[CPEO-MEF] Spring Valley (DC) Restoration Advisory Board

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Spring Valley Needs Broader Citizen Input

Viewpoint by Ted Henry
Reprinted with permission from the Northwest Current (DC)
November 8, 2006


I spent more than five years establishing and maintaining the Spring 
Valley Restoration Advisory Board as a contractor for the U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District. I've been involved with the 
advisory board process in paid and volunteer capacities, on local and 
national levels, for 13 years. My experience tells me that the Spring 
Valley Restoration Advisory Board is in significant trouble. It cannot 
fill vacant community seats and is losing its diversity. If the 
community allows this to continue, the Spring Valley partnership and 
cleanup will suffer.

Several years ago, the community board members altered operating 
procedures to exclude community members who live outside the former 
defense site boundary. The motivation for this decision appeared to have 
been their desire to address chronic frustrations with one or two 
community board members. Even at that time, I was concerned that the 
exclusion of a whole group of potential future applicants for the 
purposes of addressing problems with one or two individuals was 
shortsighted. Unfortunately, the Corps had no good grounds to fight the 
course of action at that time.

However, in May 2006, the Defense Department finalized its rule 
regarding "the scope, characteristics, composition, funding, 
establishment, operation, adjournment, and dissolution of RABs." The 
rule states that "Community RAB members should live and/or work in the 
affected community or be affected by the installation's environmental 
restoration program." The Baltimore District's legal interpretation of 
the rule concluded that the board's residency requirement, set forth by 
the community board members, did not have to change. I strongly 
disagreed, as the law must be the floor and not the ceiling when it 
comes to stakeholder involvement. Since I could no longer influence the 
quality of the advisory board, a critical component of the Spring Valley 
community involvement program, I left the project.

Community oversight of a cleanup is effective only if there are diverse 
and committed community members tracking project data, asking the tough 
questions and participating month after month. The Baltimore District's 
legal interpretation undercuts both the rule's spirit and the board's 
process. Allowing the board to continue to exclude certain populations 
will result in further disintegration of the board and the project.

The advisory board is not sustainable on its present course given that 
its membership, institutional knowledge and effectiveness are suffering. 
The property owner living outside the boundary - and still awaiting soil 
arsenic removal - cannot serve on the board. The person living next to a 
well or surface-water sampling location south of the project area, where 
perchlorate has been detected, cannot serve on the board. An American 
University professor or commuter student, who works or attends school 
next to buried military contamination, cannot serve on the board.

Based on all my experience with military cleanup and the advisory board 
process, I believe these subpopulations should be and are eligible to 
apply for the board under the "live and/or work ... or be affected by 
..." language within the rule. To interpret this language narrowly is 
shortsighted, bad for all parties in the long run, and works against 
everything the board process represents within the environmental cleanup 
process and the broader national fabric of stakeholder inclusion.

There are several steps community members concerned about the future of 
the advisory board may want to consider. First, attend the Nov. 14 board 
meeting. Second, apply for one of the vacant community board member 
seats. Third, demand that the community members change their procedures 
to at least consider applicants who live outside the former project 
boundary. Fourth, ask that the board dissolve its selection committee 
and instead have all community board members review and rank all future 
applicants. The current format allows one perspective to dominate.

I submit this perspective to The Current because I know, firsthand, how 
an active community can improve a cleanup and how an absence of such 
community oversight permits political, financial, bureaucratic and other 
less-protective forces to dominate decisions. Over the next two to three 
years, the Spring Valley project will be as complicated as ever, 
including the excavation of the known ordnance pit on Glenbrook Road. 
Unfortunately, the board is in the weakest state it has ever been and 
becoming more ineffective. This is a bad combination for the project's 
future. The project's stakeholders, both inside and outside the project 
boundary, have the right to know.

For more details, feel free to e-mail me at ted@theodorejhenry.com.

Ted Henry is former director of the Community Involvement Program of the 
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Spring Valley cleanup project.

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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