RE: Identifying the public/Feedback/EJ concerns

[Charlie Atherton <charlie@structurex.net>]

>From what I have experienced, each EPA outreach effort situation has it's own unique set of local and state political roadblocks.  

In Calcasieu Parish, La., (183,533 people) local Industrial Plants control the political process and elected officials.  

Each industrial plant is a "partener in education" with each of our 64 schools, complete with a large company logo sign in front of each school.  Industry has captured our large school system with a yearly budget close to $200,000,000 a year.  

Doctors in Calcasieu Parish will not ever say a medical problem was caused by chemicals because "industry pays the bills in Calcasieu".  

The local TV station will not say anything negative about industry because industry has pulled their advertising dollars more than once.  

Print media does a better job of reporting industrial news, same story as TV, and also had $50,000 of ads pulled just because of one story.  

Any person employed by industry, or any member of their family that is seen on TV or reported in the news paper relative to environmental issues, public hearings, town meetings, meeting with agencies, is terminated from their job.  

The whole point of this is that EPA and other agencies are having to deal with local politics that are silently stonewalling the agencies to keep the agencies from reaching the affected public.  EPA has to identify each set of local political roadblocks in any given situation and design a plan to reach the general public.  EPA can pre identify select community residents that EPA can work with early in the process, before the issues reach the news, and then local politics threat and intimidate residents into silence.  In my opinion, what I have just written is what has caused the Environmental Justice Communities issues to be in the forefront.   

Charlie Atherton