A Real Public Role
Note: EPA no longer updates this information, but it may be useful as a reference or resource.
A Real Public Role
Copyright (c) 1998 Environmental
Law Institute (R)
.
Reproduced with permission from The Environmental Forum (R) November 1998.
Except for a single, complete downloaded copy for personal, non-commercial
use or for complete
electronic retransmission of this work to others for educational, non-commercial
purposes, all rights reserved.
As part of its reinvention efforts, EPA is expanding public participation
well beyond what is required by statute, bringing citizens in at the earliest
stages of decisionmaking. The agency is also providing the public with
the information tools they need to make their increased involvement truly
meaningful.
by J. Charles Fox
US Environmental Protection Agency
One of the fundamental principles of democracy is that the public has
a voice in government decisionmaking. When the issues are simple and generally
well-understood, citizens can arrive at an informed opinion relatively
easily. When it comes to protecting human health and the environment,
however, the issues are often highly complex, and the data can be difficult
to obtain and interpret. As the federal agency charged with setting environmental
policy, EPA recognizes its responsibility to help the American people
understand the issues that affect them, as well as its responsibility
to expand opportunities for citizens to use that information in a more
involved role, shaping the decisions that are made at all levels of government.
Offering greater citizen participation in environmental decisionmaking
is only a charade if those invited to take part are not well informed
about the issues. As Administrator Carol Browner has declared, "Providing
the public with basic environmental information about their communities
is one of the most powerful tools available for protecting public health
and the environment. Better information will allow businesses to find
and eliminate inefficiencies that create pollution and reduce profits,
and will allow citizens to participate effectively in decisions that affect
their families and communities."
In recent years, EPA has seen an explosion in the public's demand for
information on public health and the environment. Simultaneously, the
agency has been expanding public access to information. Activity on our
main website www.epa.gov now averages more than a million
hits a day, proof that citizens are, in fact, exercising their right-to-know,
electronically. While EPA is consolidating and streamlining environmental
reporting requirements to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens, and to
improve efficiency for agencies and industries that supply much of the
data available through these on-line systems, this administration also
has expanded the quality and quantity of information that is provided
directly to the public. For example, through a new rule that became effective
last year, realtors and landlords are providing prospective buyers and
renters information on lead hazards before they move into a new house.
So that the public would have more knowledge about the quality of its
drinking water, Administrator Browner fought for right-to-know requirements
during reauthorization of the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996. Starting
next year, community water systems for the first time ever will be required
to inform their customers annually about whether their drinking water
is meeting federal safety standards.
Not surprisingly, data about toxic releases from industrial facilities
continue to be of great interest to the public. Through the Toxics Release
Inventory, the agency requires companies to publicly report quantities
of listed chemicals released from their facilities into the air, water,
and land. Since reporting began in 1988, total releases of toxic chemicals
in U.S. communities have decreased by almost 46 percent. Obviously, not
all of these reductions can be attributed solely to the TRI, but the evidence
suggests that business has reacted to the wide availability of information
on corporate behavior by upgrading its pollution controls and production
processes beyond what is statutorily required. EPA has doubled the number
of chemicals for which TRI reporting is required over the last five years,
and added seven industries representing over 6,000 new facilities that
must report.
Use of TRI data has expanded rapidly, both in terms of the number of
data users and the variety and complexity of users' projects. Downloading
the information from the Internet or from a wide variety of other sources,
an estimated 1,500 community groups now use the TRI in dealing with local
government and industry to track waste, encourage pollution prevention,
and more effectively press for reductions in toxic emissions. Some groups
have successfully lobbied for state and local laws, such as the Toxics
Use Reduction Act in Massachusetts, California's Proposition 65, and a
Toxics Right-to-Know charter amendment in Eugene, Oregon. Other organizations,
such as Don't Waste Arizona, Inc., have successfully sued facilities for
failure to report releases, but with a constructive focus the companies
must not only pay fines but also achieve compliance.
