in Marne-la-Vallée, said that the further acceleration of PPRTs largely depends on how efficiently the public sector meets the challenges created on its side of the process.

“The Bachelot is very interesting, but very complicated too, as it implemented several new practices to be learned by companies and government entities alike,” he said. “The law changed the way technological risks are managed in France. And it took some time for the complementary legislation to be approved, which also delayed the process somewhat,” he remarked.

“The private sector faced problems at first, as companies had to elaborate new risk scenarios following probabilistic methods, which are more demanding than the deterministic methodology used previously. But this has been addressed, and now the ball is in the court of the public sector, which is also having to face all kinds of new practices that fall out of the routine,” Mr. Galland said.

INCREASED DIALOGUE

“Public entities are being asked to do new things and to interact a lot with the public, which requires much initiative, time and energy,” he added.

But, Ms. Huot de Luze stressed that some risk managers have reported that the consultation process required by the PPRTs can actually create opportunities for the firms to strengthen their relationships with the communities where they work, both within and outside the formal structures created by the law.

“As a result of the plans, they have had access to the population and have opened channels of dialogue with them. Consequently, they are understanding each other better. For risk managers, it creates an opportunity to deliver their message to a wider public,” she concluded.

The French government has also reported that industrial facilities classified as Seveso high level spent €250m in 2009 on action to mitigate risks identified by studies performed according to new legislation for the sector that were approved in 2005.

These studies precede PPRTs and, according to the government, 310 of them were presented by industrial sites to the authorities last year. The number was 439 in 2008, 370 in 2007 and 290 in 2006, the government disclosed.

Seveso facilities were the target of 1,300 visits by inspectors last year, while 5,000 visits were made to industrial facilities of lesser dimensions. Around 700 irregularities were identified by the inspectors, a number that, the government said, represents a reduction from previous years.