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Breaking Through the Barriers
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Report of the Planning Committee for
The Regional Forum on Military Base Cleanup Technology
September 26 & 27, 1996
Milbrae, CA
a project of:
United States Department of Defense
Office of Environmental Security
United States Navy
Office of Regional Environmental Coordinators
Western Governors' Association
DOIT Hazardous Waste Generic Technologies Working Group
Forum Planning Committee
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Region 9
California Environmental Protection Agency
Department of Toxic Substances Control
Bay Area Economic F O R U M
Bay Area Defense Conversion Action Team (BADCAT)
CAREER/PRO
A Program of The San Francisco Urban Institute, SFSU
Forum Planning Committee Committee Co-Chairs
Peter Wood, Senior Hazardous Substances Scientist, Cal/EPA
Lenny Siegel, Project Director, SFSU, CAREER/PRO
Members
Erika Bley, Environmental Technology Coordinator, BADCAT
Mary Grisco, Volunteer, Alaska Sierra Club, Alaska Chapter
Aimee Houghton, Project Associate, CAREER/PRO
Sean Hogan, Superfund Technical Liaison, US EPA, Reg. 9
Joe Iovenitti, Project Engineer, Weiss Associates
Gerry Katz, Navy, EFA West
Kathy Marcel, WGA Contractor
Michael Pound, Southwest Division, Naval Facilities Engineering
Joe Ruziska, Environmental Project Manager, COMNAVBASE
John Schofield, Pres., Thermatrix
Project Coordinator
Kathy Marcel, WGA Contractor
Local Logistical Coordinator
Aimee Houghton, CAREER/PRO
Local Logistical Support
Erika Bley, BADCAT
Report Drafting
Kathy Marcel
Peter Wood Executive Summary
The Regional Forum on Military Base Cleanup Technology Part I
Program
September 26 & 27, 1996
Milbrae, CA
Introduction
On September 26, 1996, at the Clarion Hotel in Milbrae, California, over 300
individuals from nine states in the Pacific region representing diverse groups and
interests met for two days to address regional issues that affect the development of
innovative technologies for the environmental cleanup of former and existing military
bases.
The Regional Forum on Military Base Cleanup Technology was sponsored
and funded by the Department of Defense, Office of Environmental Security, and
co-sponsored by the Department of Navy, Office of Regional Environmental Coordinators, US
EPA, Region 9, California Environmental Protection Agency, the Bay Area Defense Conversion
Action Team, and SFSU CAREER/PRO. The event had two principal goals:
draw lessons learned from the Forum experience to recommend a model to DoD for
implementing a regional stakeholder approach in other areas of the country, and
elicit a broad-based, multi-state regional perspective on military base cleanup and technology needs and concerns, leading to recommended action items for communication to national policy and funding decision-makers.
Background
The Regional Forum was inspired by a three-year volunteer effort
connected with the Federal Advisory Committee for the Development of On-Site Innovative
Technology (DOIT), sponsored by the Western Governors' Association (WGA). Aimed at
breaking through the barriers impeding faster, better, safer, and cheaper environmental
cleanup, the DOIT initiative spawned a unique coalition among representatives from:
the US Departments of Defense, Energy, and Interior, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the military service organizations
State environmental regulators from 16 western states and natural resource trustee
agencies
Sovereign Indian nations
environmental restoration professionals, contractors, consultants, and project managers
private technology developers, vendors, and investors, and other research and development professionals
The DOIT Hazardous Waste Generic Technologies (HWGT) working group, funded by the
Department of Defense (DoD) to address military base cleanup issues, was comprised of
25-30 active members. The principal challenge faced by this group was overcoming the
obstacles to effective interaction and problem-solving that inevitably occur among
individuals representing a multiplicity of backgrounds and interests.
Before the DOIT initiative finalized its work in June 1996, the HWGT Working Group
submitted its final recommendations to the DOIT Federal Advisory Committee for inclusion
in the Committee's final report. One of the Group's recommendations was for DoD and other
organizations to sponsor a regional stakeholder forum to identify and make recommendations
to DoD regarding regional military base technology needs and issues.