The TRI is one of the core environmental databases that EPA is using
to support several new electronic information initiatives. The latest,
EPA's Center for Environmental Information and Statistics provided citizens with a single, convenient source of information for
investigating environmental quality trends in their community. CEIS was
designed to overcome many of the frustrations people have experienced
in combining information from a variety of sources to assess environmental
quality in their communities. Now, by keying in their county name or zip
code, users can obtain environmental profiles that summarize existing
environmental data on local air quality, drinking water systems, surface
water quality, hazardous waste, and toxic releases. Because the agency
envisioned CEIS from its inception as a tool to boost citizens' environmental
literacy and capability to act knowledgeably, EPA conducted extensive
customer surveys to find out what kind of information people actually
need and how they would like to obtain it. Initially, the surveys focused
on users familiar with environmental issues; current surveys are focusing
on citizens with less experience. The findings will help EPA refine CEIS
so that it continues to meet the public's needs.
While the novelty of CEIS is its ability to aggregate and present information
about ambient conditions at the community level, another information initiative
aims to make vital data available almost up to the minute. The Environmental
Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking program EMPACT is
designed to provide location-specific environmental monitoring data to
citizens in 86 metropolitan areas by the year 2001, offering a glimpse
at the type of information that may be readily available on-line for communities
across the country in the future. EMPACT presents monitoring data in visual
formats that are easy to understand and use. For example, during the ozone
season (May through September) its AIRNOW website www.epa.gov/airnow offers animated data
maps showing current ozone levels, updated hourly, in selected cities
and states. With such current information at hand, citizens can consider
air quality in making day-to-day decisions about their health and the
environment. The Beaches Environmental Assessment, Closure, and Health
website BEACH Watch, at www.epa.gov/ost/beaches enables
Americans to go on-line to find out the latest reported conditions on
swimming conditions at hundreds of coastal and inland beaches.
Other pilot programs offer insight into additional types of electronic
information that may be coming in the near future. For example, earlier
this year, EPA released a Sector Facility Indexing Project for five major
industry sectors that allows the public to review compliance and toxic
chemical release information on-line at www.epa.gov/sfipmtn1/ for individual
facilities or across an entire industry sector. If citizens show sufficient
interest in examining available records about industry compliance with
environmental laws, the agency may expand this type of information.
The future promises an ever-growing potential, and desire, for access
to information. Based on public demand and new technological developments,
citizens will be able to use environmental information in ways no one
had previously imagined. As we combine regulatory data with repositories
of images and geographical reference information, citizens will be able
to conceptualize and visualize a variety of environmental trends and phenomena
in their communities. Everything from watching ozone levels move up a
valley to following the flow of a chemical spill down a river basin may
be possible.
The agency's expansion of environmental data collection and dissemination
is intended to boost the public's knowledge and awareness of the environment,
and enlarge the citizen's role in environmental decisionmaking. Involving
citizens and doing so starting in the early stages, when their suggestions
can substantially influence how decisions take shape is the way we believe
environmental decisionmaking works best. Under Carol Browner's tenure,
including the public has become a routine way of doing business for the
agency. And yet, some skeptics still question whether citizen involvement
is real and meaningful. Are ordinary citizens making a difference, affecting
the outcome of decisions that are made at EPA, in other government agencies,
in small businesses, and in corporate board rooms?
As someone who has served with federal and state governments and the
environmental community, I can say that, at EPA, citizen participation
is not only for real, it is becoming ever more ingrained into the agency's
culture. Through regulatory and non-regulatory means, we are going beyond
traditional, nominal "stakeholder involvement" to enhancing citizen capability
and promoting more fundamental and meaningful citizen participation. Collaborative
processes offer significant and far reaching benefits. Shared decisionmaking
enables people to bridge their differences, find common ground, and identify
creative new solutions. Moreover, involving citizens enhances democratic
decisionmaking by keeping public values at the forefront.
Involving the public in governmental decisions is not a new idea. The
Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 granted citizens the right to notice
and comment on agency rulemaking. The Freedom of Information Act of 1966
and the Privacy Act of 1974 gave the public access to many government
records. Congress understood that openness is critical to environmental
protection when it enacted the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969,
most famous for its requirement that environmental impact statements be
prepared for federal actions with significant environmental effects, and
that EISs be made publicly available as drafts for comment and in final
form. In 1972, passage of the Federal Advisory Committee Act ensured balance
and openness when federal agencies seek input from external constituents.
And the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, in addition
to establishing the Toxics Release Inventory, enshrines the concept of
public participation as a core principle of environmental protection.
