ETV: Unusual Program
Requires Unusual Outreach

In the fall of 1997, when the Battelle team officially began working on the Advanced Monitoring Systems (AMS) pilot, a key first challenge was to launch an unusual public outreach effort. This effort had to be unusual because the program of which the AMS pilot is a part is itself unusual.

Battelle manages the AMS pilot as a partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) program. ETV’s unique objective is to accelerate the acceptance and use of improved technologies through third-party verification testing and reporting of the technologies’ performance. Battelle is the independent “third party” conducting the verification test process for air and water monitoring technologies. Other tasks include framework development (organizing and facilitating stakeholder committees), pilot promotion, privatization, and quality assurance/quality control. (See Environmental Updates, Fall 1999 and Winter 2000, for additional information about the ETV program.)

The pilot’s primary outreach focus is to reach out to groups not normally considered to be key audiences, as well as to those typically interested in EPA programs. These new audiences include vendors and developers of monitoring technologies, their consultants, financial planners, lending institutions, and university scientists and engineers helping to develop or evaluate monitoring instruments.

How stakeholders are involved is another unusual aspect of the ETV program and the AMS pilot. Whereas stakeholders typically act more as an advisory group in technical programs, ETV stakeholders take the lead in identifying needed technologies and prioritizing the order of tests. AMS pilot stakeholder committees for air and water monitoring technologies meet twice a year. The nearly 50 members of the stakeholder committees represent a variety of disciplines, orientations, knowledge bases, perspectives, and credentials.

Battelle’s initial outreach planning was in part driven by the existence in 1997 of ETV’s national communications program, which included publications, an exhibits and speakers’ program, presentations schedule, and a Web site (http://www.epa.gov/etv/). The AMS pilot Web site is located at http://www.epa.gov/etv//07/07_main.htm. To learn more about the AMS pilot, please contact Helen Latham at (614) 424-4062 or via e-mail at lathamh@battelle.org.