Weighing the Risks: Cultural Impacts of Tribal Community Participation in the EPA Hazard Ranking System
Presented by: Lucy Moore, Lucy Moore Assoc., Inc.; and Margaret Chavez, Pueblo Office of Environmental Protection

Throughout the country communities are successfully cleaning up hazardous waste sites through the Superfund program. Prerequisite to Superfund funding is an evaluation of site contamination through Superfund’s Hazard Ranking System (HRS), which scores hazardous waste sites on a numerical system. Not one of over 200 hazardous sites on Pueblo lands in New Mexico has qualified for clean up under the HRS, a system geared toward dense populations with very different life styles and uses of natural resources. With an EPA pilot grant, The Pueblo Office of Environmental Protection (POEP) is working with pueblo communities to incorporate cultural and religious values into the ranking system, putting a value on medicinal use of herbs, religious use of water, soil, plants and wildlife, and use of certain plants and natural resources in the arts or daily life. This pilot raises difficult questions of: 1) equity between Indian and non-Indian populations; 2) need for privacy of Native American cultural and religious information; 3) impact of one tribal group’s participation and disclosure of information on neighboring pueblos; and, 4) how to express and protect cultural values in a numerical grading system.

This panel presentation will describe the pilot process to date, and identify lessons learned. Tribal leadership from two pueblos-one participating, and one not participating- will offer their thinking on the risk involved in revealing culturally sensitive information in exchange for funding of clean up of sites. The Pueblo Office of Environmental Protection helped each of the 21 tribal communities make the decision, through public involvement processes, consultation with religious leaders, technical information, and governmental decision-making processes. A key challenge raised with the audience will be the need to achieve a balance between the need for confidentiality, the need to protect cultural resources, and the need to cleanup hazardous sites.

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