Regional Forum: Why?

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

LONG FILE

[Note: This is the written version of the talk that I plan to give at 
the Regional Forum on Military Base Cleanup Technology, which will take 
place this Thursday and Friday (September 26-27) at the San Francisco 
Airport Clarion Hotel. The talk is designed to lay out the objectives 
of the partnership of organization and constituencies that have 
organized this unique event. We expect over 200 people, but there is 
room for more. We have allocated all our travel scholarships, but there 
is no registration fee. If you plan to come, and you haven't yet 
registered, please send a message to Aimee Houghton at 
aimeeh@igc.org. - Lenny]
 
WHY WE'RE HERE:
Ensuring a Role for Stakeholders
Promoting and Evaluating Innovative Cleanup Technologies
Lenny Siegel
SFSU CAREER/PRO
September 26, 1996
Over the past few years, since the issuance of the Interim Report of 
the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee 
(FFERDC), there has been an enormous improvement in the way our 
government approaches the cleanup of its military bases. Members of 
affected communities, once excluded as "troublemakers," have been given 
a seat at the decision-making table. The new approach to stakeholder 
involvement, centered around Restoration Advisory Boards (RAB) at more 
than 250 installations, has not worked perfectly, but at nearly all 
facilities it has improved the cleanup process. Communities are happy 
to have a voice; base commanders and other officials are surprised that 
the voice is constructive.
Furthermore, public participation, in conjunction with the high 
priority that widespread base closures brought to environmental 
restoration, has made it possible in a growing number of instances for 
regulators and regulated agencies to work together toward common 
cleanup goals, instead of focusing on building a document record in 
preparation for possible litigation. More often than not, officials are 
now rolling up their sleeves and attacking problems, not each other.
These process improvements have not eliminated conflict. They weren't 
supposed to. But they have created arenas in which differences can be 
constructively resolved. And, as the FFERDC Final Report, issued 
earlier this year, repeatedly points out, the process still needs 
improvement: technical assistance, training, and various forms of 
capacity building.
Despite progress in the way we approach military cleanups, both 
investigation and remediation remain frustratingly slow. Cleanup, 
particularly to levels that provide permanent, unrestricted use of 
property, is costly. Especially in today's political climate, the 
federal government appears unwilling to pay the costs it incurred when 
it released toxic, radioactive, and explosive substances into the 
environment.
New and improved technologies, some of which are already in use, 
promise to help solve these problems - to make cleanup cheaper, safer, 
faster, and better. However, there are significant obstacles to the 
development, demonstration, and use of appropriate, innovative cleanup 
technologies.
When I first started attending DOIT (Demonstration of On-Site 
Innovative Technologies) meetings in 1993, stakeholder involvement was 
my pet project. It's not that other participants opposed public 
participation. They just didn't know what it meant.
However, as the RAB experiment unfolded, and as our working group began 
to understand the challenges that were slowing the use of new cleanup 
technologies, I no longer needed to push my agenda. Other members - 
military cleanup experts, regulators, technology vendors - started 
raising stakeholder issues, not just because involving the public is 
right, but because they saw that community members had a stake in 
improving not just the cleanup decision-making process, but the results..
This Forum is our collective effort to bring stakeholder involvement to 
a new level, in two ways. First, we are trying to broaden the process 
of developing and evaluating innovative technologies. Second, we want 
to build upon that broadened process to eliminate unreasonable 
obstacles to the testing and use of those technologies.
In the late 1980's and early 1990's, federal expenditures on 
environmental cleanup, particularly at the Departments of Energy and 
Defense, grew rapidly as the nation became aware of the vast 
contamination released and deposited during the five decades of the 
cold war. From the start, progress was slow and the long-term expense 
looked insurmountable. As a consequence, government, private sector, 
and academic organizations undertook many new projects to develop 
environmental technology. As the Cold War wound down, this was greeted 
as a stellar example of economic conversion: using rocket scientists to 
attack down to earth and even further down to groundwater environmental 
problems.
A good deal of progress was made, but there were many gaps as well as a 
great deal of duplication. No one at particular was at fault. Simply, 
the old structures could not cope with rapid growth in both interest 
and resources.
Decision-makers recognized the shortcomings of the effort, and the 
major agencies involved - including EPA, Energy, and Defense, as well 
