EPA Region 6 responses to Armando Quintanilla

[patricia bonner <bonner.patricia@epa.gov>]

I am posting this message for Beverly Negri of the Superfund staff in Region 6.  In her note she responds to both messages from Mr. Quintanilla.

> Monday, July 16 Collaborative Processes
>
> Upon review of my experiences in the public participation process, I found that EPA has failed to perform in their responsibilities and promises by not taking citizens seriously and by not facilitating stakeholder input into all levels of the EPA decision-making process.
>
> Let me be more specific about EPA. On July 21, 2001, EPA is having a public dialogue on Improving Public Involvement and Decision Making. The meeting will be held at Christ the King Church, which is miles away from the R&H; Refinery and Kelly AFB.

   
EPA Response

The July 21 meeting is an open public dialogue on "Improving Public Involvement and Decision Making".  It is not a meeting designed to discuss any Superfund or non-Superfund site related issues.  The Hispanic community is invited to dialogue with us during this meeting on how to better accomplish reasonable and more effective means to involve the Hispanic community in EPA's regulatory and program decisions. As long as the meeting's location provides opportunity for the  Hispanic community to participate, the location of the meeting does not need to be near a Superfund site.

Last year during an outreach effort in Hispanic communities, it was recommended to EPA that when meetings are held in Hispanic communities, we should ask local community leaders to host our meetings and let them set the meeting locations and times. 

> The R&H; Refinery is a Superfund site. Kelly AFB has been deferred by EPA as a Superfund Site. In this regard, not one single stakeholder living in South San Antonio, between these two contaminatedsites was involved in the decision to hold this meeting miles away from the contamination. Por Que?
>  
> The week of July 3, the Region 6 Environmental Justice (EJ) Office contacted Mr. Chavel Lopez, of the Southwest Workers Union, and asked if he and the Union would like to host a public meeting to provide the San Antonio Hispanic community an opportunity to review and comment on the EPA's Draft Public Involvement Policy.  Although Mr. Lopez indicated that he was interested in helping out in hosting the meeting, he never got back with the EJ Office.  After several weeks of not getting any feedback from him, (Mr. Lopez was unavailable when we called his office) we were again able to get in touch with him and we were told that he was preparing a "thanks, but no thanks" response in writing.  We told him that there were other organizations that were interested in hosting the meeting and he said that was fine.  Two organizations - the National Organization for Mexican American Rights and the Regional Office of National IMAGE, Inc. - both housed in San Antonio, were immediately contacted and they said they would work together to find a location and would ask Congressmen Ciro Rodriguez and Charlie Gonzales to solicit their support.  These two organization selected the date, time and location for the meeting.
>
> Is it because EPA Region VI has never heard or known that the fundamentals of any community involvement must be:
>     * Inclusive
>     * Responsive
>     * Open
>     * Interactive
>     * Transparent


EPA Response

There is no hidden agenda for the meeting.  The EPA is asking for input from the Hispanic community on better methods and ways on how to improve community involvement efforts for the Hispanic community for all of our media programs.  During the last several weeks we mailed thousands of post cards in English and Spanish to our communities in Region 6 alerting them about the opportunity to be actively involved in reviewing and commenting on the Draft Public Involvement Policy.
 
> The meeting being held at Christ the King Church Saturday at 2:00 pm, July 21st raised the following questions and comments from the contaminated community:
>     * When will EPA involve the citizens living in the contaminated areas of South San Antonio?
>     * Why the short notice?
>     * Why is the meeting being held on Saturday? Los sabados son dias de casa and I have many errands to run.


EPA Response

Please see the response above as to why the Christ the King Church was selected as the meeting location.  

Citizens who have expressed an interest in R&H; Oil site activities were invited to the July 21 meeting because of their expressed interest in general EPA information, but again let me restate that the July 21 meeting is not designed to discuss any site-related activities.  Other R&H; Oil Superfund meetings will be held to involve the impacted community in site activities. 

A number of other local Hispanic groups have been sent invitations to participate in the July 21 meeting too.  In addition, the National Organization for Mexican American Rights and the Regional Office of National IMAGE, Inc. have additional members who may be attending the meeting.  As mentioned above, the short meeting notice of one week in advance of the meeting came about as a result of the first community contact's decision not to host the meeting.  The two host organizations picked Saturday because a large no-cost facility would be available and it was also a day when they felt more community members would be able to attend the meeting.  We regret any difficulty that the meeting day and time might cause for any potential attendees, but our host sponsors selected the best day and time they could.

