Highlights of Battelle's International Environmental Leadership	Spring 2000

Successful Public Involvement: Creating Conditions for Making Good Decisions

In this issue . . . Gray Wolves Listening Other Faces University Initiatives Right to Know Unusual Outreach Clean Training Bioremediation Conference Pollutant Analysis Conference QA Officer Gathering in Geneva   Elected officials and public resource managers tell disquieting tales about public involvement, about angry citizens rocking a van transporting state personnel, about protestors at public meetings, and about mothers with baby carriages blocking access to waste disposal facilities. There is, however, a positive way to include community values and perspectives in decision making. In some situations, conscientious public involvement determines whether or not a decision about public resources is tenable or a project goes forward at all. Public involvement is not silencing opposition or sugar-coating projects to make them more palatable. While it is not public relations, providing accurate, timely information to the public is essential. Public involvement is an extension of the democratic process, based on the belief that people will be more likely to support decisions they have had a hand in making. It is a process of informing, educating and being educated based on the premise that information, education, and consultation yield the best solutions to problems, and that the better informed and involved people are, the more willing they are to compromise on reasonable solutions. While each successful public involvement program is tailored to the particular project or decision with which it is associated, there are common elements that should be considered in planning and conducting a program of public engagement and community outreach. Involve the public from the start. Don’t make the public wait for a public meeting to get information about a project or its related decisions. Go to the community and talk to people, getting information on the grapevines that carry important news in every community. Identify the people to whom others listen. Make a point to personally inform them and seek their advice. Know the stakeholders and their concerns. Construct a “map” of the issues associated with the project and related stakeholder groups. At the outset, interview individual stakeholders to understand their issues and concerns. A constructive progression for public involvement is to begin with individual interviews, go on to focus group discussions with stakeholders with similar perspectives, and then bring stakeholders with different perspectives together with scientists or other resource management experts. Battelle used this process in evaluating innovative technologies designed to clean up hazardous wastes at U.S. Department of Energy sites in the western United States. Do not begin with public meetings. When you do hold a public meeting, keep it informal. For example, do not place “experts” up on the dais, the public down below in a drafty gymnasium. Set up “listening posts” around the meeting room with displays showing aspects of the project and staff available to talk in small groups. Rather than attempting to “educate” stakeholders to bring them around to a particular point of view, find out what information stakeholders require in order to make their own reasoned judgments and help provide that information. For example, in evaluating the public acceptability of innovative technologies for environmental cleanup, Battelle incorporated stakeholders’ questions and “data-requirements” into plans for field testing the technologies. Convene advisory committees. Secure the participation of a wide range of interests. Be sure to involve individuals, including critics, whose absence could undermine decision making. Give advisory committees real work to do rather than installing them as window dressing. Support the communication between advisory committee members and the constituencies they represent. Agreements worked through at great effort by committees too often come to grief when wider constituencies feel left behind. Develop group facilitation skills. Acknowledge that working with people is as important to the success of a project as good design and complete scientific data. Become skillful in group processes so as to use stakeholders’ time well. Build relationships. Build trust. Follow through. Nurture relationships with stakeholders by involving them from the outset, making clear the decision-making process and its schedule, providing timely information, involving them in solving problems and making decisions, and following through by honoring commitments. Through it all, polish your tact, humor, and patience. You’ll need them. Public involvement specialist Todd Peterson can by contacted at (206) 528-3274 or via e-mail at petersts@battelle.org.

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