In late June 1996, a Planning Committee, made up of members of the former DOIT HWGT
Working Group and other organizations, was authorized by DoD to proceed with organizing
the Regional Forum. Hundreds of individuals from a variety of constituencies in the states
located in US EPA, Regions 9 and 10, were invited to attend. The Committee reached out to
a wide audience of public, private, and community interests in several Western states and
requested their participation. Because of DoD's funding for the event, registration fees
were waived and travel scholarships were offered to participants from as far away as the
north slope of Alaska, who otherwise could not have attended.
The Committee
designed the Forum's program and format to promote extensive formal and informal
interaction among participants. The group invited prominent speakers from sponsoring and
other organizations to address participants at the opening plenary and for the second-day
luncheon keynote address. The Committee then identified the topics for the four breakout
sessions:
Communications and Information Sharing
Regulatory Barriers
Commercialization of Innovative Technology
Procurement and Contracting
Each breakout session chair was asked to identify a balanced group of panelists,
develop an interactive program, and report back to and seek input from the Planning
Committee at a weekly conference call. Because of the time pressures involved in putting
the Forum on, the Planning Committee expected attendance to be low; the estimates were
between 100-150. Actual attendance was over 300.
From the reaction of participants, as well as from written evaluations, the Forum was a resounding success. People felt good about being there. They learned. They were heard. They established working relationships with individuals from other constituencies and distant locations. Community representatives, who have been active at the local level, proved both hungry for and capable of taking part in national policy discussions. Participant responses revealed strong support for the concept of a regional vehicle for eliciting stakeholder input. The Planning Committee also learned several lessons to improve and replicate the event, as discussed in Part II, below.
The members of the Forum Planning Committee wish to acknowledge the contributions of
the Department of Defense, the other sponsoring organizations, and the wide array of
speakers and participants, who generously gave their time in making this event a success.
The Committee is pleased to present this report on the Regional Forum on Military
Base Cleanup Technology.
Overcoming Barriers to
Technology Innovation
Technology developers love their technologies. They love talking about their
technologies. And they often have difficulty comprehending why the rest of the world does
not share their enthusiasm. In many instances, the reason is that few people either know
about their technology or fully understand how it works.
In 1988, the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence (AFCEE), which had been
delegated the daunting responsibility of cleaning up over 2000 fuel-contaminated sites,
launched a broad-based program to test and promote a promising, safe, and extremely
low-cost technology for the remediation of petroleum waste. The technology, called
bioventing, basically involves pumping air into fuel-contaminated soil to stimulate the
growth of naturally occurring microorganisms, which use the contaminants as a food source.
The Air Force
tested the bioventing technology at more that 100 different sites at over 40 installations
with excellent results and few problems. Yet, at each site, AFCEE claimed to encounter a
lack of enthusiasm from state regulators and other stakeholders when it proposed to use
bioventing as a cleanup remedy. Moreover, despite the number and extent of AFCEE's
successful experiences with the technology, neither the private sector nor even other DoD
service branches or federal agencies had accepted bioventing as a viable
treatment option. What was the problem? What was preventing the widespread acceptance
and commercialization of the bioventing technology? These were the questions AFCEE brought
to the DOIT HWGT Working Group when it asked for their assistance.
AFCEE's experience with bioventing is only one among dozens of example which raises the
issue: If safe technologies or processes exist with the potential for expediting or
improving the clean-up process at lower costs, why aren't they being used?
The answer to this question depends on whom is asked. Technology developers and private
investors point the finger at regulators for, they contend, tying up the system with
overly-cautious and often unnecessary and duplicative verification requirements, at
federal agencies for their inertia and inefficiency and for complex procurement
requirements that often disadvantage or discourage innovation, at DoD service branches for
their failure to coordinate technology development and information sharing, at remediation
contractors for refusing to consider new approaches that might negatively impact (i.e.
diminish the value of) their contractual agreements, and at community members for their
fears that innovations will lower cleanup standards or threaten their safety. When the
same question is put to members of the other groups, the finger is pointed elsewhere,
including at technology developers and private investors, for their failure, it is
claimed, to provide adequate and straightforward information and data about new
technologies.
