• Welcome
• Keynote: Collaborating with State and Federal Agencies To Meet Urban Environmental Challenges,” The Honorable Clarence Harmon, Mayor of St. Louis
• Open Times Topic Review

Community-Based Solutions to Community-Defined Problems
Presenters: Connie Ruth, U.S. EPA, Office of Mobile Sources; William Smith, Academy for Educational Development; Michael Kronthal, U.S. EPA, Office of Water; and local children from Let Kids Lead

Community involvement is a critical tool in EPA's efforts to increase public awareness of air quality, the impact of mobile sources, and choices individuals can make in their own lives to improve air quality. This session will bring together a panel of experts and community youth who are implementing a community-based pilot program in Kansas City. The pilot program is driven by community and youth involvement and seeks to create a replicable and sustainable program for involving youth and families in reducing the growth of vehicle miles traveled. Panelists will discuss the underlying premise of the program, the techniques used to involve community youth and city leaders, and lessons learned.

EPA/Cooperative Extension Partnership to Support Community-Based Education
Presenters: Elaine Andrews, University of Wisconsin - Cooperative Extension; and Drew Burnett, U.S. EPA, Office of Environmental Education

Gain the skills needed to improve facilitation of community-based education. This workshop provides tools to analyze the effectiveness of a community education strategy. Practical tips result from a 1997-98 study to investigate ways to strengthen the partnership among USDA Cooperative Extension, EPA, and the community. New resources show how to use the partnership to support a local decision-making process and to more effectively plan and deliver locally relevant environmental education for all audiences. Resources describe how to design effective community education programs, how to ensure that communities have access to the information they need and know how to use it, and how to improve links between EPA and Cooperative Extension.

Gauging the Effectiveness of Agency Public Involvement from Citizen Advisory Boards
Presenters: Fred A. Butterfield III, U.S. DOE, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management; Hattie Thomas, U.S. EPA Region 7; and Shawn Grindstatt, Mineral Area College

EPA, DOD, and DOE solicit community-member input to environmental decision-making by means of citizen advisory boards. This presentation will consist of a panel of three Federal employees (one from each agency) paired with three members from their associated citizen advisory boards to address, in an interactive manner with members of the audience, two broad questions: How do Agencies integrate public input obtained through citizen advisory boards into their environmental decisions—and how effective is this judged to be by advisory board members; and what are some of the key indicators that the Agency uses to assess the effectiveness of its citizen advisory boards and other public involvement activities.

The Sustainable Community Redevelopment Process
Presenters: Michael B. Taylor, Vita Nuova; Paul Radcliffe, Electric Power Research Institute; and Vernice Miller, Natural Resource Defense Council

Redeveloping environmentally-impacted properties poses special challenges to all stakeholders. This session will present a new model for redeveloping these properties sustainably. Questions to be answered include: How to involve the community meaningfully in both the cleanup and redevelopment, what sustainable factors should be included, and how to be sure that efforts support the successful redevelopment of the project. The workshop will include: information on the new ASTM Standard for Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment, the environmental design charrette process, and the EPRI SmartPlaces Model. The SmartPlaces model will be showcased demonstrating interactive land use scenarios while integrating planning and management for energy, communications, transportation, water, wastewater, and solid waste.

Facilitating Effective Community Meetings
Presenters: Catherine A. McKinney and Perstephanie M. Thompson, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

How a meeting is conducted can and will have an impact on public participation in the community involvement process. This workshop will discuss four necessary steps to having an efficient and effective meeting — planning, logistics, facilitating, and follow-up. This workshop is designed for community involvement and public participation practitioners responsible for conducting and facilitating community meetings (for example, community assistance panel meetings, public availability sessions, and community planning meetings) and agency and multi-agency meetings. To emphasize developing partnerships with communities and tribal governments, this session will focus on facilitating community meetings. Workshop participants will role-play a hypothetical case to gain practical experience in facilitating community meetings.

Building Bridges Over the River Fox: Strategies for Managing Complex Intergovernmental Partnerships
Presenters: Bri Bill and Mick Hans, U.S. EPA Region 5

EPA's efforts to accelerate cleanup of PCB contamination along Wisconsin's Lower Fox River has led to a partnership of six state, federal, and tribal governments seeking comprehensive settlement with a Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) group of paper mills. The six entities, while unified on some issues, are far apart on others. As a result—through trial and error—a unique communications infrastructure has emerged for working together on certain issues, and independently on others. Due to similarities between the Fox and some other high-profile PCB sediment sites, the Fox effort has also fostered enhanced coordination among three EPA Regional offices and headquarters.

Cleaning Up the Neighborhood: Community-Based Strategies to Prevent Illegal Dumping
Presenter: Paul Ruesch, U.S. EPA Region 5

EPA's Illegal Dumping Prevention Project will be presented, with a focus on the approach and strategy used to assess the problem, convene stakeholders, and develop collaborative community-based projects in five urban geographic initiative areas (Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, Gary, and Cleveland) and six rural Indian reservations. Two or three of these areas will be discussed in case-study format to demonstrate the key components and challenges of the Region 5 approach and strategy. Questions and answers will conclude the session.

