Summary of Communication and Outreach Work Group Meeting

December 16, 1997

I.	PURPOSE

The Communication and Outreach work group (COWG) held a face-to-face meeting on December 16, 1997 in New Orleans to discuss the December 10, 1997 draft of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Subcommittee final report, information needs from now through December 1998, and lessons learned from the FACA process.

II.	PARTICIPANTS

Attendees:

Tom Curran, Co-chair, EPA/OAQPS/ITG

Ron White, Co-chair, ALA

Bill Baker for Kathy Callahan, EPA Region II

Bruce Carhart, OTC

Richard Paul, AAMA

Nancy Seidman, Massachusetts DEP

Scott Thomas, Oklahoma DEQ

Work Group Members Not in Attendance:

Tad Aburn, Maryland

Alice Collingwood, PSAPCA

Margaret Cook, Intertribal Council of Arizona

Kathy Ellis, DOD

Nancy Kruger, STAPPA/ALAPCO

Jayne Mardock, Clean Air Network

Caryl Pfeiffer, Kentucky Utilities Co.

Quin Shea, NMA

Other Attendees:

Jan Kleeman

Wendy Vit, EC/R Incorporated (EPA contractor support)

III.	ACTION ITEMS

1.	The final FACA Subcommittee meeting will be held in New Orleans on December 17 and 18, 1997.

IV.	DISCUSSION SUMMARY

Mr. Curran handed out certificates of appreciation signed by John Seitz. He thanked COWG members for their hard work for the past 2½ years.

FACA Subcommittee Final Report

Members commented that the executive summary of the final report is well-written and conveys a sense of accomplishment.

Mr. White noted that a couple of issue papers, including the Economic Incentives and Integrated Implementation papers, are not finished. The plain English summaries of these papers need to be revised.

Information Needs

Ms. Kleeman described EPA's new Website for the implementation of the new ozone and particulate (PM) standards. It will include the implementation matrix of upcoming rules, regulations, and guidance, and it will track deployment of the PM monitoring network. It will include maps illustrating where the monitoring sites are located. Although the Website won't include actual PM monitoring data, it will provide a link to the Technology Transfer Network (TTN). Mr. Curran said there is no reason why the site can't ultimately include monitoring data.

Mr. White asked what percentage of the 1500 PM-2.5 monitors will be daily monitors. Ms. Seidman said this issue is still being discussed. She said 175 sites (some co-located) are planned for the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM). Of the 175 sites, 27 sites are planned for Maine and 23 for Massachusetts. People are concerned about this because Maine is not as populous as Massachusetts. In addition, out of the total number of NESCAUM sites, only 38 will be daily monitors, and 53 will be designated for speciation. There are huge resource issues and logistical problems with the plans. The plans are very different from what people were expecting. Mr. Baker said these issues were discussed at last week's Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) meeting. Establishing the monitoring network is the first priority. Once the network is set up, the monitors can be operated more frequently.

Ms. Seidman said there are 110 ozone monitoring sites in the NESCAUM region, which is considered good coverage. Not many places are expected to exceed the 24-hour PM- 2.5 standard. Many people are concerned about the number of PM-2.5 monitoring sites since most areas anticipate that they will only be focusing on annual variations.

Ms. Kleeman said a prototype of a real-time air quality data system for multiple states is anticipated by mid to late March 1998. States in regions 1, 2, 3, and 5, except West Virginia and North Carolina, are planning to participate. Region 5 states are already talking to NESCAUM about how to set up their programs.

Mr. White asked if any literature on this real-time data project is available. The public interest community would be very interested. Ms. Kleeman said the project proposal is available, and a detailed project plan should be available in mid January 1998.

Mr. Curran said Aerometric Information Retrieval System (AIRS) is being redesigned so that it is easier to use. The revised AIRS is due in August 1998. AIRS Website (AIRSWeb) is being tested as an intermediate product to replace the old system. It includes key graphs and data summaries, but it doesn't give people access to the database. He encouraged everyone to look at the AIRSWeb and provide suggestions of additional types of data summaries.

Mr. Baker said it would be useful for the Implementation Website to provide links to other EPA Websites that discuss control technologies, such as National Low Emission Vehicle (NLEV), Phase II Reformulated Gasoline (RFG), and others. Mr. White cautioned against overwhelming people with too many links to other Websites. Mr. Baker responded that if the site is organized skillfully, including many links can be helpful.

Mr. White said EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) has completed a wonderful summary of recent PM research, mostly animal toxicology studies. The document is fairly "plain English." He isn't sure if the document is available through EPA's Website.

The group discussed holding periodic satellite hookups. Mr. Baker asked how often non-governmental organizations tie into satellite hookups. Mr. Curran replied that EPA doesn't have much information about the participants. The Education and Outreach group of EPA is trying to look into this.

