Your facilities currently have no budget, no activities, no personnel allotted, not much of a community outreach program, but seemingly just right for such small, unobtrusive, mostly unnoticeable facilities. Even a small chemical facility can be the object of the public's wrath, especially if people feel the risk has been hidden from them. A solid environmental performance is certainly essential to a facility's efforts to be a good neighbor. However, a successful relationship can be achieved only when environmental performance is joined with regular communication and trust. Especially in situations where there is no record of communication between industry and the public, people will use their general impressions of a facility to form an opinion about whether or not the operation is a good neighbor.
Every facility is vulnerable in some way to public questions, concerns and even outrage.
If we talk to people, they'll just get upset. Sometimes after years or even decades of silence, an industrial facility will suddenly find itself engaged in an active and heated dialogue with its neighbors. The event precipitating the communication could be a minor chemical release, something that poses a small risk but requires a large response from the fire department and other emergency responders. The next thing you know, angry citizens are showing up at the gate, protesting against the facility, demanding a public meeting, and yelling at the facility manager when he tries to have a civil conversation with them. Peter Sandman has discussed the features of a risk that can lead to outrage.