The agency has come a long way from the adversarial, notice and comment
decisionmaking that prevailed during its early years. EPA learned many
lessons from its experiences lessons that have helped to lay the groundwork
for today's expansion of public involvement.
Almost instantly after EPA was created in 1970, the charge began to
stop pollution, starting with the most obvious, egregious sources emissions
from large industry. As Congress passed new legislation, the agency followed
with regulations. Like most centralized federal agencies at the time,
EPA formulated a proposed rule or regulatory decision internally and announced
its proposal in the Federal Register. The agency then accepted
public comment, made changes to accommodate the views of potentially affected
parties, and issued the final rule. Often, the regulation was challenged
in court, where outside interests would for the first time fully present
their views and contradictory information. In this manner, the courts
revisited and altered many of EPA's decisions, at substantial cost to
the agency and other parties involved. Although certain outside viewpoints
also were presented through the first advisory committees established
under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the role they played in agency
decisionmaking during the 1970s was limited.
By the 1980s, as litigation increased, EPA saw that adversarial relationships
were halting progress on environmental problems. Meanwhile, science, technology,
and public policy were advancing quickly. The agency began looking outward
for new ideas, and the information and perspectives of the public became
more important than ever. EPA was one of the first federal agencies to
pilot negotiated rulemaking, or "reg-neg," a collaborative, consensus-based
approach that brings outside parties into the process of developing a
regulatory proposal, from the very beginning. Compared with the traditional
process, EPA learned, negotiated rulemaking generally required less time.
In cases where consensus was reached by the participants, negotiated rulemaking
usually prevented litigation. Reg-neg was not always successful in some
cases, negotiations failed or parties could not reach consensus. The concept
of involving interested parties early and throughout the rulemaking process,
however, proved to have a number of advantages. Typically, the resulting
rules were more practical and cost efficient, contained more innovative
solutions, were more technically and scientifically current, and had greater
legitimacy. Negotiated rules often resulted in stronger protection than
EPA would achieve working under the traditional regulatory process. Moreover,
when EPA considered opposing views early on and built understanding through
negotiation, legal challenges usually diminished and the agency could
implement the final rule more quickly.
Although not all rulemaking lends itself well to negotiation, EPA learned,
reg-neg embodies certain principles that can be applied more broadly to
many types of decisionmaking situations, maximizing the benefits of public
involvement. Three basic principles apply:
Go slow to go fast. Careful, thorough consideration is needed
in the very beginning to organize and allocate the agency's time, expertise,
and other resources; to retain a neutral facilitator; and to structure
a balanced, workable committee of representatives. Before starting a negotiation,
it is critical to clarify the goals of the rulemaking and agree on ground
rules and definitions so that all the participants understand the process,
their responsibilities, and possible endpoints.
Demonstrate leadership. Negotiations should begin with a clear
goal but not an ultimatum. The process works best when EPA explains the
overall environmental goal, and allows the participants to suggest ways
in which the goal can be met. The agency stays ready to make decisions,
and also to terminate negotiations if they appear to be futile.
Keep our promises. In a reg-neg, if the committee reaches consensus
(often defined as an outcome that, as a package, everyone can live with),
then, as initially promised, EPA issues the outcome as a proposed rule,
and the other participants refrain from filing negative comments or lawsuits.
Although EPA leads all executive agencies in negotiated rulemaking
20 rules have been completed to date the process is used only selectively,
when it's most important for the agency and outside parties to reach agreement
on a solution or course of action. Nonetheless, while reg-neg is the exception,
the agency's experience in using the process has taught us what principles
are essential for successful regulatory development with stakeholder involvement.
In turn, these principles have guided EPA's movement toward a greater
public role under Administrator Browner.
So, too, have the White House's calls for government reform and reinvention.
From the early days of this administration, Vice President Gore has led
an unprecedented charge to create a federal government that works more
efficiently and more effectively. For EPA, doing so has meant reaching
out to discuss and test new ideas with many diverse interests.