The Tale of Two Cities: Two Approaches to Urban Community Engagement
Presenters: Kerry Herndon, Stacy McVicker, Kathleen Fenton, and David Doyle, U.S. EPA Region 7

EPA Region 7 has initiated Community-Based Environmental Protection programs in two mid-western urban communities: St. Louis and Omaha. Because of differing community dynamics, two unique approaches to public engagement were developed and implemented. This session will compare and contrast "The Listening Tour" in St. Louis and "Targeted Network Meetings" in Omaha as models for others to consider. The presenters will also describe their approach to increasing citizen interest in environmental issues; ongoing stakeholder engagement processes for specific environmental projects (including EPA programs); methods for encouraging "citizen democracy;" and how they have learned in both communities, "when you're down, you're not necessarily OUT!"

Development of a Community Team Approach to Address the Issue of Childhood Asthma in Toppenish, Washington—A Pilot Project
Presenters: Dan Robison, U.S. EPA Region 10; Jim Gallagher, Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic; and Ed Chu, U.S. EPA, Office of Children's Health Protection

Toppenish, WA, is the Region 10 pilot community under the new Child Health Champion Community Program. Toppenish is a small, low-income, predominantly Hispanic and Native American community located on the Yakima Indian Nation Reservation. A "Community Team" selected childhood asthma as the environmental risk issue to address and the non-profit Yakima Farm Workers Clinic as the lead entity. This session will discuss team-building issues that surfaced in the formation of the Community Team and how they were addressed, how diversity in team composition is vital in developing a broad-based action plan that the whole community can embrace, and the importance of developing a team that will function beyond EPA funding.

Overcoming Sins of the Past: A TOSC Solution for Mitigating a Legacy of Poor Community Involvement and Other Benefits of Third-Party Outreach
Presenters: Christopher Blakeman and Michael Fernandez, Western Region Hazardous Substance Research Center, Oregon State University

The Western Region Technical Outreach Services for Communities (TOSC) program facilitates ongoing community involvement. One component of this program concerns a widespread hazardous materials release at the Oregon State Penitentiary, Salem, OR. Contaminants were mixed with ground water and the plume has migrated offsite to neighboring residential areas. The agencies historically involved chose to address this matter with little or no public involvement, resulting in distrust and anger within the community. This descriptive and interactive presentation will elucidate TOSC's community-involvement efforts in the facilitation of cleanup plans and the unique benefits of thirdparty involvement.

Working with Local Health Officials: Addressing Community Health Concerns at Hazardous Waste Sites
Presenter: Karen Roof, National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)

Local health officials are often the primary contact for concerned citizens. These officials must therefore be informed and capable of addressing health related community concerns and questions. EPA and the state need to be able to rely on and partner with local health officials providing assistance to the community. The greater the role of local health departments, the better a resource and partner they can be. NACCHO and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have designed a needs-assessment approach to community education. This session will provide a description of local health departments, the needs-assessment tool, and why it is so useful.

Environmental Excellence Business Network
Presenter: Stacia Stelk, Bridging the Gap

Community sustainability efforts recognize the importance of including the business sector as an integral part of the effort. Businesses make many decisions that result in both environmental problems and environmental solutions. Bridging the Gap has created a network of environmentally oriented business leaders who foster the development of that orientation in new businesses. The project brings new businesses into direct contact with respected approaches for natural resource conservation, and provides excellent hands-on examples of conservation and pollution prevention actions in the workplace. This workshop session will teach other communities how to implement an Environmental Excellence Business Network by identifying key partners in communities to facilitate the establishment of business networks.

Building Capacity in Communities through a USDA-EPA Partnership
Presenters: Claudia Walters, U.S. EPA, Office of Research and Development; Drew Burnett, U.S. EPA, Office of Environmental Education; Elaine Andrews and Chet Arnold CSREES; and Chuck Krueger, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Communities are assuming greater roles in identifying problems, setting priorities, and devising solutions to environmental problems. However, community members frequently do not have the time or ability to surf the Internet, do not know who has the information, or even know what kind of information to ask for. This presentation will explore utilizing the extensive infrastructure of the USDA "extension network" to translate and apply information for specific local environmental management decisions. The USDA "extension network" brings forth manpower from the county and local level to Land-Grant universities. The extension agents are known by the community and have the technical ability to understand and interpret information for the local community.

Lessons Learned About Meaningful Community Involvement
Presenters: Bruce Engelbert, U.S. EPA, Office of Emergency and Remedial Response; Andy Bain, U.S. EPA Region 9; Cynthia Babich, Del Amo Action Committee; and Jane Saks, EG&G

Learn from successful efforts to get community members involved at Superfund sites. With the help of the community involvement coordinator and a community member from a site, the presenters will have a dialogue with the audience about how to achieve meaningful public participation. The session will:

• encourage reflection on creative ways of promoting community involvement;
• promote sharing of ideas and experiences among participants; and
• convey actual lessons learned about how to make community involvement effective.
  

Village-Based Solutions to Rural Sanitation Challenges in Alaska
Presenters: Nina R. Miller, Alaska Native Health Board; and Joe Sarcone, U.S. EPA Region 10

Approximately 45% of Alaska Native rural households do not have piped water and sewer services. The Alaska Native Health Board, with funding from EPA, initiated the Rural Sanitation Facilities Operation and Maintenance Demonstration Project. The purpose is to identify ways to assist villages in meeting their management, operation, and maintenance needs. Administered by an Alaska Native organization, this project provides small grants for sustainable, village-based solutions to difficult rural sanitation challenges using a rural development approach. The lessons learned from this demonstration project have application for understanding and working effectively with all communities. The approach is inclusive, participatory, flexible, and complimentary of existing programs.

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