Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
• Interviews - Face-to-face interviews with key stakeholders could be used to anticipate
reactions, gain individual support and provide targeted education.
• Meetings - a widely used form to provide for the public to be heard on specific issues.
• Workshops - smaller meetings designed to complete a task or communicate detailed or
technical information. They provide a maximum use of dialogue and consensus
building, but is not appropriate for a large audience.
• Volunteer programs - involve citizens, who volunteer to provide services related to the
task. It builds a sense of shared ownership and allows communities to experience
some of the realities on the ground, but requires a significant input from professionals
for supervision and guidance.
• Polls-carefully designed questions are asked of a statistically selected portion of the
public. It provides a quantitative estimate of the general public opinion, but the
information obtained is static, reflecting present conditions only and the procedure is
costly.
4.3.3
Communicating technical information
PAP in the field of water quality management often requires communicating technical
information to non-technical individuals and the public, which might create a lot of
confusion, miss-understanding and have an adverse effect on the general objective of the
program. For this reason, care should be taken to “translate” correctly the information,
which needs to be communicated. The following points could be useful during this
process:
• Anticipate in advance issues of public interest, based on previous results from
interviews, workshops, and meetings.
• Invite public involvement during the preparation stage; a possible solution is to invite
outside consultants as advocates for the citizens.
• Use an outside body (objective consultant) to review the technical aspects of the project.
• Present technical information in an understandable language, by hiring public relations
experts to review the language in handouts, news releases, reports, etc.
4.4
Enforcement of regulatory documents
A successful enforcement of the regulatory instruments with respect to water quality
management will determine the overall success of any program for water quality control,
pollution prevention and water bodies' restoration. In the process of enforcement of the
regulations, two phases could be differentiated:
• During the first stage, all supporting documentation must be completed and approved
by the governing authority.
• During the second stage, inspection must be provided to ensure that the proposed
activities and components of the execution body are installed and function as
designed.
