Wednesday, August 30
| 8:30 am - 10:00 am Concurrent Sessions |
| Nonviolent Communication: A Method to Deal
with Citizen Mistrust Presenter: Mary A. Wenska, Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. This presentation will cover a model for nonviolent communication (NVC) that enables people to respond to themselves and others compassionately, even in adversarial or hostile situations. It is based on the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, a psychologist who founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Dr. Rosenberg and others have used NVC methods to support the peace process in the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. NVC, with a focus on observations, not judgments, and identification of feelings, needs, and requests, offers insight for dealing with citizen mistrust of EPA and resolving emotionally charged environmental issues. |
| How to Succeed in Health Risk
Communication with Diverse Populations: A Case Study Involving the Asian and
Pacific Islander Communities in Washington State Presenters: Diane Urban, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR); Lua Pritchard, Korean Women's Association; Alan Rammer, Washington State Department of Health; Thanh Nguyen and Kim Clarke, Tacoma Pierce County Health Department The Asian and Pacific Islander Environmental Education Project employed effective health risk communication techniques to implement a model project. The project trained youth from six cultural backgrounds to promote informed intergenerational decision-making and normative change regarding safe and sustainable aquatic resource management. The goals included changing shellfish harvesting habits, introducing concepts of health risks, and instituting long-term resource conservation. By utilizing youth trained in these areas to deliver culturally appropriate education and using videos, the project eliminated barriers that normally impede getting messages to elders. A multifaceted coalition provided oversight, resulting in increased respect and trust between community members and agency staff. |
| The Cultural Dynamics of Tribal Source
Water Protection Presenters: Michael Kronthal, U.S. EPA, Office of Water; Kreg Ettenger, Environmental Anthropology Fellow; and Jim Ransom, HETF, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory The 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act established source water protection as the initial step in a multi-barrier approach to protecting the sources of people's drinking water. Source water protection relies on voluntary, local initiatives to prevent contamination associated with local activities and land use. This session will describe an EPA project to provide social science technical assistance to nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to overcome cultural obstacles to tribal efforts to protect ground water sources from contamination. Panelists will describe how the cultural dynamics at the local level required a creative approach to community involvement. |
| Citizen Involvement in Source Water
Awareness Campaign Presenters: Ron Adams, Louisiana State University Extension Service; Jack Beard, Lincoln Parish Police Jury; Ronda Martin, Union County Conservation District; Dorothy Morrison, International City/County Management Association This session will present a discussion on how citizens of Lincoln Park, Louisiana, worked with the International City/County Management Association, a local government association, to develop and implement a media campaign. The campaign was aimed at increasing the level of awareness of small rural communities about source water protection issues. The session will highlight the issues the community was faced with prior to the media campaign. It will also indicate how the community got involved, how they worked together to adapt the campaign message, and the benefits of the campaign to the community. The goal of this presentation is to educate attendees about effective ways to disseminate educational information to smaller, rural communities. ICMA expects to produce a guideline report on procedures for conducting a media campaign in small communities by the end of the year. |
| Memphis Depot, Tennessee: Effective Risk
Communication Strategy Creating Communication Excellence Presenters: Mr. Dale R. Bowlus, Jr., U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM); Mr. Shawn Phillips, Memphis Depot Caretaker (MDC); and Mr. Terry Flynn, APR, Frontline Corporate Communications, Inc. Since 1997, the Memphis Depot has been involved in a proactive, community-based outreach program as part of the U.S. Government's commitment to return the former distribution depot site to productive community use, under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) strategy. This study looks at the results of the risk communication/community outreach model, which recently replaced the more traditional, public information model the depot used. The key to creating communication excellence is the implementation of a strategic risk communication program during environmental restoration activity. This study depicts the successes and evaluation of the risk communication strategy at Memphis. |
| Demonstrating the Effectiveness of the
Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment Process: A Tool for Designing &