Much of the progress achieved through the agency's reinvention agenda
has resulted from involving interested citizens in problem-solving in
more timely, meaningful ways. One of Administrator Browner's most ambitious
undertakings has been the Common Sense Initiative, a program to test sector-based
approaches to environmental protection as an alternative to the traditional
pollutant-by-pollutant method. From conception, CSI was designed to engage
affected interests, specifically including the public, in reaching consensus
on new approaches for improving environmental performance within selected
industries. CSI has produced many tangible results, particularly for the
metal finishing sector. Last year, that industry and other sector participants
agreed on environmental goals that encourage metal finishers to go beyond
compliance with baseline environmental standards. When fully implemented,
these goals could cut the industry's toxic emissions to air and water
by 70 percent, and reduce toxic sludge disposal and water use by 40 percent.
CSI's open, inclusive process was critical in reaching this consensus
among the industry's stakeholders. The interaction created opportunities
for much better relations across the sector, as previous adversaries began
to talk and understand each other better. The effectiveness of public-private
collaboration in this process was influenced by at least four important
factors.
First, through its previous advocacy efforts at the national and local
level, the metal finishing industry had established a pattern of involvement
with interested parties. National and regional environmental groups, publicly
owned treatment works, and state regulators all were familiar with the
environmental issues, policy positions, and to some extent the nature
of industrial processes prior to the start of the discussions.
Second, the way in which the membership of the CSI stakeholder group
was established was pivotal. All potential participants were given the
authority to select their own representatives. They were asked to exercise
good judgment and discretion in making these selections, understanding
that their choices could set the stage for success, or guarantee failure.
Each group believed that a successful CSI effort was in their best interest.
As a result, a rancorous selection battle was avoided, and all stakeholder
groups sent representatives who contributed constructively.
Third, common interests and concerns among several types of participants
contributed to the effort's success. The metal finishing industry is composed
primarily of small businesses. Participating regional and local environmental
organizations found that their concern for both the economic contribution
and environmental impacts of the industry in neighborhoods and urban areas
helped them engage constructively. For example, a well recognized community
group representing Hispanic neighborhoods in the Los Angles region participated
very effectively in the process, both preserving employment opportunities
in their community and insuring improved environmental protection. At
least four regional environmental and neighborhood organizations participated
during the deliberations.
Finally, the leadership and commitment of all participants was an important
element toward success. The industry, states, and environmental groups,
as well as EPA, all made a major commitment of time and political capital
within their organizations and constituencies. And they sent representatives
empowered to represent their respective interests, encouraging them to
think creatively about new approaches.
Today, all of the groups involved are working to help the metal finishing
industry reach its goals. An oversight committee of CSI participants is
monitoring progress and advising the industry and the agency on issues
needing further attention. Ultimately, this landmark agreement may serve
as a model for other sectors interested in improving environmental performance
by involving interested parties.
Another example of how citizens are helping to reinvent traditional
environmental protection is Project XL. Under this program, EPA invites
industries and other regulated parties to propose alternative regulatory
approaches. Three years ago, the agency made this challenge: "If you have
an idea that promises better results than what would be achieved by complying
with existing requirements, and if you involve affected stakeholders,
then EPA will work with you to put that idea to the test."
Intel was one of the first companies to take the agency up on this
offer. The company negotiated an innovative permit that included a multimedia
emissions cap for its Pentium chip manufacturing facility in Chandler,
Arizona. In being able to reduce regulatory delays when making changes
to its manufacturing process, eliminating 30 to 50 permit reviews, the
company has saved millions of dollars in just one year. In return, Intel
agreed to substantially reduce the wastes the facility generates by the
year 2000, recycle much of the fresh water it uses in an arid region,
and maintain current hazardous air pollutant emission levels even if it
expands or changes operations.
Among the negotiators of the final project agreement were four citizens
from an existing community advisory panel that had worked with the facility
for several years. These citizens a farmer, a geologist, an environmental
activist, and a member of the Gila River Indian Community were on an executive
committee that included, along with Intel, representatives of the City
Water Quality Department, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality,
the Maricopa County Air Permitting Authority, and EPA Region IX. Operating
under a consensus decisionmaking ground rule, the full committee met biweekly,
while four working groups met in between. Minutes from one of the groups,
which included two of the citizen representatives, note: "Real give and
take among the members was evident and productive. The group worked extremely
hard to solve the problems it was facing and struggled to address the
real interests of those who were raising concerns."
