EPA Dialogue Summary: Collaboration (July 16)

[Katherine Carlitz <kcarlitz+@pitt.edu>]

Public Involvement in EPA Decisions

Summary: July 16, 2001

Dialogue Day 5 Agenda: Collaborative Processes

Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz and host and panelist Deborah Dalton
from EPA's Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center introduced today's
topic: Collaborative Processes. Participants were invited to focus on
four areas:
 *Collaborative processes: how they work and what works
 *Decisions suited to collaborative efforts
 *Collaborative processes at the national, regional, and local levels
 *Collaboration and small businesses or small communities.

Note: Postings appearing by 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time appear in
today's summary.

COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES: HOW THEY WORK AND WHAT WORKS

** By giving all stakeholders a place at the table, collaboration
provides incentives for reaching lasting agreements.  The collaborative
process requires advance planning, management support, funding for a
facilitator and other expenses, and time enough to reach useful
results. 

**It is crucial to maintain a balance of power among the participants
in a collaboration.  The labor-management model, being adversarial,
works poorly for environmental protection.  Instead, collaborations
should recognize all parties at the table as near-equals. 

**One participant reported a good experience of working as an internal
facilitator at her state agency, but most participants stressed the
need for neutral, third-party facilitators, who should be brought in at
the beginning of the process to avoid private negotiations. 
Facilitators need to have subject-matter expertise.

**One participant worried that as facilitation techniques become more
popular, the process will become corrupted, with facilitators in the
pay of their clients (an analogy was made to pollsters).

DECISIONS SUITED TO COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS
**Not all projects fit into the collaborative model.  When the
individuals who will benefit from the project outcomes are the same as
the individuals responsible for taking action, collaborations stand a
high chance of success.  Where no benefits are gained by those who
carry out the project, collaborations probably should not be attempted.

**Agency participants in collaborations must wear three hats, balancing
the roles of leader, partner, and stakeholder (because the agency wins
too when the consensus process works). 

COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES AT THE NATIONAL, REGIONAL, AND LOCAL LEVELS

**While EPA reviews state permitting processes, states themselves have
the final say on most permits. EPA has the authority to address
hazardous substance releases on its own, but prefers to work with other
agencies to negotiate an acceptable cleanup.

**Several postings addressed the relationship between EPA and various
Tribes.  One posting noted that Tribes should be dealt with on a
government-to government basis. Another posting pointed out that since
the Tribes are sovereign nations, EPA can enter into collaborations
with members of the Tribes, but not with the Tribes per se. One
panelist noted that it is misleading to speak of Tribes as a unit,
since different Tribes have different decision-making cultures,
requiring differently structured collaborations

**Agency panelists described how Federal Advisory Committees work, and
directed participants to relevant websites.  One participant was
dismayed to find that there has been a decrease in funding for FAC's,
and in the total number of individuals involved.

**EPA Title V air pollution workshops provide a good example of
capacity-building collaborative projects.  Community activists thirst
for this kind of avenue to knowledge that will make them more
effective, and tell them how the regulations affect their local areas.

**Participants were advised to watch out for well-meaning regulations
that can actually hamper collaboration and consensus.  An example from
Carson National Forest showed that regulations could be revised so as
to bring about a change from an adversarial to a collaborative process. 
Staff training and awareness raising were required.

**A number of postings called for public participation at the point
when a permit application is complete, rather than when the draft
permit is ready-by that time, the agency and the permittee tend to
think that negotiations are over.

**One posting described a case in which the late entry of EPA upset the
agreements that were being reached by the state environmental agency. 
Ultimately, this message sees the problem not with EPA, but as a
general problem of late entrants into the process.

**A number of postings described cases in which EPA and other agencies
had withheld information or been otherwise unresponsive to citizen
concerns.  Members of citizens' groups from Florida, Missouri, Texas,
Wyoming, Oklahoma and New York complained that EPA was essentially
collaborating with polluters, by denying them timely access to
information or ignoring their testimony. 

**Two panelists responded that it would be naive to think that politics
could be removed from environmental protection, and said that the
solution is not to demonize polluters, but to work on better
collaborative models and inclusive processes.

**Two panelists strongly objected to the projected demise of the EMPACT
program, since in their view it has been a model capacity-builder. 
Through the Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community
Tracking (EMPACT) program, EPA has been providing environmental data
directly to community groups.

COLLABORATION AND SMALL BUSINESSES OR SMALL COMMUNITIES

**One posting from Texas described a successful collaborative process
of regionalizing stakeholder groups in small business advisory
committees.

**One panelist described an environmental collaboration initiative in
the print and graphics area that effectively levels the playing field
between regulatory agencies and small businesses.

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.
This and all daily summaries are available from the agenda page of the
website.

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

The dialogue for today's discussion is available at:

http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/archive/date-e1.html

Katherine Carlitz
Reporter