Evaluating Stakeholder Involvement Presenters: Michael Taylor, Partnership for Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment; Vernice Miller, PSBR; Deeohn Ferris, PSBR, and Jim Rocco, PSBR The Partnership for Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment (PSBR), under a cooperative agreement with U.S. EPA, has developed a new evaluation tool that helps communities both plan stakeholder involvement programs and measure the effectiveness of them. The SBR's primary objective is to "meaningfully involve stakeholders in the cleanup and redevelopment of environmentally-impacted properties." This new tool allows the user to define inputs, activities, outputs, and short and long-term outcomes, as a means of defining and measuring stakeholder involvement and its impact on the SBR process. The tool is being used to support the Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment process based upon the ASTM standard for Sustainable Brownfields Redevelopment. This process is being implemented on numerous sites across the country. The Partnership is evaluating the impact on each project of stakeholder involvement. This research will provide a foundation for designing, implementing, and measuring the success of broad stakeholder involvement in many Superfund and Brownfields redevelopment projects. |
| 10:00 -11:30 am Concurrent Sessions |
| Nonviolent Communication: A Method to Deal with Citizen Mistrust (continued from the 8:30 session) |
| How to Succeed in Health Risk Communication with Diverse Populations: A Case Study Involving the Asian and Pacific Islander Communities in Washington State (continued from the 8:30 session) |
| Incorporating Tribal Values in EPA
Programs: Two Regional Examples Speakers: Cindy Pilot, Louden Village contact for the EPA grant; Martha Sommer, Louden Village Acting Environmental Director; Kevin Mayer, Remedial Project Manager, U.S. EPA Region 9; and Brian Wallace, Chairman, Washoe Tribe This community affairs session focuses on tribal environmental justice issues and the incorporation of tribal values into the EPA's programs. Two regional case studies will highlight the importance of EPA staff expanding their own understanding of what is meant by resource protection, perception of risks, and working effectively with tribal partners. The Region 10 example is the Louden Village (Alaska) Integrated Waste Management Grant, a two-year project that addressed solid and hazardous waste management. The Louden Village Tribe worked closely with diverse partners, including the City of Galena and the Air Force, to create and implement this waste management strategy. The Region 9 example is the Leviathan Mine (California) Superfund Site, located upstream of the East Fork of the Carson River. The East Fork flows through Dresslerville, Nevada, on the Washoe Reservation. The East Fork is a major western Nevada water supply source and is relied on heavily for fish/wildlife habitat, fishing, recreation, and other uses. The EPA has funded a two-year project to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (even prior to the site being listed on the NPL in May 2000) for the Leviathan Mine Support Agency Cooperative Agreement. The Cooperative Agreement allows for the meaningful participation of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California in the collection of tribal data for the subsequent remedial investigation and other studies relevant to the remediation of Leviathan Mine. This includes program administration, review and comment on reports, training, inventory of tribal resources, and outreach and education. This vehicle ensures that the tribal culture values associated with Leviathan are incorporated into the subsequent work to follow. |
| This is How We Do It: Building Informed,
Sustainable, and Empowered Communities Presenters: Noemi Emeric, Karla Johnson, and Derrick Kimbrough, U.S. EPA Region 5 The panelists will discuss how the Region's Environmental Justice initiatives have led to increased public participation in environmental decisions, communication tools for communities, cultural awareness, and enforcement actions. Outreach/education initiatives in Northwest Indiana, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and East St. Louis, Illinois (all of which are predominantly Hispanic and African-American communities) will be highlighted. The panelists will provide instructions on hosting a community-driven environmental information forum, involving citizens in the Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) process, and providing opportunities for environmental job training. More specifically, the panelists will discuss how the Region significantly increased community participation in outreach/education efforts by developing and implementing an innovative "community-developed workshops/agendas" strategy. |
| Pittsfield and PCBs: The Threat is
Fading Presenters: Bryan Olson and Angela Bonarrigo, U.S. EPA Region 1 The presenters will examine the community involvement techniques used from1997 to the present during a heated public-relations battle with General Electric (GE) followed by an equally-heated negotiations with the company and a partnership of federal and state agencies to reach an agreement on the cleanup of PCB contamination in Pittsfield and the Housatonic River. PCBs pervade this community where GE was once a major employer—impacting backyards, schoolyards, recreation areas, and the River. The presentation will highlight how EPA built broad support for a comprehensive cleanup, while side-stepping Superfund listing and ending GE's campaign to oppose cleanup. Lastly, the presentation will look at the role EPA has created for environmental, residential, business, and political stakeholders to participate in implementing the cleanup. |
| Fall From Grace: Libby Montana Residents
Help You Read Between the Lines Presenters: Brad Black, Lincoln County; Wendy Thomi, U.S. EPA Helena, Montana; Diana Hammer, U.S. EPA Region 8; and Gayle Benefield, Lincoln County Asbestos Victims Relief Organization The site Community Involvement Coordinators (CICs) will describe the background of the site, how and when EPA got involved, community involvement, major site activities, and coordination with other agencies. The CICs will highlight some larger-than-Libby issues that were and are unfolding concurrently with the remediation work in Libby. Each community member will speak about one important aspect of the site, which will include discussion of the impact of EPA's communications and community involvement, how this project got started, the media attention, the economic effects, the effects of the investigation, and medical testing. |