At the conclusion of the negotiating process, consensus was reached
all interest groups agreed to implement the outcome, and all were signatories
to the final project agreement. The citizens realized their demand for
added protection against any potential emissions-related risks when Intel
agreed to establish an environmental buffer zone. The facility also agreed
to include the negotiating group in future monitoring of the agreement.
In response to other concerns, Intel became the first company ever to
provide their environmental performance data to the public on the Internet,
in a format designed with input from the local community.
A similar outcome occurred at Merck & Company's Elkton, Virginia, plant
as a result of its Project XL negotiations. The company obtained a flexible,
plant-wide air emissions cap, and agreed to permanently reduce key air
pollutants by 20 percent below compliance levels. In response to local
priorities as expressed by the four community members on the negotiating
committee, who were selected by an existing community advisory panel,
Merck also committed to joining other interests in conducting a five-year
study of air quality trends in the area, including nearby Shenandoah National
Park. Besides local citizens, participants in the Merck negotiations included
representatives from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality,
the National Park Service Headquarters and Shenandoah National Park, and
the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors.
The citizen representatives participated actively, searching out information
to understand the technical issues and voicing their concerns about potential
project risks. Decisions of the committee were made by consensus. Because
it became clear to all participants that the arrangement could not be
implemented without the citizens' approval, they were given a signatory
role in the final agreement. All participants did endorse the project
agreement, in which the facility also agreed to provide the community
and other participants progress summaries concerning its implementation
of the agreement.
Both the Intel and Merck examples show how citizen input can be used
to realize benefits that never would have resulted through the traditional
regulatory process, while supporting, rather than hindering, regulatory
innovation.
Areinvention initiative aimed at cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields
has provided another important opportunity for citizen involvement. EPA's
brownfields initiative empowers communities to clean up and redevelop
abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial properties,
where redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental
contamination. Several years ago, EPA began awarding grants to cities,
states, tribes, and other communities to support brownfields work. To
be eligible for assistance, community groups must be actively involved
in the cleanup and revitalization effort. So far, EPA has awarded 228
brownfields grants totaling over $42 million to states, cities, towns,
counties, and tribes. These grants have leveraged almost $1 billion for
redevelopment and created over 2,000 jobs.
A brownfields pilot in Dallas, Texas, for example, is turning several
properties into the focal points of a more livable community. The Dixon
Street site and the JPI North End site were vacant downtown lots that
attracted criminals and blighted the surrounding community. One is being
transformed into a recreation center, the other a residential and shopping
development. At other sites, buildings are being constructed to house
a wholesale florist and new retail businesses, as well as an environmental
training and technology center. In just over two years, an initial EPA
investment of $200,000 has yielded $100 million in business investments
and created hundreds of new jobs. The Dallas Brownfields Forum now has
over 100 representatives from all parts of the community, including business,
banking, and private citizens, and continues to meet every six weeks.
East Palo Alto, California, a historically agricultural city with an
ethnically diverse population, has shown how a small, bypassed community
it is just outside Silicon Valley can achieve success by forming brownfields
partnerships to leverage resources. Restoration of the Ravenswood Industrial
Area, a city-designated brownfields site, will create a large retail center,
a hotel and conference center, and an employment center providing space
for high tech companies employing nearly 4,000 workers. A Brownfields
Stakeholder Group composed of 18 representatives of the community and
surrounding areas met twice a month over a nine-month period, developing
recommendations and principles for change. They generated five scenarios
for land use and redevelopment that are guiding the local redevelopment
agency's plans. In addition, through the brownfields pilot program, community
members and students from Stanford University worked with local and regional
organizations to create a hazardous materials job training program for
local youth. Seventeen graduates of this program are now pursuing environmental
careers.
While increased citizen involvement is a vital component of many EPA
reinvention initiatives, the concept also is taking hold within some of
the agency's more traditional functions, including enforcement. EPA's
commitment to taking enforcement action against polluters is stronger
than ever fines in 1997 were the largest in the agency's history. But,
beyond paying fines, we believe polluters should be required to correct
the environmental damage, as well as prevent future damage. Thus, EPA
seeks settlements that devote resources toward improving the environment
and addressing the concerns of affected citizens, rather than pursuing
protracted litigation. Increasingly, these individuals are participating
in settlement discussions, helping to shape the terms of the agreements
so that the local environment is improved and community concerns are addressed.
