WGA stakeholder inv

[meuser@cats.ucsc.edu]

Aimee asked me to post this. I participated in the WGA Tribal and
Public Forum. This is a copy of a fax I sent to Ginger Swartz of
WGA on stakeholder participation. The papers I refer to in the text
are the same that I offered on this list a few days ago.
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Date: May 15, 1995
From: Michael R. Meuser and Marie T. Clary
To: Ms. Ginger Swartz, Project Director and Public Involvement Specialist
 Federal Committee to Develop Onsite Innovative Technologies.
Re: Comments on Tribal and Public Forum on Technology Acceptance,
 Reno, Nevada, May 4-5, 1995.

Dear Ginger,

First, we want you to know how much we both appreciate participating in the 
Tribal and Public forum and also how appreciative we are of the effort made by 
you, Patrice, and Kathryn to make it all happen. It was a truly extraordinary 
meeting that helped us in two ways. We realized that what we are seeing and 
hearing at Fort Ord is not an anomaly, but an instance, an example of 
widespread communication problems between federal agencies, regulators and 
communities. We also gained an incredible amount of ins ight about how to 
correct the situation, how to make community participation more meaningful, 
more substantive. Besides being helped ourselves we hope that the following 
observations, drawn from our research experience over the last ten months at 
Fort Ord, will help WGA craft policies that truly reflect the needs of 
communities and result in contaminated public lands being cleaned up quickly 
and at as little cost as possible. 

In the paper I gave you we recommended three things. First, individuals 
selected for RABs should not be selected to represent only themselves. 
Rather, each member should represent a relevant segment of the community. 
Second, give the RABs more power, scope and authority. Push the RAB 
guidelines back toward the Keystone model. And third, take RAB implementation 
guidelines seriously. This includes following guidelines for member selection 
and practicing good communication skills. 

Since the paper was written Marie and I have thought of a few other items that 
expand upon the recommendations. First, much more work must be done to assure 
that the RAB/SSAB truly represents the community. This means going way beyond 
public meetings advertised and conducted in the usual manner. This means 
actively identifying and seeking out membership. How can this be 
accomplished? A baseline can be developed through demographic research. For 
instance, as consultants to the Fort Ord Toxics Project, we have used Bureau 
of Census data to develop a demographic profile of the surrounding community. 
The profile identifies various racial, ethnic, income, religious groups, to 
name a few, that must be part of the RAB at Fort Ord if it is to represent the 
diversity of the community (few of these groups are represented on the present 
RAB). Other social science tools such as surveys, interviews, participant 
observation and historical research should be employed to expand the 
demographic model. This, of course , requires funding. Funding should be 
made available early on in the process to do this sort of baseline research 
and to do the sort of outreach that a functional and representative RAB/SSAB 
requires. 

Second, we mentioned broadening the scope of the RAB/SSAB. The RAB 
guidelines, unlike Keystone and other documents, say that the RAB should be 
concerned with restoration, not reuse (I can supply a chronology of documents 
that indicates where and when reuse was dropped from the language). This is 
an artificial separation. At Fort Ord and many other converting facilities 
reuse drives restoration. In other words, cleanup levels (how clean is 
clean?) are arrived at by determining what the future use of the land will be. 
It makes sense that RABs, if they are to participate in decisions about 
restoration, must first participate in decisions about reuse. 

Third, federal agencies should make various TAG grant money available early 
on. DoD has still not figured out how to distribute its TAG grant funds to 
the RABs yet many final decisions are being made and restoration carried out 
without the community expertise that TAG grants could provide. 

Fourth, communication between the facility, the RAB/SSAB, and contractors must 
be improved. Trained educators and facilitators must be used rather than 
facility environmental office employees and contractor representatives who may 
not have the skills required to effectively communicate with the RAB/SSAB. 
(Note: Anne's presentation lost the spirit of what the group meant by 
education. I don't believe that we meant that the school system should take 
over educating RABs, rather we meant that trained educato rs and facilitators 
should do the communicating between facilities, RABs and contractors). 

We were very happy to participate in the forum and will be happy to 
participate in the future at any level that you think would be helpful in 
securing community acceptance of innovative technology. 

Sincerely,

Michael R. Meuser
Marie T. Clary