In response to AFCEE's request for help in unraveling the conundrum, in November 1995
the HWGT Working Group sponsored a broad-based stakeholder forum at Hill AFB, located
north of Salt Lake City, to explain and demonstrate the bioventing technology and to put
the question directly to parties with a stake in the effective cleanup of
fuel-contaminated soil. The participants' answers were illuminating. What became apparent
from discussions at the Hill Bioventing Forum was that the one group - state environmental
regulators - everyone assumed was the major impediment to acceptance of the technology in
fact was not. A polling of the environmental regulatory community made clear that not one
incidence could be sited of regulatory disapproval of a proposed use of bioventing at a
fuel-contaminated site.
The HWGT Working Group, as did many of the participants at both the Hill Bioventing
Forum and the September 26-27 Regional Forum, concluded in its final
report to the DOIT Coordinating Committee that there are three fundamental obstacles that
any effort to integrate new technologies into the cleanup system is likely to face, each
of which are attributable, to some degree or another, to all groups involved in the
process:
failures of communication and information sharing
lack of coordination
absence of incentives to approve of, accept, or use new technology.
But clarity about the sources of the problem is only one step, albeit an important one,
in the right direction. The cornerstone and greatest challenge in overcoming the barriers
to cleanup innovation is getting all groups and individuals with stakes in the system
talking and working constructively and creatively together to find practical,
cost-effective answers that meet everyone's principal needs for efficient, effective,
safe, cost-conscious environmental cleanup. The process experiment held at Hill AFB and
other similar initiatives sponsored by the DOIT working groups established the
effectiveness of overcoming the isolation that prevents people and groups with varied
interests in promoting innovation from collaborating to address the barriers to new
technologies and processes.
As outlined below, among their numerous other findings and proposals, Forum participants found a need for a standardized protocol for evaluating new technologies. They also recommended that more resources be explicitly earmarked for technology demonstrations and that independent technology "champions" within key organizations be used to build support for promising technologies.
Both the DOIT
initiative and the Regional Forum on Military Base Cleanup Technology were
designed to facilitate communications and stakeholder participation to generate
cooperative, practical solutions to overcome impediments to the use of innovative
technology. These initiatives were also designed to themselves serve as models to address
the most important component in the problem of sparking enthusiasm for cleanup innovation
-- the barriers to effective human interaction.
The Importance of
a Regional Stakeholder Perspective
in Developing a Needs-Based
Technology Assessment
The concept of combining "regionalism" with innovative technology development
originated from the WGA DOIT initiative. DOIT was founded on the belief that individuals
and communities will work together to develop the best solutions to the problems they
face, if given the opportunity to do so. However, this simple, yet intuitively obvious
idea often has been overlooked by federal technology development programs, which have
focused on issues of technical efficacy while foregoing the opportunity to elicit and
include input from those people working on and affected by military base cleanups.
Since the mid-1980s, the federal government has supported a number of initiatives established to facilitate the development and demonstration of innovative cleanup technologies. Unfortunately, these ventures have not been successful in producing the urgently needed number and variety of new technologies capable of better, faster, cheaper, and safer cleanups. The absence of communication links between these federal technology development programs and the end-users of cleanup technology, that is, those individuals involved with the actual cleanup, is a major impediment to the acceptance and use of innovative technologies. In business terms, these technology development programs have generated products (i.e. cleanup technologies) without first conducting a market survey to determine the needs of the customer, which in this case are the cleanup remedial project managers (RPMs) and the Restoration Advisory Boards (RABs).
The Bay Area
Defense Conversion Action Team (BADCAT) Environmental Technology Partnership (ETP)
represents a new breed of technology demonstration program conceived specifically to
address regional technology needs. The goal of the ETP is to expedite the cleanup and
transfer of properties at the San Francisco Bay Area's twelve closing bases by
facilitating technology demonstrations that focus on addressing regional contamination
problems with input from RPMs and RABs.
