minimized by corrective action and, when they cannot, cash compensation is feasible if not always satisfactory.

On the other hand, in some cases mitigation is not possible. The destruction of wetlands that constitute hatcheries for commercial species may do irremediable harm to commercial, subsistence, and sports fisheries. Compensation can make partial restitution, but cannot restore the ecosystem or a lost way of life, and in some instances such a loss may be inestimable. It has already been noted that the Yupik speaking natives of Bristol Bay, Alaska, believe that a spill in the area's wetlands would be likely to destroy the species on which their subsistence fishing depends. Inasmuch as their culture is, in the main, maintained and reproduced through subsistence activities, such a loss would not be simply a loss of food, which could easily be compensated for, but a loss of the means by which their culture is reproduced, which could not be compensated or otherwise mitigated.

The benefits and costs of OCS development are never shared equally by all elements of any human system. There are almost always some who benefit and others who are harmed. Some inequities resulting from OCS development are obvious. Those who derive livelihoods by providing support to OCS activities with goods and services obviously benefit, as do the previously unemployed who find jobs in the offshore fields or in onshore support and those who, although previously employed, find higher-paying jobs in the petroleum industry. Losers can include coastal industries that are more or less incompatible with oil production: the resort industry, for one, and also, perhaps, the fishing industry. Also among the losers are other employers who, unable to pay competitive wages, must either suspend operations or go out of business. An instance of such circumstances is provided by Alaska's experience when Exxon paid extremely high hourly rates for unskilled labor in its attempt to clean shorelines following the Exxon Valdez spill. Somewhat less obviously, entire communities can lose if OCS development is temporary and results in radical declines in employment and leaves behind rusting and crumbling shore facilities.

Within communities there are further inequities that, although consequences of OCS development, are not necessarily entailed by them. Gramling (1980), for instance, found that white males have benefitted disproportionately from the increasing employment associated with the growth of OCS activities in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The possibility of inequities among the benefits and burdens suffered or enjoyed by different classes, ages, sexes, races, and other sectors of communities in the vicinity of OCS activities will always vary in some degree from case to case and must always be studied. Explicit mention needs also to be made of questions of intergenerational equity. These questions may be ethical rather than political, legal, or strictly economic questions because future generations are obviously not on hand to contest the rate at which resources are extracted, the environment contaminated, and the landscape scarred.

Inequities are not confined to a region. The environmental risks and the social, economic, political, and cultural stresses attending OCS activity are largely borne within the region of development, whereas much of the benefit of OCS activity and the hydrocarbons produced by it accrues to the national system. This understanding does have some merit. ''Warrilow's Law" (proposed by Christopher Warrilow with respect to open pit mining in Papua New Guinea), states that the distribution of the benefits of large scale mineral extraction is inversely proportional to distance from it, whereas the distribution of its costs and damages is directly proportional to proximity to it. But the easy and vague assumptions that the national system accrues only benefits while costs and damages are largely confined to the area of development and that it is the national system as a whole, rather than particular components of the national system, that benefit, cannot be left unquestioned. It

Front Matter (R1-R10)

Executive Summary (1-10)

Introduction (11-22)

The Human Environment (23-28)

A Framework for Organizing OCS Socioeconomic Studies (29-44)

Analysis of the Program (45-60)

Conclusions and Recommendations (61-66)

References (67-82)

Appendix A: Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, & Resources (83-86)

Appendix B: The Human Environment (87-106)

Appendix C: The Evolution of the Federal OCS Program: National and Regional Perspectives (107-142)

Appendix D: Social and Economic Studies Technical Reports, Alaska OCS Region, MMS (143-153)