"+2">Discussion Summary: July 13, 2001 Dialogue Day 4 Agenda: Providing Assistance to Promote Public Involvement Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz introduced today's topic: Providing 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 <ul> <li>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. <li>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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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). <li> Enforcement agreements can be used to get the responsible party to pay for technical assistance to communities. <li> EPA needs to identify training models in communities and collaborate to provide assistance unique to the area or situation. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> EPA should lead a coalition to develop a plain-language guide to the regulatory process and a guide to science fundamentals. </ul> Needed financial assistance <ul> <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> Expenses of providing technical information on environmental issues could be the responsibility of the permit requesters and holders. </ul> Acquiring information on technical issues <ul> <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> EPA should support community assistance centers through clinical studies in graduate programs and development of educational materials by graduate students. <li> 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. </ul> Involving people without access to computers <ul> <li> 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. <li> Libraries need funding to organize documents for public access and to train librarians and other public information staff to better involve the public. <li> EPA and other stakeholder documents need to arrive promptly with an indication of priority and to whom and when comments are required. <li> 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. <li> Ministers are catalysts for change and can be very proactive with respect to environmental preservation. <li> 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. <li> Newspapers, radio, television, flyers, citizens' handbooks are established channels to reach people without computers. <li> 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. <li> EPA should collaborate with professional associations to prepare environmental information pamphlets. </ul> 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. Sally Hedman, Reporter <html> <head> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/network-democracy/images/favicon_epa-pip.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <title> </td> </tr></table>  </td>  </tr></table>  </td></tr>   <tr><td bgcolor="#F7F2E6"> <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/welcome.shtml">Welcome</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/about/about.shtml">About this Event</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/join/join.shtml">Join the Dialogue</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/bb/bb.shtml">Briefing Book</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/comment/comment.shtml">Formal Comment</a> | <a href="/cgi-bin/network-democracy/epa-pip/search.plx">Search</a> </td></tr>  </table></td>  </tr> <tr><td bgcolor="F7F2E6" colspan=2> <center>This EPA Dialogue is managed by Information Renaissance. Messages from participants are posted on this non-EPA web site. Views expressed in this dialogue do not represent official EPA policies. </center> </td></tr> </table>  </body> </html>

n" href="/network-democracy/images/favicon_epa-pip.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> "+2">Discussion Summary: July 13, 2001 Dialogue Day 4 Agenda: Providing Assistance to Promote Public Involvement Dialogue moderator Bob Carlitz introduced today's topic: Providing 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 <ul> <li>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. <li>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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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). <li> Enforcement agreements can be used to get the responsible party to pay for technical assistance to communities. <li> EPA needs to identify training models in communities and collaborate to provide assistance unique to the area or situation. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> EPA should lead a coalition to develop a plain-language guide to the regulatory process and a guide to science fundamentals. </ul> Needed financial assistance <ul> <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> Expenses of providing technical information on environmental issues could be the responsibility of the permit requesters and holders. </ul> Acquiring information on technical issues <ul> <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> 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. <li> EPA should support community assistance centers through clinical studies in graduate programs and development of educational materials by graduate students. <li> 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. </ul> Involving people without access to computers <ul> <li> 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. <li> Libraries need funding to organize documents for public access and to train librarians and other public information staff to better involve the public. <li> EPA and other stakeholder documents need to arrive promptly with an indication of priority and to whom and when comments are required. <li> 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. <li> Ministers are catalysts for change and can be very proactive with respect to environmental preservation. <li> 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. <li> Newspapers, radio, television, flyers, citizens' handbooks are established channels to reach people without computers. <li> 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. <li> EPA should collaborate with professional associations to prepare environmental information pamphlets. </ul> 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. Sally Hedman, Reporter <html> <head> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/network-democracy/images/favicon_epa-pip.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <title> </td> </tr></table>  </td>  </tr></table>  </td></tr>   <tr><td bgcolor="#F7F2E6"> <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/welcome.shtml">Welcome</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/about/about.shtml">About this Event</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/join/join.shtml">Join the Dialogue</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/bb/bb.shtml">Briefing Book</a> | <a href="/network-democracy/epa-pip/comment/comment.shtml">Formal Comment</a> | <a href="/cgi-bin/network-democracy/epa-pip/search.plx">Search</a> </td></tr>  </table></td>  </tr> <tr><td bgcolor="F7F2E6" colspan=2> <center>This EPA Dialogue is managed by Information Renaissance. Messages from participants are posted on this non-EPA web site. Views expressed in this dialogue do not represent official EPA policies. </center> </td></tr> </table>  </body> </html>