For example, on the South Side of Chicago last year, local citizens
showed how their involvement can lead to innovative, environmentally protective
provisions in enforcement settlements. In response to alleged violations
of air, water, hazardous waste, and community right-to-know standards,
a Sherwin-Williams resin and paint manufacturing facility agreed to reduce
the emission of hundreds of tons of ozone-forming volatile organic compounds
from its facility. The company also agreed to conduct two supplemental
environmental projects. First, the company is contracting with the city
to perform a $950,000 cleanup and restoration program at a brownfields
site near the facility, in a predominantly minority area with a number
of active community groups. A community relations plan that is part of
the contract will ensure continuing citizen participation, and the city's
involvement will help ensure the success of this program. In addition,
the company is contracting with a local environmental group, Openlands
Project, to perform a $150,000 wetland restoration project near the facility.
The two projects that were included in the final agreement were the result
of EPA lawyers in Chicago contacting area public interest attorneys to
request that their constituents offer projects ideas.
Rulemaking is another area in which the public is becoming more involved.
Under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, for example, EPA was required
to develop new maximum achievable control technology standards for toxic
pollutants emitted by 174 source categories of industrial facilities.
The agency realized that a traditional approach would not allow this obligation
to be met by its statutory deadlines (25 percent of the 174 source categories
were required to be regulated by 1994; 50 percent by 1997; and 100 percent
by 2000). EPA developed a process which greatly increased external involvement
in initial data gathering and the development of the MACT standards. EPA
and state and local air quality agencies formed an alliance with industry
and local organizations, which collected preliminary information on emissions
controls used by sources within an individual category, and then developed
a "presumptive MACT," an estimate of MACT based on readily available data.
This reinvented process for rule development, involving 25 states and
other stakeholders, has reduced the number of significant issues between
industry and the agency, as well as the time and costs of standards development.
EPA has developed a working relationship with many key public, business,
and governmental interests which will continue as these standards are
implemented and as future standards are developed.
Citizens also have been centrally involved in some of the most controversial
land management issues facing this administration including how to protect
and restore some of the nation's most important ecosystems, such as the
old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and the San Francisco Bay
Delta. In 1993, a report on northwest forest management issued by an interagency
coordination team established by the president concluded that "bold changes
are required" in how agencies relate to one another and to the states,
tribes, private landowners, and communities in the region. The five-agency
agreement, which created a framework for cooperative planning and implementation
of forest ecosystem-based management practices within the range of the
northern spotted owl, was an early mark of this administration's commitment
to engaging with affected interests to work through difficult problems.
The following year, EPA was a major player in the agreement between
the state of California and the federal government to provide ecosystem
protection for the San Francisco Bay Delta Estuary. As with the Northwest
forest management controversy, diverse urban, agricultural, and environmental
interests had a contentious history, and yet by working together in a
collaborative, partnership mode, they reached agreement.
Though productive overall, difficulties have been inevitable in many
of the agency's citizen participation initiatives. Defining appropriate
representatives determining which citizens and interest groups are the
"right" ones to include is one of the first steps we take in leading a
consultative process. It is also one of the most challenging. Within any
constituency, different individuals often hold a range of opinions, adding
complexity to the task.
Difficulties also can arise if the goals and ground rules of the citizens'
involvement are not clear. Because their time and resources are limited,
obtaining citizens' commitment to the process can be problematic. If an
issue is not ready for a decision or if no clear time frame for making
the decision has been established, the group's progress may decline. The
overload of opportunities to participate may, in itself, become a problem,
as different interests become burned out from too much engagement and
too many issues.
Appropriately, given its charter, membership, and history, EPA's consensus-based
Common Sense Initiative Council has become a focal point for identifying
and analyzing difficulties in how EPA involves citizens in environmental
management and decisionmaking. The council's stakeholder involvement workgroup
has studied the agency's most pressing citizen participation problems,
including burnout and complaints that some involvement processes are launched
because they are considered an a priori "good," without a clear definition
of how they factor into actual decisionmaking. In a report released in
June, the workgroup found that EPA does not sufficiently analyze which
type of involvement is appropriate, or use effective techniques that reach
target audiences.
