RE: EPA's evolving role - communication is a two-way street.

[Jerry Filbin <filbin.gerald@epa.gov>]

Mark's pick of the word, "daunting" in describing the work ahead of us to build community capacity to participate in risk assessments and decision processed is a wise choice, I think.  One dimension of EPA's Community-based Environmental Protection approach has been an effort to build community capacity to understand and particpiate in environmental assessments.  EPA's current strategic goals identified under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) don't provide for a lot of resource investment in this area (Superfund, Brownfields, and Watershed Protection are exceptions to this)so this is going to be a considerable challenge for the Agency.  Our strategy has been to tie these investments in capacity building to improved environmental results that address the GPRA goals and measures indirectly.  This often takes time , since capacity building involves complex community processes - so this has been a long, slow process for us - and hopefully that will change as we demonstrate how capacity improvment provides for environmental results.  We share the concern over EPA's cultural competency and accessibility of risk information to diverse communities. As some commenters have noted too, in an age when we are moving to using the internet to communicate there is a risk that we will leave economically disadvantaged communities behind - the internet can't be our only way to communicate.  I think that this is an area for improvement for EPA.