Mr. Baker suggested setting up a chat room on the Internet to talk about detailed ideas such as a specific control technology. Four or five people from OAQPS could be on-line to answer questions. Mr. White said ALA set up a chat room to discuss the new ozone and PM standards. A moderator screened the questions and assigned questions to ALA personnel based on topic—medical, policy, etc. They had problems with delays back and forth as people waited for responses to their questions. This could be addressed by limiting the number of people who participate. For instance, one month small business could participate, the next month tribes, and so on. Mr. Baker acknowledged that the more detailed the topic, the more effective the session would be.

FACA Process

Mr. Curran asked COWG members what they would do the same or differently if EPA set up another FACA process.

The group first discussed the successes and shortcomings of the COWG. Mr. Paul said the COWG did the best it could with the tough job of communicating highly technical information. For someone who doesn't work full-time on air quality issues, the issues were complicated and difficult to grasp. Mr. Thomas commented that the COWG succeeded in getting information on the new standards out to people, which was its primary responsibility. However, he was never quite sure what the work group's charge was. Ms. Seidman isn't sure if the COWG accomplished their outreach goal throughout the entire process. She said it was hard to know the work group's role until the end of the process. Mr. Carhart said the biggest challenge was to reach out to people who weren't involved in the FACA process.

Several people commented that the 1-page summaries were a successful product from the COWG. Ms. Seidman said she has been told that the 1-page summaries have helped people understand the issue papers. Mr. Curran asked, if this group hadn't developed the 1- page issue paper summaries, what would the final report have been? Ms. Kleeman said many people realized what the issue papers said for the first time when they read the 1-page summaries.

Mr. White asked how this group worked compared to the Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG) communications group. Ms. Seidman commented that OTAG's group didn't work because it was full of insiders. Mr. Carhart said both groups faced a similar challenge: Until the message is defined, the group can't develop the communication strategy. The FACA COWG was more successful because the message was more clearly defined.

Mr. Baker said one thing he'd do differently when setting up the FACA work groups in the future is to have an open process. OTAG's work groups were open. It was a self- selecting process, and the work groups ended up with the best people. The work groups consisted of people who actually did the work. Mr. Curran said a problem with that approach is that it doesn't necessarily maintain a balance of interests.

Mr. White said the public interest community was frustrated by not being able to actively participate due to resource and time limitations. The frustrations were felt more strongly at the work group level where some small issue groups were meeting every week. EPA should think about resource issues and equity, in addition to balancing the numbers of participants. He suggested using EPA resources to hire consultants on an ad hoc basis. Mr. Paul said he didn't know any industry representatives who were able to devote full time to this process. Everyone had resource problems.

Mr. White recognizes that everyone has resource problems, but he asserted that not many public interest groups have made air quality an issue. The same small group of folks are being asked to participate in all of the air quality stakeholder processes. He knows several people in the public interest community who turned down chances to participate in other processes in order to be involved with FACA. Mr. Curran acknowledged that the public interest community has a much smaller pool of people to choose from. He noted that the public interest attendance was often higher at the meetings held in Washington, D.C.

Mr. White said of all the rulemaking processes he's been involved in, this process was the most successful in getting the word out to affected interests. Of the COWG's original target audiences—small business, public interest community, and the media—they most successfully got the word out to the public interest community. If they fell short on any group, it was the media. He saw a lot of media coverage on the standards but not on implementation. Maybe there was no story, or maybe they need to figure out a better way to reach the key reporters.

Mr. Carhart said the issue of regionality is part of EPA's future message. Maybe this is the "hook" for reporters. It is a shift in the way people think about air pollution. Mr. Curran said someone told him that information about the FACA process was so accessible that it was a non-story.

Mr. Curran commented that the Subcommittee had too many members. Ms. Seidman said Subcommittee meetings were hard to sit through. Mr. Baker said the size of the Subcommittee, as well as the process, contributed to long, dull meetings. Perhaps the debate should have been more distilled at the work group level.

Mr. Curran said work group members worked hard on their issue papers. The work group members then presented their papers at Subcommittee meetings where they were discussed for 20 minutes by people who skimmed the papers the previous night. In many cases there was no discussion, only comments. Perhaps providing incentives or setting deadlines for reaching closure would have helped. Mr. White said they did that. Mr. Carhart agreed EPA set up a schedule, but it was ambiguous. People felt there were more benefits associated with discussing the issues than with reaching closure. Mr. Baker said if people knew the deadlines were real, they would have been more determined to reach closure.

Mr. White was surprised that EPA didn't use professional facilitation for the meetings. Although facilitation doesn't guarantee success, it does move the meetings along. Ms. Seidman said she has not had good luck with EPA-facilitated meetings. The problem is finding someone who knows a lot about the issue but does not have a position.

Mr. Curran said the FACA Website was very successful. 44,000 files were downloaded from the site. This would have been a huge expense if all this information had been distributed by Federal Express.