The workgroup concluded that EPA's greatest need is to "integrate its
stakeholder involvement programs." In other words, the agency needs to
link involvement clearly to its decisionmaking, and not simply think of
involvement as an end in itself. The group advised EPA to involve the
public in ways that provide the greatest value to both the agency and
the participants, and to find ways of ensuring that lessons learned and
information acquired in one program are shared with other programs.
To assist the agency, the workgroup identified and defined the types
of involvement currently used by EPA. They identified three important
ways citizens may be asked to participate in agency programs or decisions,
forming a continuum from exchanging information, to developing recommendations,
to developing agreements. EPA's role also can be portrayed as a continuum,
from decisionmaker, to partner, to capacity-builder. Using these two scales,
the workgroup created a matrix of involvement techniques. This new tool
should help the agency do a better job of choosing the most effective
public involvement activities, given the nature of the decision at hand.
While a variety of different interests, circumstances, and conditions
make it impossible to create one systematic approach to public participation,
certain key issues are to be expected in designing any involvement process.
The workgroup captured these issues in a process model for the agency.
In the future, careful analysis using this model should help EPA staff
and others coordinating environmental decisionmaking initiatives to choose
techniques, set clear goals, and clarify exactly what they are hoping
to accomplish with the public. An EPA manual currently under development,
Better Decisions Through Consultation and Collaboration, will include
information on the use of a common vocabulary, types of involvement techniques,
and an expanded version of the process model for early planning of public
involvement.
Ultimately, we believe our investment in these tools can build the
agency's capacity to involve citizens in truly meaningful, productive
ways. Yes, the process of doing so can be difficult. By working through
problems and learning from them, however, EPA has begun to evaluate and
refine its methods for involving others in decisionmaking. For example,
as a result of a recent evaluation of four Project XL stakeholder processes,
the agency has learned more about the strengths and weaknesses of two
basic stakeholder involvement models consensus decisionmaking, and public
consultation and information-sharing and found that a clearly defined
structure and clear objectives are the most important elements for the
success and credibility of any type of XL public involvement process.
Through earlier analysis, EPA found that special assistance is needed
in some XL projects to help nontechnical participants understand the issues
and proposals being discussed. As a result, the agency has awarded a cooperative
agreement to a non-profit agency that will provide up to $25,000 per site
to XL stakeholder groups to obtain technical assistance. This program
should help address a perception reported in the recent Project XL evaluation
that local groups achieve less of what they seek in XL stakeholder processes
than other constituencies.
In another sign that the agency is becoming more active and systematic
in supporting public involvement, evaluating the results, and training
others to conduct participative processes successfully, EPA held its first
annual National Community Involvement Conference in August. This conference
provided an opportunity for public participation and community involvement
practitioners, managers, and policymakers from EPA and other federal and
state agencies to share their knowledge, experience, and ongoing research
from useful techniques and approaches and practical lessons learned in
the field, to the development of promising new tools for improving community
involvement, such as community cultural profiling. Such collaborative
discussion and training is a worthwhile investment in building the public
participation skills of EPA's staff and others, and in producing new community
involvement ideas and approaches.
Providing citizens with information and fostering their involvement
in environmental decisionmaking is vital to creating the more open, inclusive
environmental protection system that EPA envisions for the 21st century.
The American public has the right to know about environmental hazards
and to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Increasingly,
they expect and demand access to high quality environmental information
and more meaningful involvement in environmental decisionmaking. EPA is
meeting these expectations by expanding public access to information and
providing citizens an opportunity to apply this information in decisionmaking
processes at many levels and in many forums.
For those who wonder whether this trend is only a short-lived initiative
of this administration, I would remind them that democratic principles
suggest otherwise. Time and time again, history has shown that it is extremely
difficult to take back what the public comes to view as a fundamental
right. As such, it is doubtful that the access to information and influence
gained in environmental decisionmaking will be taken away. On the contrary,
it is much more probable that these trends will not only survive, but
will expand. As citizens continue to gain a stronger voice in environmental
decisionmaking and have access to more and better environmental information,
they expect to receive, just as EPA expects to deliver, more of the same.
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