The EPA of the Future: The Focus Group Reports

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Five Focus Groups and Their Reports: A Rich Set of Ideas

 

Based on brainstorming with several groups of alumni, the EPA Alumni Association’s project committee formed five focus groups on different related topics (described below) and invited EPA alumni to volunteer for them. Ultimately, about 60 alumni from all parts of the agency participated (about a dozen on each focus group). Each group met in Spring and Summer 2018, and produced a short report, including a variety of the group’s own priorities and recommendations.  

 

The reports address many important aspects of future directions for environmental progress and EPA’s role. They contain a rich set of ideas, reflecting the considerable and varied experience of the individuals who wrote them.  The reports overlap somewhat in their coverage and do not address every aspect, reflecting the fact that they were done relatively independently. To make them most readable, they are relatively short (5-10 pages each), which also means that they are intentionally “broad brush.”

 

The reports make many significant points, including the following:

 

• The most likely environmental challenges of the coming decades are different in some important ways from those EPA faced when it was formed in 1970 and will require approaches that are different from the “traditional” approaches. Climate change is the most important but not the only such challenge.

 

• While the gains of the past decades must be maintained and updated, we need to identify paths that build on the continuing support for environmental quality, transcend the current polarized debate and move us toward mutual environmental and economic sustainability.  This will require not only define different roles for EPA and its governmental partners, but also provide explicitly for the incorporation of new paths in science, technology and information technologies, and deeper engagement with the public. The “new narrative” must emphasize that continuing progress in public health and environmental protection are a collective responsibility.

 

• New legislation is needed to implement this vision fully, but there are many steps that can be taken under the present legislative framework.

 

It is important to note that these reports, facilitated and made public by the EPA Alumni Association, were developed by Focus Groups composed of individual alumni. The views expressed, including priorities and recommendations, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Association or its Board of Directors. The Board of Directors did not review or comment on these Focus Group reports. These documents have not been peer-reviewed.

 

The themes and focus group topics are as follows:

 

Theme 1:      What will be the future challenges for achieving environmental progress?  

Focus Group 1: Future Environmental Challenges

 

Theme 2:      What should be the model by which the U.S. and EPA address future challenges for achieving environmental progress? 

Focus Group 2: The “Environmental Protection Enterprise” and EPA’s Role

Focus Group 3: EPA’s Relationship with States and Other Public and Private Actors

 

Theme 3:      What will EPA need to do its job?  

Focus Group 4: Science, Technology and Information

Focus Group 5: EPA Tools, Processes, Culture and Resources

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORTS

You can also read the instructions and questions provided to these groups HERE

_______________________________

• The Project: Looking Decades Ahead, Stimulating Public Dialogue
• Five Focus Groups and Their Reports: A Rich Set of Ideas
• Survey of EPA Alumni Association Members
• Conference on Future Directions for Environmental Progress and EPA’s Role: April 2019