While both the Regional Forum and the BADCAT ETP represent regional technology
development initiatives, additional programs of this kind could assist the federal
government in clarifying cleanup technology needs at military bases in other regions in
the country. By creating a process to identify and convey regional technology needs to
decision-makers, the federal government would ensure that future national technology
development policy is based on the needs and concerns of all stakeholders.
The Regional
Forum held in Milbrae in September 1996 offered federal decision-makers an opportunity to
listen to the concerns regarding technology development and funding of individuals in US
EPA Regions 9 and 10. Input from stakeholders in other parts of the country would assist
federal technology development and demonstration programs by helping to prioritize their
efforts to develop and field technologies that address real environmental needs. As with
the simple notion of a community working together to solve a common problem, it is
becoming apparent that the single most important factor in facilitating the use of
innovative cleanup technologies is the creation of communication links that coordinate and
integrate technology development, are responsive to existing demands, and are transferred
efficiently throughout the federal, state, and local levels.
Final Plenary
Synopsis
At the final plenary session, facilitated by Lenny Siegel of CAREER/ PRO and Joe
Iovenitti of Weiss Associates, the chairs of the breakout sessions reported on each
group's major conclusions. Participants were then asked to work with others at their
luncheon tables to identify the most significant findings and recommendations they wished
to have communicated to DoD to encourage the development, demonstration, and use of
innovative cleanup technology.
At the conclusion of the final plenary session, Lenny Siegel observed that reports from
the breakout groups' discussions established that regulatory and contracting barriers can
be surmounted if there is a will to get the job done. He summarized the participants'
proposals for fostering better and cheaper cleanup and the development of effective and
safe new technologies under three focus areas:
Communications
- Utilize needs-based networking to identify and coordinate common technology and process needs among sites.
- Notify and share information among all interests and organizations by focusing the information provided and identifying resources for additional information.
Funding for Technology Demonstrations
- Establish a cleanup technology demonstration account for each military service designated specifically for funding of technology demonstrations .
Funding for Cleanup
- Absent a clear commitment for cleanup and adequate funding to accomplish it, there is no incentive to innovate and develop safer, better, and cheaper cleanup technologies.
Breakout Sessions
Summary of Session Recommendations
Communication and Information Sharing
It is crucial for DoD to ensure early community involvement in the demonstrations of
innovative remediation technologies that meet cleanup standards and also protect public
health and the environment. DoD's support for community involvement should include
incentives for participation and technical training.
Commercialization
DoD should reduce over-evaluation of innovative technologies through unnecessary
repetition of testing by creating incentives for innovation and establishing consensus
protocols for technology appraisal. DoD should also improve community involvement in
technology demonstration and selection processes.
Regulatory Barriers
It is only with the community's participation that critical regulatory issues such as
the scope of acceptable risk and uncertainty in the selection and use of new technologies
can be fully understood and resolved by all interests affected by the cleanup process.
Additionally, regulators should avoid undue restrictiveness in the scope of RD&D
permits issued for treatability/pilot scale studies, especially for in situ treatment
evaluations.
Procurement and Contracting
To facilitate the contracting and procurement process, technology vendors must be given
access to information on how to get approval for demonstrating a technology or for
implementing one which has been successfully demonstrated. The Services should also
develop approaches to better involve RABs at the earliest stages in technology
demonstrations. DoD should provide direct funding for all or part of technology R&D
demonstrations and should establish specific contract requirements and vehicles which
provide actual jobs and training for local workers.
Summary of Participants'
Findings and Recommendations
Findings
- All speakers and participants at the Forum agreed that communication is the foundation of the cleanup process and DoD should allocate funds to improve communication among stakeholders.
- Community members want to better understand the process by which cleanup standards are set, who is accountable for reaching these standards, and how factors such as cost affect the process. Community members are also interested in understanding how cleanup standards are established and applied, particularly regarding land that may never be developed.
- There is a significant need for workers in the field and the public to obtain reliable information about new technologies.
- There needs to be innovation in every area of the cleanup process, including community involvement, contracting, and sharing of success stories.
- Technology transfer champions within key organizations will help to streamline the process of getting an innovative technologies into the system and transferring them to end-users.
Recommendations
- DoD should be pro-active in facilitating, coordinating and implementing innovative technology.