>  * The contamination stands out like an ugly sore. It has robbed us of the economic value of our homes. It makes our neighborhoods a place from which people turn. Now EPA turns its back on our contaminated neighborhoods and holds public involvement meetings miles away from us. Que triste?


EPA Response

Please note that the meeting in being held in San Antonio to involve as many Hispanic communities participants as possible, not just the two neighborhood areas around Kelly and R&H; Oil.  

> As I said before, I do not view EPA as a just, kind and respected agency. Citizens living in contaminated neighborhoods should not be ignored by EPA. They should be considered and involved in any or all stages of EPA's decision making process that affects them.
>
>     Suggestions on how EPA can improve collaborative processes:
>
> 1. EPA must commit to include citizens, living in neighborhoods, contaminated by our government or by private industry, in all stages of the decision making process. This means:
>     * Providing information and data to the citizens affected
>     * Receiving input from the citizens before decisions are made jointly
>     * Reporting back the results of the decisions
>
> How EPA can use collaborative processes at the national level:
>
> 1. By EPA ensuring environmental laws and regulations are implemented equitably.  
> Note: EPA and TNRCC regulators have known that Kelly AFB contaminated our neighborhoods since the 1980s. To this date, Kelly has no plan to remove the contaminants from under 18,000 homes. EPA and TNRCC regulators have looked the other way and never taken Kelly AFB to court to come up with a plan to remove the contaminants from under our homes, schools, streets, and churches.
>
> 2. By EPA and other federal agencies providing resources, training and information to citizens living in areas contaminated by our government or by private corporations.
>
> 3. By EPA sponsoring a national conference hosted by CPEO that join stakeholders across the U.S.  to share info on how to better public involvement and decision making by EPA at contaminated sites being remediated.
>
> 4. By EPA demonstrating a top-to-bottom staff commitment to Environmental Justice.
>
> 5. By EPA producing results that provide a level playing field for public participation and decision making and ensuring that all people including our South San Antonio community is treated equitably.
>
> 6. By EPA reaching out and building upon local neighborhood leadership. The people living in neighborhoods contaminated by our government know what needs to be done.
>
> 7. By EPA extending itself to all members of contaminated neighborhoods and ensuring that low income communities, including Mexican-Americans in South San Antonio who pay their taxes and have served honorably in the US Armed Forces are included. This does not currently exist.
>
> 8. By ensuring EPA's accountability to local citizens, including those in South San Antonio who historically have been subject to social, economic and environmental injustices by our government.
>
> 9. By EPA creating a policy that allows citizens to participate as equal partners on decisions affecting the clean up of contaminated sites and their health.
>
> 10. By EPA taking the lead and establishing productive working relationships with all citizens, federal agencies and state regulators.
>
> 11. By the community and learned scholars assessing independently EPA's annual progress in fulfilling the promise of public participation and decision making. EPA should not assess their own progress.


EPA Response

Thank you for your excellent suggestions and ideas on how to better reach and involve not just Hispanic communities, but all impacted neighborhoods. Your comments reinforce the community involvement investigation EPA conducted in 2000.  We are learning better methods everyday on how to involve all communities in the EPA decision making process.

Archived: Sat, 14 Jul 10:06
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:51:10 -0400 (EDT)
Author: Armando Quintanilla
Subject: joining dialogue by fax
Topic: Assistance

This is Lisa Kahn at EPA, putting in a posting for the dialogue from Armando C. Quintanilla, who wants to participate but who has no computer. Armando faxed the following message to us.

For the record my name is Armando C. Quintanilla. I reside at 70 Bristol Green, San Antonio, Texas 78209-1899. My phone number is 210-804-2126 and my fax number is 210-826-5763. I am a member of the Kelly AFB Restoration Advisory Board, the National RAB caucus, and the San Antonio Center for Health and Environmental Justice. I do not have a computer.

I would like to start off by stating that I do not view EPA as a just, kind and respected agency as far as public involvement in EPA decisions. Let me explain.

