EPA Dialogue Summary: Assistance (July 13)

[Sally Hedman <shedman@home.com>]

Public Involvement in EPA Decisions

Summary: July 13, 2001

Dialogue Day 4 Agenda: Assistance to Promote Public Involvement

Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz introduced today's topic: assistance to
promote public involvement. He asked participants to address four areas:
needed technical assistance, needed financial assistance, how people can
acquire information on technical issues, and involving people without
access to computers

Note: Postings appearing by 8:00 PM Eastern time appear in today's
summary.

Bruce Engelbert, staff member of today's hosting office Community
Involvement and Outreach Center, identified different ways EPA supports
public participation and noted how these efforts often promote public
participation; however, at times, they do not work well or are not
sufficiently funded. He posed questions soliciting ideas to help EPA
provide assistance that fosters better public involvement.

Needed technical assistance

** The cornerstone of public participation is technical assistance by
technical people whom the public trusts. Technical assistance educates
the people and leads them through the process, the documents, the data,
and the public hearings.

** EPA needs to find a way to provide free technical assistance to the
public for all environmental issues. Technical Assistance Grants need to
be available for environmental issues other than the Superfund.

** Private citizens, hampered by lack of financial support and technical
resources, face great difficulty in educating themselves. Such
difficulty points to the need for public access to sites of concern,
financial and technical assistance.

** Assistance is needed to interpret technical data and make
recommendations about whether a proposed solution is sufficiently
protective. Communities need financial and technical assistance to
decide how much risk is okay. This assistance is best provided by a
relatively neutral source. EPA should find funding for such neutral
information providers and direct communities to these resources. The
relevant information needed falls into three categories: potential
effects of the contaminants, rationale and assumptions behind "safe"
standards, and options for clean-up or pollution control.

** Alternatives assessment, rather than risk assessment, was presented
as the option of first choice. People should ask what cleaner and safer
technologies are available and whether these can eliminate a particular
hazard.

** Citizens have much common sense and need to be heard at the
discussion table. Also, some of the problems may be technical, but often
are primarily political and need a more collaborative relationship to be
established by all parties. EPA and the public need to identify
"politics" as an issue that limits public participation and discuss the
issue online.

** In a discussion of EPA's non-responsiveness it was noted that
technical assistance is absolutely necessary for effective citizen
participation. EPA also needs to move from "participatory openness"
(providing opportunities for expressing opinions) to "reflective
openness" (listening with empathy and changing plans when comments have
merit).

** Enforcement agreements can be used to get the responsible party to
pay for technical assistance to communities.

** EPA needs to identify training models in communities and collaborate
to provide assistance unique to the area or situation.

** EPA should take a holistic approach to technical understanding. For
example, EPA dollars invested in watershed understanding and protection
is an appropriate technical assistance activity. It would result in more
informed stakeholders who might participate to solve pollution problems.

** A discussion of the costs and benefits of public participation
centered on increasing the benefits resulting from participation,
flexibility in policy-making/regulations, and consensus building.

** EPA should lead a coalition to develop a plain-language guide to the
regulatory process and a guide to science fundamentals.

Needed financial assistance

** Participation should be equalized among all stakeholders. EPA must
provide honorariums, stipends, or small grants to organizations and
individuals that have a vital contribution to make.

** Streamlining public participation would reduce the time needed by the
public to comment and be cost effective. The Agency should combine
public participation activities/events to cover more than one topic when
possible.

** Financial assistance for travel, food, and lodging is needed to send
environmentally dedicated people to EPA conferences and meetings and to
pay for trusted, competent, technical assistance to the public.

** Expenses of providing technical information on environmental issues
could be the responsibility of the permit requesters and holders.

Acquiring information on technical issues

** Some sources of technical information are libraries, web sites with
print capabilities and free direct information mailings of hard copies
to requesters, CD's, and trusted, competent technical advisors.

** The EPA should develop educational materials about environmental
issues that newspapers and schools could use to educate and inform the
public. This information should present the issues from different points
of view.

** Communities faced with environmental problems, particularly
low-income and minority communities that may not have environmental or
legal expertise available, need readily available, easily digestible
information to help them understand the issues.

** EPA should support community assistance centers through clinical
studies in graduate programs and development of educational materials by
graduate students.

** Community dialogues offer people different opinions and perspectives.
These dialogues need a panel of good communicators and prompt follow-up
communications. EPA could collaborate with religious organizations,
universities, and community organizations.

Involving people without access to computers

** The offending industry or agency, through the permitting process,
should provide free technical information and assistance to the people
without computers. Toll free phone lines and free mailings of hard
copies are essential.

** Libraries need funding to organize documents for public access and to
train librarians and other public information staff to better involve
the public.

** EPA and other stakeholder documents need to arrive promptly with an
indication of priority and to whom and when comments are required.

** EPA's use of PDF files generated discussion about the benefits of
different file formats and how document format effects its size and
speed with which it can be downloaded.

** Ministers are catalysts for change and can be very proactive with
respect to environmental preservation.

** Local environmental commissions and committees are typically
dedicated volunteer environmental activists with an incentive to solve
their environmental problems. They are familiar with local power
structures and can provide a local forum for information dissemination.

** Newspapers, radio, television, flyers, citizens' handbooks are
established channels to reach people without computers.

** Title V permitting process, including steps in the process and points
where public participation is allowed, illustrated with a timeline,
should be distributed to building inspectors, conservation commissions,
and planning board offices, as well as libraries, county conservation
district offices, and agriculture extension agent facilities.

** EPA should collaborate with professional associations to prepare
environmental information pamphlets.

Each day's summary is intended to capture the essence of the
conversation. While this summary contains the highlights of
participants' comments relating to today's topics, more comprehensive
information may be found in the individual postings. I welcome your
comments on the summaries. This and all daily summaries are available
from the agenda page of the web site.

http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/join/agenda.shtml

The dialogue for today is available at:

http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/archive/date-d1.html

Sally Hedman
Reporter