[CPEO-BIF] Post-hurricane community involvement

["lsiegel@cpeo.org" <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Received from Mary Lou Soscia <Soscia.MaryLou@epamail.epa.gov>:

Lenny:

I am responding to the email that you sent to Debbie Lowe in EPA Region 9
concerning community involvement for the Hurricane Katrina response and
recovery.  I have been working on the Hurricane Katrina EPA community
involvement team in EPA Incident Command in Metairie, LA. Your email brings
up some excellent recommendations for the type of community involvement
that is essential to the scope of  this disaster. I have been the person on
our community involvement response team that has been working with the
environmental justice community.   I want to briefly share some of the work
we have done and are doing and I when I leave on Thursday to go home, I
will refer your name to somebody else to keep you informed of these
important community involvement efforts.

1.  EPA developed a community involvement team as a part of the Hurricane
Katrina Response that for the past 2 weeks has worked with all Katrina
affected parishes, where flooding occurred and where evacuees are located,
to establish a community/parish network and contacts.  As a result of this
effort, we have developed a plan and list of contacts to provide
information to as it is developed.

2.  For the past week we have been providing fact sheets to citizens on
Re-Entry into Homes, Household Hazardous Waste Debris, Drinking Water, and
Mold throughout the aforementioned affected parishes.  We have also been
providing PSAs on our website and we have also provided Spanish and
Vietnamese translations of those fact sheets.

3.  We are now working on a broader effort which will involve conversations
with community residents.  We are working right now to identify
opportunities for these community conversations.  Today we contacted the
New Orleans City Council members to find out their interest and we plan
also to contact Parish governments to find out about other opportunities
for citizen dialogues.  We are also pursuing the opportunity to have
dialogues in public buildings such as libraries.

4. We have also been participating in the conference calls that Jonathan
Hook, EPA Region 6, Director of Tribal Affairs and Environmental Justice,
has been holding with a wide group of parties (federal, and state
government, and environmental justice contacts) to develop an EJ
Interagency Taskforce.  We have been providing information to the
conference call participants on the community involvement work efforts
underway here at the EPA Incident Command.

I hope this information is helpful to you.  I am leaving on Thursday, but I
can forward you to the person that will be following up on this work effort.

Mary Lou Soscia 
Columbia River Coordinator 
US EPA - Region 10 


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