Introduction

[Carolyn Offutt <offutt.carolyn@epa.gov>]

I am Carolyn K. Offutt in EPA's Office of Emergency and Remedial Response (OERR).  Our office provides national direction for the Superfund program to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites.  I have been with Superfund for 13 years and previously worked in both the Offices of Water and Pesticide Programs.  

My responsibilities are in information management, especially public access to Superfund information via the Internet (please see http://www.epa.gov/superfund ) and records management.  Previously, I managed the Superfund Community Involvement program, including the Superfund Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) program.  I consider the TAG program to be a unique Federal program in that it provides community members, who coalesce around a Superfund site, the funding to hire a technical advisor to help them understand the issues of the site contamination and cleanup -- in essence, the funding to second-guess the EPA Regional managers about a site cleanup decision.  Now much more information on Superfund sites is available on the Internet and the increased use of the Internet is allowing community members more access and earlier access to site information.  

I am interested in knowing how to better present environmental information to the public, particularly via the Internet.  Are there tools that will help involve the public participate in environmental decision-making? Should we be presenting more information via maps, graphs, audio files, videos?  Should we provide information and web pages to mobile phones and handheld devices?  Should we video-cast public meetings?  I would like to know whether increased information is increasing the involvement of community members in Superfund decision making or, at least, making them more comfortable with the decisions -- or whether the increase of information is overwhelming and unfathomable.  I look forward to the dialogue!

Carolyn