RE: Identifying the public/Feedback/EJ concerns

[Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>]

Charlie Atherton writes about Calcasieu Parish:

"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."

I think this brings up one of the problems with the idea that EPA should "empower the public" by letting them define the problem, suggest the range of solutions, work collaboratively right from the start, etc.  Those ideas sound great, who could argue with them?  But as long as "the public" includes big business, these collaborations are not going to be collaborations at all, they are simply going to be one more route by which industry defends its interests -- interests that are not the same as those of the general population.   Let's face facts and realize that there isn't "the public", and there certainly aren't nicely symmetrical and abstract "stakeholders", there are the polluters and the rest of us.  And the polluters have the money to have professional representation at every meeting, and to buy the support of local politicos -- we do not.

The idea of outreach to the public isn't going to really work until EPA acknowledges this.  Instead of looking for ways to identify "the public", perhaps EPA should be looking for ways to identify likely victims.