Kelly AFB has contaminated our neighborhoods. Contaminated ground water is under 20,000 homes. The residents of these homes are low income 90% Hispanic. EPA has known of this contamination since the 1980's and to this date EPA has not forced Texas state regulators to come up with a plan to remove the contaminants from under our homes, schools, streets and churches.

EPA officials who attend the RAB meetings have never compelled Air Force officials and Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) regulators to consider and address issues of environmental justice nor spoke in behalf of the residents and their right to participate in back door meetings.

In this regard EPA officials have never allowed stakeholders living in the contaminated areas to participate with EPA in meetings with the Base Closure Team (BCT) where cleanup and remedial decisions are made. In fact EPA and BCT members have repeatedly ignored our requests to be involved. Members of the BCT make key decisions on the restoration of Kelly AFB and our neighborhoods. Excluding Mexican-Americans is discriminatory, but again EPA officials have never brought this discriminatory practice and non-public involvement to EPA higher ups nor to EPA's Office of Civil Rights. Why?

Another non-involvement EPA decision making action is the Public Involvement Conference held in San Antonio. All the participants were big time EPA officials. The Southwest Workers Union protested and demonstrated for hours before EPA conference officials allowed two or three minority persons living in the contaminated neighborhoods adjacent to Kelly to speak on public involvement. Again EPA excluded participation and Public Involvement of populations because of their national origin. When will this discrimination by EPA stop?

EPA Response

The Annual Community Involvement (CI) Conference is an annual training conference for all EPA program staff who are responsible for community involvement/relations activities.  The participants were certainly not "big time EPA officials".  For the most part, the CI Conference attendees were the folks who work out in the fields with the communities and their immediate supervisors.  As the annual conference is designed to provide EPA CI  staff training opportunities, it is not an open forum like NEJAC with invitations sent to the general public to attend and participate.  Each year before the conference, we do send out solicitations to the general public asking for proposals for presentations to be given during the conference.  This year over 112 proposals were received by EPA and a selection committee selected about half of those to be offered at the CI Conference.

Several weeks before the conference Mr. Chavel Lopez called the Region 6 Office because he was unhappy that he had not been invited to participate in the conference and talked to several EPA staff members who explained the conference purpose and format to him.  At that time, he was also told that the Workers Union would be issued an invitation to make a presentation proposal for next year's conference.  Mr. Lopez and the Union still chose to picket the training conference and on the first day of the conference they were offered an opportunity to speak at an open forum that day of the conference -  which they did chose to do.  

As mentioned previously in this document, the CI Conference is a training opportunity for EPA community involvement staff, not a public meeting or forum for site related issues.  Nor is it a general open public forum.  Therefore as the Ci Conference is not designed for general public participation except in the role as presenters, there was no exclusion of any population, and most certainly not "because of their national origin".  I am certain that you are not suggesting that the public wants to deny EPA staff an opportunity for training.

> Concerning EPA's last December 28th draft Public Involvement policy, and its 20 year Participation Policy; I have no comments. I have never heard or seen the draft policy list of goals and objectives. I hope our government realizes that under served populations are the last to know or maybe EPA just didn't want to keep us informed in the past.


EPA Response

Except for the Superfund Program, all other EPA Programs have been delegated to the states.  Many of our states have excellent community involvement policies, many do not.  But, the EPA Participation Policy is for EPA staff, and is not mandated for our states.

> Suggested ways that EPA should identify interested and affected parties is through:
>
>     1. Newspaper ads requesting members of the public to notify EPA of their interests through a toll free 1-800 line. 


EPA Response

All Superfund sites have a required community involvement process.  Each site related mailing lists a Superfund toll-free number that the community can call to get site related information.  Many of the other programs also have toll-free numbers that the public can call.  Whenever a specific action is about to occur at a Superfund site - such as the announcement of a Proposed Plan for remedial action, or the awarding of a Technical Assistance Grant - in addition to sending the impacted community a fact sheet about the action, EPA places a newspaper notice in a local paper alerting the impacted community about the impending action.

>     2. EPA can enable minority low income and under served populations by establishing citizen review committees at every Superfund Site. The Citizen Review Committees CRC's should be co-chaired by EPA and have facilitators. The establishment of CRC's would provide interested parties with a forum to discuss and provide input, and decision making in all phases of Superfund cleanup activities including budgets and contracts as required in 10 USC 2705 (c) and Executive Order 12580, "Superfund Implementation".