- DoD should provide information on base contamination and cleanup priorities to potential technology vendors and other stakeholders..
- DoD should provide incentives for community participation in the cleanup process especially among the younger generation. One approach DoD might consider is arranging for college credit for RAB and other community participation.
- DoD should emphasize communication, information sharing, and education of local communities early in the cleanup process so community concerns and comments are addressed prior to the formal notification of a cleanup decision. Additionally, the DoD organizations and technology vendors involved in testing innovative technologies should report their findings directly to RABs so that community members are made aware of successfully demonstrated technologies and are better able to provide input on those technologies they find acceptable.
- Because the primary beneficiary of new technology is not necessarily the technology developer but the owner of contaminated property, the federal government should fund significant portions of field demonstrations for promising new technologies which have received positive peer reviews.
- DoD should make long-term commitments, including the necessary financial and administrative support, for RAB involvement throughout the entire cleanup and property disposal process. Additionally, DoD should seek the input and participation of all affected stakeholders, including RAB members, in the negotiation of terms for property transfer.
- DoD and the regulatory community should address the public concern that human health may be compromised by the use of innovative technology.
- DoD should encourage flexibility in the drafting and reopening of RODs to promote the use of innovative technology.
- DoD should encourage the development of an efficient, standardized national cost and performance reporting system which establishes a baseline to compare technologies.
- DoD's Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs) relating to cleanup and technology issues should be disseminated to RABs.
Part
II
The Regional Forum Model
The Regional Forum was conceived as an experiment to test a regional approach for :
- eliciting diverse stakeholder input on actual military base technology needs, and
- communicating to national decision-makers the findings and recommendations developed during the Forum regarding specific regional concerns and technology needs.
The Forum Planning Committee's goal was to develop the most efficient and effective
format to elicit, share, and transfer information regarding regional technology concerns
and needs between local interests and the national level. Because the event held in
Milbrae in September 1996 was the first of its kind, the Planning Committee made several
assumptions about design and content. The Committee drew upon its members' expertise and
their experience during the WGA/DOIT initiative in designating the appropriate region and
categories of stakeholders, in generating the invitation list, and in designing and
developing the Forum's program. However, for recommendations derived from such an event to
be more meaningful, members of the Planning Committee strongly recommend that future
forums include a pre-planning phase of interviews and research to identify stakeholders'
real technology needs and concerns, especially from RPMs and the community.
As described in earlier sections, the Committee identified US EPA Regions 9 and 10 as
the appropriate geographical area for the Milbrae Forum. In defining the region for the
Forum, the Committee wanted the regional area to be large enough to maximize economies of
scale. However, the Committee was also concerned that stakeholders in a designated region
have a commonality of interests regarding environmental problems, stakeholder concerns,
and geographical and technology needs.
While design and implementation of the Forum resulted from a joint stakeholder effort,
the Committee was fortunate to be able to rely on the expertise of Lenny Siegel and Aimee
Houghton of CAREER/ PRO, who were selected to provide local logistical support for the
event. Much of the Forum's success was due to CAREER/ PRO's extensive network among RABs
and community members in US EPA Region 9 and elsewhere.
The designation of stakeholder categories was determined by the Committee's DOIT
experience to include the broadest areas of relevant stakeholder interests. Because, with
one important exception, the Planning Committee was comprised, of representatives from
those same interests, the Committee's members were asked to seek sponsorship for the Forum
from their constituent organizations and to provide the list of invitees. Invitations were
extended to approximately 1500 individuals, first through a "Reservation of
Date" letter sent six weeks before the event, followed two weeks later by a formal
invitation packet. The one stakeholder category which was not well represented on the
Planning Committee was the Remedial Project Manager (RPM) constituency. The Committee was
not successful in generating a list of RPMs at all military bases in US EPA Regions 9 and
10.
The Committee identified the categories for the four breakout sessions -- Communication and Information Sharing, Regulatory Barriers, Commercialization and Research and Development, and Procurement and Local Contracting Issues -- based primarily on lessons learned from the HWGT Working Group's DOIT experience regarding the major impediments to the development and use of innovative technologies in the cleanup of military bases.
