RE: Intro & Comment on Goals

[Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>]

Nathan Cooley writes:

'Jumping to solutions is basic human nature but EPA should use the public first in a business process called, "project definition". EPA needs to learn to lead a "project definition process" that ultimately results in shared goals and solutions rather than a stated but endless goal of "facilitating discussion between conflicting views".'

This is ideal in some situations, but EPA has to be clear about when it can really do this and when it can't.  There are some public meetings in which both the project and the range of available solutions have already been defined by legislation.

The public comment process really starts with Congress, if you want to look at it that way.  Different members of the "public" lobby Congress to write legislation, and eventually Congress passes an environmental law.  The results of public comment to the executive branch are restricted by the results of the public comment in the legislative phase.  I put "public" in quotes above because I'm using the word in the same sense that EPA does, to include corporate entities.

So the EPA public comment process is really a continuation of politics by another means.  That is why the goal of "facilitating discussion between conflicting views" is endless, because politics deals with questions that never get finally settled but only have continuing compromises that change as one party or another gains the upper hand.