YOU DON’T KNOW UNTIL YOU ASK: USING COMMUNITY INTERVIEWS TO BUILD PARTICIPATION

摘要

Public participation faces a world of challenges as budgets shrink, stakeholders burn out, and agencies and organizations look for approaches that are cheaper, yield results faster, and still meet the spirit and the letter of the law. For many organizations involved in environmental clean-up and waste management, public meetings are the primary mechanism for exchanging information with the public. However, public meetings often are not well attended and can be dominated by a few vocal participants. Through community interviews, organizations can obtain input, convey information, and use stakeholders’ advice in designing community involvement programs that meet the needs of organizations and communities. This paper focuses on the validity and utility of community interviews as a means of building public participation in the environmental decision-making process. The paper presents diverse issues based upon case histories from various projects in different geographic settings. Applications covered in the paper range from a state-wide program involving the management of spent nuclear fuel to projects involving nuclear reactor decommissioning, selection of technologies for clean-up of a chemical waste landfill, and community interviews to determine preferences for broad-scale economic development activities. The authors share practical tips and advice on revitalizing a tried and true technique. The paper describes how to design and conduct community interviews as part of a public and community involvement program. The following questions are addressed: 1. What are community interviews? 2. How should they be designed? 3. When is it best to do interviews and when shouldn’t they be done? 4. Who should be interviewed? 5. How should the information obtained from interviews be used? Included in the paper are benefits and advantages of conducting community interviews, guidelines on do’s and don’ts—pitfalls and lessons learned, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the interview process.