Draft Comments for US Government Public Participation Assessment (please review)

Below are our proposed comments for this process (see April 17 posting). These comments must be filed on-line by Friday, May 17. If you wish to suggest changes, please email Ed Lorenz at lorenz@alma.edu

We are an officially recognized, by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, community advisory group (CAG).  We have been incorporated as a non-profit since EPA launched an emergency clean-up in the river adjacent to the Velsicol Superfund Site – Michigan in 1998.  That clean-up focused on the legacy of a chemical plant that in addition to carelessly disposing of wastes from production of pesticides (such as DDT) and flame retardants, made a catastrophic ‘shipping error’ in 1973 when a truck load (or more) of a fire retardant composed of polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) was sent mistakenly to an animal feed cooperative in place of an animal feed supplement.  For a year or more contaminated feed was sold to farmers, entering the food chain of the upper Midwest.  At least eight million people consumed some PBB in dairy products or other food products from contaminated farms.

The Pine River Task Force, while an EPA community advisory group, has worked with a number of different U.S. government agencies since our incorporation in 1998, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Commerce, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, especially because of the health impacts of the PBB accident, divisions within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and related health institutes.  We have experienced the variety of cultures in these agencies tied to organizational missions and what Frederick Mosher (in Democracy and the Public Service) called “elite” professions that dominate each.  We have also experienced differences arising from both the rural nature of our community and the complexity of the human health and environmental problems that have been spread from our community to very different communities across the state and beyond.    

The problems our CAG seeks to address by ‘second-guessing’ government regulators are in two categories: 1. human health and 2. the environment.  In addressing these, we have found Mosher’s “elites” to be fundamentally different in accepting public interaction.  At both US EPA and related environmental agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce we have encountered environmental and engineering professionals accustomed to interaction with the public and with other professionals.  While not always welcoming of criticisms or disagreements, they nonetheless treat alternative perspectives as deserving of recognition. 

By contrast, we have had fundamental problems achieving dialogue with the elite professionals at the DOJ (attorneys) and at DHHS (medical professionals).  The cultures of these agencies apparently sustain and justify expert dismissal of the perspectives of the general public and the resulting reluctance to welcome inclusion of the general public in planning or assessing implementation of policies to respond to environmental exposures. 

The EPA has a robust process of public engagement.  The very existence of CAGs is proof of that.  In addition to recognizing organizations such as ours, even helping with the process of incorporation when we formed in 1998, the EPA Superfund program has dedicated staff called Community Involvement Coordinators.  USEPA Superfund Project Managers (the title for those overseeing responses at specific Superfund sites) come to community meetings (our CAG has had a public meeting monthly since 1998 virtually always attended by the Project Manager and often the Community Involvement Coordinator for our three Superfund sites).   Some of our meetings are quite ‘heated,’ but EPA staff endure us and remain in dialogue.  They repeatedly have added components to their plans suggested by community members, including renewing a focus on one of our sites that had been considered for removal from Superfund. 

By contrast, our experience with U.S. health agencies has been disappointing.  This is especially a problem since the public concern with the human health consequences of ‘our contamination’ appears to be much greater than the focus on environmental remediation.  Responding to this, shortly after the PBB accident was discovered in the mid-1970s a variety of follow-up studies were launched to determine health consequences of the accident.  More than 6,000 people volunteered to be part of the “PBB Cohort” study, funded jointly by the U.S. and state governments.  However, in contrast to USEPA, federal health agencies have seldom sent professionals to the community. 

While the NIH funded over many years important research into consequences of PBB exposures with community involvement, finding a number of disturbing correlations between exposures and human health outcomes, there has been no consistent effort by other branches of DHHS to provide  either a federal clinical response for people concerned with consequences of exposures to PBB or worked consistently with state healthcare providers to assure they remain conscious of possible consequences among patients of the likely exposure to PBB or other contaminants in the state resulting from the company’s carelessness.  This is despite funding under Superfund of a division called the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

Our CAG is more than willing to enter into dialogue with components of DHHS, especially ATSDR, to maintain a clinical response in Michigan (and nationally, since many exposed people and their descendants have become scattered outside Michigan).  We also need funding as generous as for EPA clean-ups to support the PBB related research being done by our partners at Emory University and its collaborators at other institutions.    By the time US EPA finishes removing, containing or destroying contaminants produced by our polluter, at least a half billion dollars will have been spent.  The costs of all the human health responses is a tiny fraction of that funding, even though it is a priority for most people.

Similarly, the US DOJ has repeatedly been hostile or indifferent to public involvement in legal decision making, especially in seeking to secure funds from the polluter.  The CAG has had to secure pro-bono legal help to challenge tentative settlements with polluters.  The DOJ even sided with the polluter when after their initial bankruptcy settlement, it was proven that the community’s water supply needed to be replaced.  As with DHHS, the elite professionals in DOJ seem much less interested or prepared to hear the perspectives of the lay public.