EPA Dialogue Summary: Catch-up Day (July 14)

[Sally Hedman <shedman@home.com>]

Public Involvement in EPA Decisions
Summary: July 14, 2001

Dialogue Day 5 Agenda: The Catch-up Day

Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz invited participants to review the
previous four days' discussions and look for common themes and comment
on the dialogue process.

Patricia Bonner, EPA's lead staff person for the Agency's Draft Public
Involvement Policy, suggested that participants look at what has
happened the previous four days and catch up on unread messages. To that
end, she suggested they read the daily summaries and look at the
subjects and threads that interest them.

Today's discussion summary is organized by daily agenda topics.

Outreach - Identifying the Interested Public

** Interviewing community leaders at the beginning of a process,
combined with the linked chain technique (i.e., asking people you
interview to identify other potentially interested people), is the best
way to identify the interested public.

** To engage a seemingly disinterested public, EPA should to talk to the
people in the community and determine why they might be disinterested.
Discussions must be at a level the non-technical public can understand.

** Two published resources that address public participation were
presented: (1) "Public Participation in Contaminated Communities" by
Nicholas Ashford, MIT, 1999, and (2) "Improving Dialogue with
Communities by Caron Chess and Peter Sandman, Rutgers University, 1988.
The latter would have been in the Briefing Book had it been available on
the Rutgers web site.

** EPA can learn to enable underserved populations to participate more
effectively by reading "How to Succeed in Ethnic and Minority Outreach
by Really Trying" by Julie Hoover. (See
http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/bb/pdf/railvolutions.pdf )

Getting Information Out

** EPA needs to make information more accessible to the public, bearing
in mind that the public consists of busy people who want to be involved
but do not have a lot of time. Summaries of relevant information with
links to full documents would be an effective alternative to providing
too much material.

** Two ways to inform people are the Internet and small newspapers that
have no ties to corporate entities.

** The public has a strong commitment to the environment; however, lack
of basic science knowledge related to the issues causes misunderstanding
and mistrust. Education is critical to combat scientific illiteracy.

** Study Circles are a means of getting information out. They are
multi-session meetings of self-selected citizens who engage in a
democratic adult self-education process.

Providing Assistance to Promote Public Involvement

** Local government boards, which advise local elected officials on
potential impacts of a situation, are a tool to foster citizen
participation. To gain trust of rural residents and interest groups, EPA
should keep them informed from the beginning and deliver information
they can verify in a language they understand.

** One participant described a situation in which EPA did not force
state regulators to remove ground water contaminants from a community of
low-income Hispanic residents. He cited examples of discrimination and
non-public involvement. Suggestions for increasing public involvement
included newspaper ads, toll-free phone lines, citizen review
committees, distributing information remembering the sole mission of EPA
is to protect the environment and people's health, listening to people,
eliminating answering machines, listening to taxpayers not polluters,
not withholding information through delay tactics, a more user-friendly
web site, and working around the public's daily work schedule.

** Stakeholders and the public need financial assistance for grants for
technical advisors and health advisors.

** For individuals and groups without computer access, EPA can conduct
town hall meetings and environmental justice forums, as well as talk to
local neighborhood groups, rather than to the polluters.

** The Agency needs to utilize the EPA National Library Network, which
already interacts with academic, public, school, special libraries, and
professional library associations.

** EPA needs to remember its role: to protect human health and the
environment by regulating toxic wastes. One participant noted concern
about relevant information about a toxic substance not being available
to the public. In this case, the "industry versus public" issue affected
EPA decisions.

** EPA should look beyond the USA to see how other countries deal with
problems similar to those found in the USA.

Each day's summary is intended to capture the essence of the
conversation. While this summary contains the highlights of
participants' contributions relating to today's topics, more
comprehensive information may be found in the individual postings. 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 discussion archive for today's dialogue is available at:

http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/archive/date-X8.html#today

Today is my last day as reporter for the EPA Dialogue. I appreciate the
dedication and commitment you bring to this process and hope you have
found that these summaries represent your opinions accurately and
fairly.

Sally Hedman
Reporter