The Environmental Protection Agency's Use of Community Involvement to Engage Communities at Superfund Sites.

Larry J Zaragoza

doi:10.3390/ijerph16214166

Abstract

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program was established to identify, assess and clean up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites to protect human health and the environment. Community involvement is an important part of the Superfund program for at least three reasons. First, involving communities in decision making at Superfund sites is a statutory requirement. Second, community involvement is important so that clean up decisions will support reuse in the surrounding community. Third, because even after cleanup many sites have residual contamination that warrants administrative and legal controls to protect health and the environment, community members should understand these controls to both help protect community members and any limitations on site reuse. Community feedback informs both proposed actions and local reuse decisions. While the EPA recognizes that the agency performs many activities that are helpful to support community involvement, there are areas in need of improvement and further research would be helpful for communities in the future.

Highlights

The Superfund program serves as an example of how the federal government involves communities as it works with a variety of stakeholders in the cleanup process
This paper provides a perspective on the development of today’s community involvement program and describes how Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sought to improve the Superfund community involvement program
EPA regional staff choose from a broad selection of approved questions to evaluate how community members at their site feel about the effectiveness of the community involvement program

Summary

Introduction

The Superfund program serves as an example of how the federal government involves communities as it works with a variety of stakeholders in the cleanup process. The goal of Superfund community involvement is to advocate and strengthen early and meaningful community participation during Superfund cleanups. While some of the work associated with cleanup is undertaken by states and tribes through cooperative agreements, the federal Superfund program has not been delegated to states. Protect human health and the environment by cleaning up contaminated sites; make responsible parties pay for cleanup work; involve communities in the Superfund process; and return Superfund sites to productive use. In the early days of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it had a challenging situation in gaining public trust because of the health-related impacts of contaminants reported from some communities. Perhaps the most well-known of these hazardous waste sites is the Love Canal site

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