as organizations such as the Western Governors Association - responded. 
Communications were improved. Strategic plans were developed.
The Defense Department came up with its first Department-wide strategic 
plan for environmental research and development - covering waste 
management and pollution prevention as well as cleanup - just a few 
years ago. As far as I know, no one outside the Department was 
consulted. In fact, few of us outside the Department even saw the 
results. Still, it was a giant step forward. In fact, when I compared 
it against unmet technology requirements, as I understood them from my 
work with stakeholders across the country, I thought that it was 
generally on target.
But like any new plan, there is room for improvement. There is 
contamination that cannot cost-effectively be cleaned up at many of the 
facilities that we, as community members and regulators, oversee. There 
are places where the cure - that is, the environmental impact or public 
health and safety impact of existing cleanup technology - may be worse 
than the disease. And there are technologies and approaches to cleanup 
that we, as the affected communities, find unacceptable, because the 
result is temporary or incomplete.
Our challenge, beginning with this forum, is to create a partnership in 
which federal agencies and private technology vendors seek the advice 
of the affected public, state and Indian regulators, and local 
government, not just in the application of cleanup technologies, but in 
choices about development. Outsiders have a role to play in allocating 
resources and in making sure that technology demonstrations adequately 
capture the strengths and weaknesses of the new technologies. It is my 
hope that decision-makers, in both business and government, will 
respond to our advice, not just because we represent a political force 
to be reckoned with, but because we have good ideas and knowledge based 
upon the fact that we are downwind, downstream, or upstairs from the problem.
The pay-off from this partnership could be enormous. As the slow 
development and implementation of innovative technologies attests, 
there are institutional obstacles to their introduction. Regulators are 
reluctant to take risks. Contractors may make more money using tried 
and somewhat true methods that take longer and cost more. The public, 
however, has a clear stake in faster, safer, better, and more 
cost-effective cleanup. When and where the neighbors and employees of 
military bases find new approaches acceptable, they often 
enthusiastically support innovative technologies. Even now, that 
increases the use of new approaches, but we need to do more.
Over the next two days, we are asking you, as representatives of this 
emerging partnership, to do more than discuss our common problems, and 
surely to do more than say "gee whiz" when you hear about an exciting 
new technology. We want to do more than set priorities in technology 
development. We want to do more than find out how to agree that new 
technologies are acceptable and desirable. As partners with a common 
interest in the implementation of improved technologies, we want to:
1. Propose way to improve the sharing of information about new 
technologies within constituencies and among constituencies.
2. Figure out how to make it easier for government 
decision-makers, particularly regulators, to approve innovative 
technologies, both for demonstration and implementation, when they make 
sense.
3. Support contracting methods that reduce obstacles and create 
incentives for cleanup contractors to propose and utilize new 
technologies, both for site characterization and cleanup. A corollary 
of this is to promote contracting methods that make its easier for 
displaced workers and affected communities - particularly where a base 
is downsizing, closing, or closed - to benefit economically from 
cleanup activities.
4. Recognizing that the military cleanup market is only a portion 
of the overall environmental technology market, devise and support 
strategies that enhance technology development by ensuring that private 
developers can reap the rewards of their work in the commercial sector.
I know that there are some among us who remain distrustful of the 
process, and often there is good reason. And surely, it would have been 
better for us to embark upon this partnership a few years ago, or even 
decades ago, when our institutions of national security unleashed their 
toxic substances, radionuclides, and explosives upon the American landscape.
We can't reverse history, but we can learn from it. Today the climate 
is right for this broad, multi-constituency partnership for innovative 
cleanup technologies. I am sure there will be conflicts. At some 
locations the process will break down entirely. But today we do have a 
common interest. It is my hope that we will not only make cleanup 
better, but that we will create a model for such partnerships in 
attacking other environmental problems and perhaps even other issues 
where the public has a direct interest in the activity of large, 
technologically sophisticated institutions of government. In my view, 
democracy and innovative technology are not only compatible. If we 
approach them properly, they complement and strengthen each other.