Final Report (all chapters)

Superfund Community Involvement Toolkit. 92
As even a cursory examination of these
documents and the related online resources shows, the EPA has made enormous efforts to inform
and involve the affected populations.
There is no doubt that the EPA has become much more sophisticated and effective in
dealing with what continues to be a very delicate public controversy. In other respects, however,
the EPA has not been able to reconcile community demands with bureaucratic authority and
expectations from former property owners. Officially, the EPA has moved away from a strategy
based on “communication” and adopted an approach that emphasizes dialogue – what
practitioners describe as “two-way communication.” The Superfund Community Involvement
Handbook, published in 2002, includes among its “core values for public participation” the
expectation that “People should have a say in decisions about actions that affect their lives,” and
furthermore, that public participation “includes the promise that the public’s contribution will
influence the decision.” The handbook also requires that “[t]he public participation process
communicates the interests and meets the needs of all participants.” 93
One does not need to be a public administration specialist to recognize that these generic
declarations of intent, as laudable as they may be, provide precious little guidance to
administrators in the trenches. What does it mean from an administrative standpoint that the
community “should have a say”? Should community views simply be accepted on their face
value, even if the EPA has come to the conclusion that the option advocated by the community
would produce marginal health benefits whose costs could not be justified? What if the option
favored by the community from a public health perspective is inferior to the agency-preferred
alternative? If the EPA determines that it is politically preferable to endorse the community’s
preferred option, even if it is the less-than-optimal choice, how should the EPA justify its
decision to the responsible parties?
Left without appropriate regulatory guidance, program administrators could respond in one
of two ways. They could interpret their role as a purely informational one. In this role, the EPA’s
primary responsibility is simply to adequately inform the general public, and secondarily to
“listen” to the community’s concerns. The requirement to listen, in this case, is simply a
procedural obligation, and does not entail a duty to incorporate the community’s concerns into
the clean-up plan. This strategy is entirely compatible with the technocratic instincts of many
federal agencies, and has been the EPA’s preferred mode of operation for many years. 94 It allows
the agency to formally meet its statutory mandate, but also to preserve its authority.
Alternatively, program administrators could envisage extending the clean-up process until a
consensus among the affected population and the responsible parties is reached. This option is
unlikely to garner significant administrative support, however, for several reasons. By its nature,
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See http://www.epa.gov/superfund/tools/.
See the Superfund Community Involvement Handbook, p.7.
See, for example, Folk, "Public Participation in the Superfund Cleanup Process." for a detailed account of the
EPA approach to public involvement.
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