FFERDC REPORT FINALIZED

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

FFERDC FINALIZES REPORT
The Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee 
(FFERDC) has reached consensus on its final report. If the 
implementation of its February, 1993 Interim Report is any indication, 
the new report should help shape the nation's approach to cleaning up 
hazardous waste contamination for years to come.
FFERDC is an official advisory group of the U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency, facilitated by the Colorado-based Keystone Center. 
The fifty members of the FFERDC represents other Federal agencies, 
including the Departments of Energy, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, 
and Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration); state 
hazardous waste officials and attorneys general; Indian nations; labor 
unions; and representatives of communities where contaminated federal 
facilities are located. Since the issuance of the Interim Report, the 
group has been expanded to include representatives of the armed 
services - in addition to the Defense Environmental Security office - 
local government, and environmental justice organizations.
Members of the Committee have pre-print versions of the Final Report. 
By mid-April, it will be possible to request copies directly from U.S. 
EPA (202/260-1606; fax: 202/260-5646) or the Keystone Center 
(970/468-5822; fax: 970/262-0152; e-mail: tkcsppp@keystone.org).
The Committee plans to hold briefings for Senate and House staff on 
April 15, followed by a press conference on April 16. You may wish to 
let your elected officials, as well as reporters who cover cleanup in 
your community, know that these events are coming up.
The Final Report contains an introduction (Chapter 1) and five 
substantive chapters. Chapter 2 repeats and explains in depth the 
"Principles for Environmental Cleanup of Federal Facilities," released 
by FFERDC in August, 1995. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 expand upon 
"Community Involvement" and "Advisory Boards," those areas where the 
Interim Report had its most visible impact. The new report addresses 
ways that communities of color and local government representatives can 
be better integrated into the cleanup process. Chapter 6, "Capacity 
Building," addresses the importance of providing resources to ensure 
that the various stakeholders, official as well as public, are in a 
position to implement the other recommendations. In that last chapter, 
the Committee urges that EPA develop a public stakeholders' guide to 
Federal facilities cleanup, both to introduce the cleanup process and 
to explain the findings and recommendations of the Committee.
Chapter 5, "Funding and Priority Setting," was the most difficult 
chapter for the Committee to reach consensus on, but its implementation 
may be the most far-reaching. The section (Chapter 4) of the Interim 
Report that addressed the issues of budget-building and managing budget 
shortfalls was subject to widely varying interpretations, and FFERDC 
members themselves disagree about the degree to which it was implemented.
The new Chapter, hammered out in marathon negotiating sessions between 
regulatory agencies (U.S. EPA and the states) and regulated agencies 
(polluters such as Defense and Energy), builds upon the increased 
cooperation (among regulated agencies, regulators, and public 
stakeholders) that is already growing out of the Committee's work. The 
chapter offers guidelines, building on its August, 1995 Principles 
(Chapter 2), for using risk and other factors to set priorities on the 
way up - that is, while budgets are being built. It also suggests ways 
to integrate the establishment or implementation of regulatory 
milestones (in negotiated cleanup agreements) with the establishment of 
Federal budget levels. It redefines the "flexible fair share" method of 
distributing budget shortfalls. The FFERDC approach will not eliminate 
every potential conflict. However, the Committee concludes, in the face 
of anticipated conflicts between regulatory milestones and budget 
shortfalls: "the Committee expects regulating agencies will consider in 
good faith the adjustment of milestones and other requirements and 
regulated agencies will explore the availability of additional funds 
within their agency budgets."
This report is not likely merely to collect dust. The Interim Report 
was widely read and broadly implemented. Many of the participants in 
the institutional structure established by that report - particularly 
the members of the site-specific advisory boards formed by federal 
agencies - have been waiting for the new report. Agencies are already 
implementing pieces of it. 
Perhaps the greatest unknown is Congress. Frustrated by the high cost 
and slow pace of federal facilities cleanup, Congress has not only been 
slashing overall cleanup budgets, but it has targeted pieces of the 
program that the FFERDC considers vital to success. Will the Republican 
majority endorse the hard-fought consensus of cleanup stakeholders? Or 
will it follow a course of its own?
The FFERDC concludes its report optimistically: "Building on the 
recommendations from the Committee's 1993 Interim Report," this report 
recommends that federal agencies undertake more expansive and 
meaningful community involvement in general, and make more effective 
use of advisory boards. It also recommends that agencies use a 
combination of approaches to priority setting and the allocation of 
funding shortfalls. Finally, because federal facilities cleanup issues 
are so complex, federal agencies, state, tribal, and local governments, 
communities and other stakeholders must forge partnerships that will 
enable our nation to make the best decisions possible to address 
environmental contamination at federal facilities. Through the 
collaborative processes recommended in this report, the Committee hopes 
that the federal government and its stakeholders will rise to the 
challenge posed by federal facilities cleanups by establishing a model 
for responsible democratic decision-making resulting in reasonable and 
credible cleanup programs."

Lenny Siegel