RE: Providing Free Assistance to Promote Public Involvement

[Charlie Atherton <charlie@structurex.net>]

The public feels like it is the goal of industry and elected officials to "preserve the public's ignorance", and they are successfull to a point.  They manage the exceptions by passing special laws to exempt those environmental problems that the public knows about and place funding riders on EPA funding, such as the contaminated sediments rider. 
  
  * Needed technical assistance

The cornerstone to any public participation is technical assistance for the people, by technical assistance the public trusts.  Out of 183,533 people in Calcasieu Parish, there is not one technical person that the public trusts.  We go to Wilma Subra 1 1/2 hrs. away for this critical assistance.

Most competent, trusted technical assistance is hundreds of miles away from the affected people.

Technical assistance educates and leads the people, through the process, through the documents, through the data, through the public hearings, including the political issues that EPA is prohibited from talking about.

EPA must find a way to provide free technical assistance to the public for all environemntal issues.  There needs to be TAG (Technical Assistance Grants) grants available for environmental issues other than superfund.

  * Needed financial assistance

Financial assistance is needed to provide travel, food, and lodging, to send environmentally dedicated members of the public to EPA conferences and meetings.  Not money to pay people for their time.  This allows the public to participate and to be educated.  This also allows EPA to be educated, by the public, on how to better serve the public. 
Many EPA meetings and conferences are about how EPA can work with the public, yet EPA does not provide financial assistance to get the public to the meetings and talk to the public directly in a learning environment.

Financial assistance is needed for the public to pay for trusted, competent, technical assistance to the public.

  * How people can acquire information on technical issues

Every environmental issue has a need for some degree of technical information.  The key is that the information must be provided quickly and at no cost to the public.  Most of this responsibility could be required to be provided by permit requestors and holders at their expense.  Libraries (two copies), web sited with print capabilities and free direct information mailings of hard copies to requestors, CD's, and trusted, competent technical advisors, are some of the methods to acquire technical information.  

  * Involving people without access to computers

Require the industry or agency that has interested, affected, or aroused the public, to provide free technical information and assistance to the people without computers.  This could easily be done through the permitting process.  Toll free phone lines to request technical information from EPA, and free mailings of hard copies of information to people quickly, are essential.  

Charlie Atherton