EPA Response

Superfund provides each National Priority List (NPL) site community an opportunity to apply for a Technical Assistance Grant.  In addition, support, training and tools are provided to the community to develop site related Community Advisory Groups.  Unfortunately, like all other government programs, EPA has faced a declining budget and decreasing staff numbers, but not a decrease in work load, each year for the past several years.  So we try to be as efficient and effective with budget dollars and staffing as possible.  Whenever we can, Superfund staff attend and participate in community sponsored site meetings.

>     3. EPA can better distribute information to a national audience by remembering that its sole mission is to serve the people, protect the environment and peoples health.
>
>     4. EPA must listen to the people. There must be communications up and across with the taxpayers.  Just communication down from EPA does not cut it. Listen to the people.
>
>     5. EPA must get rid of its answering machines and stop giving the people the "idiot treatment" by not answering their questions and shuffling them from one bureaucrat to another.


EPA Response

Because a large number of Superfund staff are technical/scientific Remedial Project Managers and On-Scene Coordinators, they are in the field for long periods of time working on cleaning up sites and therefore they do not sit in the office at their desks and are not always available to answer their phones.  On the whole, the staff do try to respond to all phone contacts.  Region 6 does provide toll-free 800 numbers and a Customer Action Feedback Engine system designed to facilitate customer response.

>     6. EPA should train their staffs to listen to the taxpayers -- not just to the polluters.
>
>     7. The length of time it takes to get a response to a Freedom of Information request is incredible.  Then EPA charges you for this delayed information. EPA should stop withholding information through bureaucratic delaying tactics.
>
>     8. EPS's information services should launch a new more useful user friendly Web Site. The Web Site should have easier-to-remember addresses, and organized by service categories, instead of by EPA organizations.
>
>     9. In order for EPA to insure that the public has adequate time to review information, EPA must remember that the public works from 7am to 5pm. The only time the public can participate effectively is from about 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the decision making processes.
>
>     Financial assistance that stakeholders and the public need to participate effectively are:
>
>     1. Technical grants for advisors to interpret EPA directives, regulations, environmental investigations, studies and proposed remedial actions of contaminated sites, drinking water, contaminated soils, polluted air, etc.
>
>     2. Grants for Health advisors to interpret ATSDR Reports and other health information from federal, state and local health agencies.


EPA Response

As mentioned above, EPA does provide opportunities to apply for Technical Assistance Grants to communities impacted by NPL Superfund sites.   In addition, communities impacted by non-NPL Superfund sites have an opportunity to contact and work with the Technical Outreach Services for Communities (TOSC), a program of nationally recognized universities that can provide no-cost assistance to communities looking for answers and searching for an understanding of technical issues associated with cleaning up their environmental hazards.  In addition, a number of other non-Superfund grant opportunities are available to communities.

>  
>     3. EPA can involve individuals and groups without computer access by conducting:
>
>     - Town Hall meetings at proposed or known contaminated sites.


EPA Response

At all NPL Superfund site, we host small availability sessions, one-on-one interaction opportunities, TAG training, Public Meetings, Open Houses and numerous other informational site related meetings.  "Town Hall" meetings in the political sense are not the usual meeting format.  

>     - Environmental justice forums.
>     - Coming to San Antonio and talking to groups such as:
>     * The Southwest Public Workers Union
>     * Center for Health & Environmental Justice
>     * Center for Environmental Justice and Action
>     * The Maverick Alliance


EPA Response

While we have contact information for some of the associations mentioned above, we are not familiar with some of the others.  If we are provided contact information, we will followup,  work with, and involve these organizations whenever possible in EPA activities in the future.

> Note: EPA people do come to San Antonio but they only talk to the polluters, they never come to our neighborhood meetings. Por Que?  We, our culture does not feel comfortable conversing with a machine.  We prefer talking to a live person, face to face or over the telephone.
>
>     That's all for Friday - will start again later.
>     Please tell me what you think and if I should continue.
>
>     Thank you,
>     Armando C. Quintanilla
>     phone: 210-804-2126
>     fax: 210-826-5763


EPA Response Contact - Beverly Negri, (toll-free) 1-800-533-3508
PI Involvement