In designing the structure for the program, the Committee hoped to facilitate
significant interaction among the stakeholder groups to generate recommendations about the
region's technology needs and concerns. The opening plenary and second-day's luncheon
keynote addresses and the breakout sessions programs were structured to offer those in
attendance the opportunity to hear from and interact with prominent, experienced
individuals at the national, regional, and local levels regarding general policy and more
specific themes affecting the selection and use of cleanup technologies. The Committee
requested the chairs designated to facilitate the breakout sessions to submit
recommendations for speakers and topics to the group for final approval. The breakout
session chairs also were asked to be mindful, in proposing speakers, of the need for
balance and diverse representation.
To generate as much interaction among stakeholders as possible, the Committee
structured the program to include working lunches during both days of the Forum and a
reception at the end of the first day. To ensure a good mix of stakeholder representation
at each of the first-day's breakout sessions, the Committee used an arbitrary scheme,
announced at the end of the opening plenary, to assign attendance. The same breakout
sessions were repeated the morning of the second day to allow participants to attend a
second session of their choice. During the final plenary, the breakout session chairs
reported on recommendations that came out of these discussions and then participants were
asked to work with others at their luncheon tables to develop a list of the most important
findings and recommendations that should be communicated to DoD. Other recommendations
were drawn from the participant evaluation forms, which were distributed at the conclusion
of the final plenary.
The most significant finding from the two days of discussions among the diverse
categories of stakeholders is that communication issues are the critical factor in
overcoming obstacles to the use of innovative cleanup technologies. This theme was
emphasized and reiterated in each of the addresses at the opening plenary, in the luncheon
keynote speech, at each breakout session, and at the final plenary. It is clear, then,
that for productive stakeholder interactions to occur, both during and following an event
like the Regional Forum, communication needs and strategies should be identified through
research during the Forum's pre-planning phase and addressed at the event through
communication training discussions, workshops, and demonstrations.
Members of the Planning Committee and participants at the Forum believe that events
patterned after the Milbrae Regional Forum also would be an effective and
efficient method for enhancing the transfer of information regarding promising cleanup
technologies. Moreover, educating stakeholders about technology options, including
offering at such events information about successful technologies and processes, would
ensure that recommendations developed during the Forum reflect specific regional
technology needs. This information would be of great value to national decision-makers in
the technology selection and funding process.
The Planning
Committee was extremely grateful for the support and participation of representatives from
DoD's Office of Environmental Security in planning and implementing the Regional Forum.
DoD's support was critical in many respects, but most importantly for giving the event
credibility, for providing travel funds to community members who otherwise could not have
attended, and for creating a pathway for facilitating the exchange of information between
the national and local levels and for conveying recommendations developed during the Forum
to national decision-makers. The participation of the Under-Secretary of Defense for
Environmental Cleanup as a speaker at the Forum's Opening Plenary, and her informal
discussions and meetings with numerous stakeholders following her presentation, was
especially effective and well-received.
Recommendation for
Regional Forum Concept
Forum participants unanimously recommended that DoD, in partnership with other
organizations, sponsor annual regional forums across the nation on military base cleanup
and innovative technologies, methods, and processes. This vehicle offers diverse interests
the opportunity to inject a regional perspective into the national policy and
decision-making dialogues on cleanup and technology selection issues. As Terry Smith of
the Idaho Dept. of Environmental Quality and chair of the DOIT Coordinating Committee
remarked during his comments at the opening plenary, it is self-defeating for any
organization to generate its own sensitivity training. In seeking consensus on cleanup
policy and funding decisions directly from affected regional interests before choices are
made and positions harden, DoD benefits through improved cooperation and coordination, an
expanded base of support, and increased credibility for its cleanup and technology
development programs.
The most efficient and effective mechanism for eliciting stakeholder input on national
policy and funding questions are at the regional level. A regional perspective broadens
identification of stakeholder concerns beyond strictly local interests and strengthens the
flow and quality of and the weight accorded the contributions from a multiplicity of
distinct and disparate voices. The definition of a region for these purposes should be
made on a case-by-case basis and turn on the number of bases in an area, the nature of the
cleanup issues faced, and the extent of common needs and interests.
