It Takes Time and Money

[Steve Taylor <Steve@miltoxproj.org>]

Hi all:

I'd like to reiterate something I noted yesterday.  Building REAL community involvement in an issue takes a LOT of time.  It also takes building relationships and trust in a community.

Even for an existing community organization with existing members and relationships, often the first reaction when an environmentally harmful project is proposed or upcoming EPA decision is advertised is the need to slow down the process to generate time to really outreach to and involve people.

Building real community interest, understanding, and involvement with enough breadth and depth to offset the power of polluters and allow true equitable public participation takes months and years.

The PIP goals speak to time, but it should be more explicit.  The Agency is either committed to taking the time necessary to provide for real public involvement or it is not.

Additionally, it takes resources to build public involvement.  EPA needs to provide resources to community organizations around many issues, perhaps similar to the TAG grants provided under the Superfund program to allow communities to retain independent technical expertise.

So: if the Agency wants to really identify and outreach to the public, it needs to take the kinds of steps noted in many other emails (particulary to reach fenceline neighbors but also downwind and downstream people), but also provide much more lead time and resources to the existing organizations and leaders in communities who can really do the job.

Steve