Conventional wisdom
- Archived: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:32:00 -0400 (EDT)
- Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:05:47 -0400 (EDT)
- From: Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>
- Subject: Conventional wisdom
- X-topic: Introductions/Goals
I'm Rich Puchalsky, and I've worked on providing public access to EPA databases since 1991 for a variety of environmental groups. There is a list of some of my projects at www.grconnect.com.
Let's quickly review the conventional wisdom among activists about EPA opportunities for public participation. The conventional wisdom is that these opportunities are designed to take a lot of time, produce no results, and incorporate the activist into a formal structure and style in which their ability to cause any actual change will be lost -- instead of sending out press releases and leading demonstrations, they will be attending EPA public comment meetings, writing formal comments on unenforceable draft internal agency guidance for public comments (!), and in general disappearing into a vortex of paper which will swallow them and their energy with no real world result.
It remains to be seen whether this perception can or should change. In the meantime, I'm hoping to use this process to try to nudging the agency along towards public access to data once again after the disastrous reorganization into the Office for Environmental Information.
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