Conclusion
Broad stakeholder involvement is time-consuming and frequently a very frustrating method for reconciling conflicting needs among diverse interests. Yet, as a method for deciding how most equitably to allocate our cleanup dollars, the stakeholder approach has no equal. However inefficient, awkward, or unwieldy the process or imperfect the results, the strengths of the stakeholder model are in promoting direct participation in the democratic process, which encourages people to become a part of and to contribute to the solution rather than remaining stuck in the problem. These processes also promote increased accountability among decision-makers, regulators, and the parties responsible for cleanup implementation.
The use of regional, broad-based stakeholder forums to develop a needs-based
perspective on military base cleanup and technology issues is a positive, efficient means
for injecting stakeholder views into national cleanup policy and funding decisions.
Regional forums offer the potential to both reflect and reconcile the concerns of local
interests by combining these interests into a broader and stronger statement of collective
need. Statements of regional technology requirements will deliver a more powerful
collective message to national decision-makers than any single communication, which runs
the risk of being diluted by the sheer volume and multiplicity of individual voices
filtered through more conventional communication channels. Regional forums also offer an
effective method for transferring information about innovative cleanup methods and
technologies and for giving local interests the opportunity to learn from one another.
While the ultimate goal of a regional stakeholder forum is to identify specific
regional stakeholder needs for selection and funding of innovative technologies, the first
action item must be the commitment to effective communication, education, networking and
information-sharing efforts related to the availability and appropriate uses and
limitations of new technologies. Absent these initiatives, local stakeholders will be
hampered in identifying and developing a consensus on technology needs, which will render
any effort to generate a regional perspective on these matters a hollow exercise.
Given the benefits to be derived from a regional approach, the principal question for
national decision-makers is whether a regional stakeholder process is worth the time and
expense involved to develop and implement the process. In addressing the barriers to
cleanup innovation, the greatest waste of time and resources is not an investment in
people and the processes through which conflicting interests may be creatively reconciled.
Rather, the waste is in failing to cast the farthest reaching net to include the
perspectives of those whose experiences and needs are different from our own. As Lenny
Siegel has said, "All cleanup decisions must be made by partnerships among
responsible parties and federal, tribal, and state regulatory agencies, with early,
frequent communications and consultation with the affected public. Every constituency has
to keep up with project activities it is to remain satisfied with results."
Once the compelling requirement for broad stakeholder involvement in matters affecting both individual and collective interests is accepted, the only question is how to make the system work. The reality is there is and can be no panacea, no ultimate or pervasive solution to the difficulties encountered when people from diverse backgrounds representing distinct viewpoints, concerns, and needs interact directly with one another. There are only processes and communication strategies, which, through trial and error, are likely to improve these interactions, and those likely to make them worse. Regional stakeholder forums designed to break through the barriers to cleanup innovation offer the most efficient and effective approach for bridging communication between and for coordinating and reconciling the needs among individual, local, regional and national interests. ******************** For additional information and summaries of breakout sessions, click here.
For additional information about
The Regional Forum On Military Base Cleanup Technology
contact:
Peter Wood
Senior Hazardous Substances Scientist
Cal-EPA
Dept. of Toxic Substances Control
P. O. Box 806
Sacramento, CA 95812-0806
P 916-323-3516
F 916-323-3500
email: pwood@cwo.com
Lenny Siegel
Project Director, SFSU/CAREER PRO
at 222B View St.
Mountain View, CA 94041
P 415-961-8918
F 415-968-1126
email: lsiegel@igc.apc.org
Vic Wieszek
DUSD (ES) CL
3400 Pentagon, Rm. 3E787
Washington, DC 20301-3400
P 703-697-9789
F 703-695-4981
email: wieszev@acq.osd
Kathy Marcel
Forum Project Coordinator
Facilitator and Technical Writer
3000 S. Holly Place
Denver, CO 80222
P 303-692-9476
F 303-692-9715
email: kwmarcel@ix.netcom.com