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2. Membership should be inclusive. A. Diverse interests and perspectives must be at the table. Parties who are left out can easily cause trouble down the road. B. Each federal agency, component, or office with a stake in the outcome must be in the room, either at the table or feeding information and ideas to their agency’s lead representative. 3. Professional facilitators should be selected not just because they know how to run smooth meetings, but on the basis of their knowledge of the substance of the discussion. That understanding is not only required to lead meetings effectively, but the facilitator may be asked to draft portions of the group’s written report. 4. Time must be devoted to bringing all participants up to speed and placing them on the same page. That is, each interest group should have the opportunity to offer background or bring in its own technical experts to make presentations. 5. The output—the written report—of the committee should be “owned” by all the participants. Committees that lapse |
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into the comment-and-response pattern are less likely to operate in a problem-solving mode. 6. The goal of participants should not be to win debates or to fashion language that they can enforce on others in court. Rather, they should come up with ideas and language that their “adversaries” feel comfortable supporting or even implementing. 7. Dialogue committees are advisory. Made up, at least in part, of volunteer representatives of special interests, they should not make final decisions. But if they develop workable solutions, official decision-makers should feel comfortable endorsing their findings and recommendations. 8. Official participants are not expected to bind their agencies to the committee’s positions. Rather, they are asked simply to advocate for the committee when they return to their agencies. 9. It’s essential for the federal sponsors of the committee to pay the travel expenses of nonprofit and non-federal governmental participants, or they usually are unable to take part. Industry representatives |
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are usually expected to pay their own way. The committee should not, however, directly pay for the time of member participants. Multi-stakeholder dialogue committees may develop draft regulations; joint principles, or even proposals for legislation. The key is that their goal is to find common ground. To be sure, there are issues that can only be decided through contentious Congressional votes or extended litigation, but properly constituted and supported, dialogues can keep such disputes to a minimum. You will face many challenges when you take office. Some will demand your direct attention. Others will simply require that you allow career professionals to do their job without political intervention. But for many key issues of environmental policy, it is essential that you move quickly to create multi-stakeholders processes that inspire trust among diverse participants, not only to resolve today’s environmental issues but also to set a precedent for tackling future problems as they emerge. Some people might not consider building bridges with one’s adversaries as satisfying as unconditional victory, but it’s the best way to protect America’s environment, public health, and the future of the planet.” |
Synergistic template for environmental cleanup
(CONT’D FROM P. 12)
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A public meeting will be held October 29, 2009 concerning the selection of a Response Action for the following sites:
A
site map is provided on page 14. It is a reproduction of Figure 1 of the Final Proposed Plan (FPP) for the |
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Group 3 Sites, dated October 2009, that was prepared by Arcadis for the Army. There are apparently several surface water bodies within the Group 3 Sites: drainage ditches, swampy marshes, streams, a 0.3 acre pond, a 4.5 acre pond within Site 2 (G-2 Pond), and a gunnite-lined rocket exhaust pond within Site 4. Page 5 of the FPP explains that : “Surface water draining from the Group 3 Sites eventually flows off of Picatinny Property via Ames Brook.”
Tables 2 and 3 of the FPP are |
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reproduced on pages 15 and 16. These tabulate the contaminants which were detected in surface water and ground water samples from the Group 3 Sites whose levels exceeded established acceptable levels of concern (LOCs). The FPP explains on page 7 that: “LOCs for Picatinny groundwater were based on the lower of the following values: Federal Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs); New Jersey State MCLs (NJMCLs); New Jersey |
Group 3 Sites public meeting by Michael Glaab
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