| 1:00 - 4:00 Field Trip |
| Field Trip to Creek Keepers
Projects Presenters: Harini Madhavan, Halima O'Neil, and Steve Cochrane, Creek Keepers The mission of the Creek Keepers is to support the development of a multicultural environmental leadership, to raise awareness of urban youth to environmental quality within their neighborhood, to educate about the causes and sources of pollution, to empower students to take actions to improve the environmental quality and public health of their community, and to provide employment and job training to youth. The Creek Keepers seek opportunities to assist organizations within the Wildcat and San Pablo Creek Watersheds. This field trip will take participants on a watershed tour and have participants meet with project/community members to learn how a youth employment project benefits the community. Participants will visit a variety of Creek Keepers projects and do some type of a hands on activity related to the projects (most likely native plant work and water quality monitoring). |
| 2:00 - 3:30 Concurrent Sessions |
| Community Involvement in Hispanic
Communities Presenter: Maria D. Teran-MacIver, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) This presentation will describe how three different Hispanic communities in urban, rural, and island settings responded to environmental health events and subsequent public health activities. Each of these communities reacted to an environmental health threat based on their unique and culturally defined interpretation of the events and their perceived consequences. Each community presented unique communication challenges. Strategies employed and lessons learned in these communities will serve to prepare community involvement personnel to more effectively design sensitive, respectful, and culturally relevant programs, products, and processes that can bridge communication gaps and improve collaboration. |
| EPA's Community-Based Environmental
Protection Approach: Overcoming the Institutional Barriers to Better
Implementation Presenter: Gerald Filbin, U.S. EPA, Office Policy and Reinvention During three discussions over the last year, the EPA's Reinvention Action Council (RAC), which is comprised of EPA's senior career managers from the Programs and Regions, identified institutional, operational, and perceptual barriers within the Agency that impede it from working with communities to address sustainability issues. The presenters will present those barriers along with Regional examples of how those barriers may have worked to impede EPA's effectiveness as a community partner, as well as some examples of how those barriers were overcome. The session will provide an opportunity for participants to identify potential solutions to these barriers. |
| Preparing for the Media
On-Site Presenters: PerStephanie M. Thompson and Ruby Palmer, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) This workshop is designed to provide a comprehensive public health response for community involvement and public participation practitioners responsible for developing talking points for the media. It will also provide coaching of other staff to communicate with the press. Crafting messages to the media determines how information reaches the public, and what the message means to the person reading the newspaper article or watching the television news story. The key goal for working with the media is to reach your target audience with the right message and getting the real audience to listen. ATSDR personnel coordinate all media activities through the Office of Policy and External Affairs (OPEA) before contacting the media, going on-site, or preparing releases to the public. Workshop participants will receive step-by-step instructions on developing messages, selecting appropriate communication options, and conveying those messages to the media. This workshop will discuss how community involvement coordinators and practitioners can develop long-lasting working relationships with the media for on-site activities. |
| Boulder Area Sustainability Information
Network (BASIN): One Community's Approach to Gathering and Providing
Environmental Data Presenters: Shelia F. Murphy and Tammy Fiebelkorn, City of Boulder BASIN is a collaborative effort to present environmental data to the public in an easily understandable way. BASIN aims to assist the average citizen in understanding where water comes from and how their actions affect water quality. This project was funded by an EPA EMPACT grant and is administered by the City of Boulder. Numerous local stakeholders contribute to the project, including community groups, USGS, and the University of Colorado. Thie presenters will discuss the process involved in gathering data from numerous sources, interpreting a broad array of data, and presenting this data in a meaningful manner to the public. |
| Educate to Action: Using Cutting Edge
Tools to Motivate a Watershed Community Presenter: Gayle Marriner-Smith, EcoVision, Inc. This session is an instructional case study of the Peconic Estuary Program's award-winning Public Education/Outreach campaign. Highlighting innovative motivational tools, this presentation will colorfully detail how a watershed community was galvanized into taking right action in the home, the community, and the polls. This presentation will reveal how much of the needed implementation funding was put in place, and how many of the plan's recommendations are already underway, prior to the release of the final plan, thanks to an educated and motivated public. Thought and action provoking, this is a must for all organizations/Regions attempting to coordinate community involvement. |
| 3:40 - 5:10 Concurrent Sessions |
| Public Involvement in Drinking Water
Protection: A Preliminary Community Assessment Presenters: Susan Seacrest and Jonna Jackson, The Groundwater Foundation As part of a study of the extent of community involvement in Superfund communities that depend on groundwater for their drinking water supplies, The Groundwater Foundation (GF) identified key factors that influence positive community involvement outcomes and categorized these factors into four areas of community responsibility. The second phase of this study will involve developing an assessment tool that can be used by communities to evaluate their own community involvement progress. In this presentation, GF representatives will discuss the key factors and the community responsibility areas, how they also affect community involvement activities across EPA programs, and how the experiences of the GF and the findings of their study can be applied to other EPA programs. |
| Developing a Community Advisory Group with
Pueblo/Non-Pueblo Communities Presenters: Peggy Six and Marion Naranjo, community members, and Beverly Negri and Donn Walters, U.S. EPA Region 6 The Rio Arriba Environmental Health Association (el RAEHA) has been working with the community of Espanola and the Santa Clara Pueblo Environmental Office to assist their communities in addressing health and environmental issues related to the North Railroad Avenue Plume Superfund site that is impacting Espanola and Pueblo lands. Both groups have been representing the community's concerns about the impact of the contaminated groundwater with EPA and the New Mexico Environmental Department. Because the groundwater contamination crosses over into the Santa Clara Pueblo, both groups believe that if the communities are partners and stakeholders in the Community Advisory Group (CAG), the CAG will be more effective. They both want to understand how to best utilize the tools to bring the two communities together in a multi-cultural CAG. Because of the Pueblo's sovereignty issues and concern about protection of their cultural heritage, this cooperative effort may be difficult to achieve. |
| The 4 Ps: How to Protect the Environment,
Produce Jobs, Provide Environmental Training, and Promote Economic
Development Presenters: Myra Blakely, U.S. EPA Headquarters; Noemi Emeric, U.S. EPA Region 5; Sharon Beard, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; and Dwayne Jones, Young Community Developers The panelists will discuss how, through collaborative partnerships, the "4 P's" can be produced in any geographic area. The panelists will highlight EPA's job training grant programs including: the Brownfields Job Training and Development grants, the Superfund Job Training Initiative, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' job training grants; and Brownfields Job Worker Training and the Minority Job Worker Training programs. Dwayne Jones of Young Community Developers, a local non-profit that implements grants provided by both agencies, has an exemplary track record for creative collaborations, recruitment of environmental justice communities, and job placement rates, and will discuss his experiences. The panelists will provide: a brief overview of each grant program; how to initiate a job training program through collaborative partnerships; how to implement the job training program; how to involve the community and how the partnering creates better community relations; and lessons learned and best practices. |
| Are We Doing Anything Right? Meeting the
Needs of Environmental Justice Communities Presenters: Cynthia B. Peurifoy and Yvonne O. Jones, U.S. EPA Region 4; Janetta Coats and Ursula Lennox, U.S. EPA Region 6; Debra Ramirez, community representative; Harold Mitchell, Re-Genesis, Inc.; and Mary Wenska, Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. The goal of this panel discussion is to have a frank and engaging discussion about whether EPA and others are responding to the needs of environmental justice communities and to provide recommendations for enhanced responsiveness in the future. Panelists and the audience will examine the processes EPA and others use to foster and support public participation efforts in environmental justice communities. Specific areas of interest include looking at the role of EPA, the states, local governments and industry in empowering environmental justice communities; trust; resources; tools; community education; empowerment; expectations; and priorities. |
| Non-Traditional Public Participation
Strategies in a Carribean Coastal Community: The Community of Piñones
Case Study Presenters: Mayra Vega Gerena, Edna Villanueva, Susana Rivera-Colón, Carmen Guerrero-Pérez, San Juan Bay Estuary Program Piñones is a coastal community in the municipality of Loíza located within the limits of the San Juan Bay Estuary Program (SJBEP) system. Its unique cultural and natural values make it one of the most frequently visited areas of the San Juan Bay Estuary. During the past few years, the SJBEP has assisted a small business community in the development of a solid waste management/recycling project. Also, the SJBEP is working on an ecotourism initiative started by community leaders. Piñones' special environmental, historic, and social circumstances, as well as its cultural idiosyncracy, have represented an interesting challenge to traditional public participation strategies. Non-traditional community outreach and environmental education efforts have been powerful allies in the success of these initiatives. |
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