**4. Conclusions**

180 Environmental Monitoring

CEMs in participating communities are part of the official chain-of-custody for collected samples, and become trained in the basics of ionizing radiation, including detection and potential health effects. They become knowledgeable points-of-contact for other community members. Although the CEMs are the primary means of interacting with and disseminating information to the public, DRI and DOE personnel actively participate in community events (e.g., producing displays and giving presentations for civic

In 1999, DRI developed a public web site and upgraded communications at the stations so that most could upload their data every ten minutes (http://cemp.dri.edu/, accessed July 2011). In addition, data are archived back to the year 1999 for most stations, and users are able to produce tabular and graphical summary data for multiple parameters in any combination. The advent of the web site ushered in a new era of even greater transparency for the monitoring program, since now the public could access the data in near real-time, and know that they were seeing the data as soon as anyone else, including personnel of the sponsoring federal government. With time, links were developed to multi-level educational information on ionizing radiation, as well as a means to contact and discourse with program

Fig. 5. A photo of a CEMP station and its CEMs in California, taken when nuclear testing was still ongoing at the Nevada National Security Site, then called the Nevada Test Site.

There are undoubtedly some pitfalls associated with significant public transparency that can be provided by a public web site such as the CEMP. The public sees not only the normal data when it is posted, but also is occasionally privy to "bad" data caused by message mistranslation during communication, power outages, or equipment malfunction. While these incidents can cause significant angst for program personnel for short periods of time

organizations and schools).

personnel.

Members of the general public often have a surprising willingness to participate in the process of assisting scientists with the collection of data as well as the dissemination of and communication of results to the public at large. While such public participation is often driven by personal curiosity, in cases where there is either the perception or reality of a potential risk to the personal well-being of an individual, his or her family, or community, many citizens relish the opportunity to become significantly involved when the opportunity is made available.

Most models of public involvement in environmental monitoring or other scientific endeavours have traditionally stopped short of a direct role for public involvement, instead relying solely on practices such as holding public meetings, providing opportunities for written feedback in the form of response to proposals or studies, or the formation of advisory groups to provide input into the decision-making process. While these are all important avenues for public discourse, they are oftentimes regulatorydriven, with little effort or impetus on the part of the agencies or corporations involved to provide additional opportunities for public engagement. The endowment of public stakeholders with a direct role in the process of environmental monitoring (or other scientific research) can convey several potential benefits, both to the stakeholders as well as the entities responsible for conducting monitoring studies. Direct participation by public stakeholders imparts a sense of ownership to those involved as well as to the general community. Careful identification of participating individuals who are in positions of high public trust and who are representative of a broad cross-section of the members of potentially affected communities can be an important contributing factor towards increasing public confidence in monitoring results. A role for direct involvement for the public from the outset (as opposed to in the conduct of damage control following an incident which has caused a loss of public trust) can be seen as a gesture of both good faith and public transparency in the monitoring process. The inclusion of these public stakeholders also helps to engender increased accountability on the part of those conducting the monitoring activities.

Public Involvement as an Element in Designing Environmental Monitoring Programs 183

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Engaging members of the public in a participatory role can actually produce programmatic cost savings, especially in those cases where significant computer resources or data entry is required, or in cases where environmental data must be collected from widely dispersed sites over a large geographic region. Technical tasks that require a minimal amount of training (such as the proper collection and replacement of an air filter sample at a CEMP station) can be accomplished by local residents, often on a voluntary basis, rather than sending technicians out on a regular basis at a significant cost to the monitoring program.

Finally, the process of educating and training citizen participants can create a network of informal communicators who live and work within the communities that may have concern about future or past activities that necessitate environmental monitoring. These citizens can be equipped with the knowledge to become "lay-experts" on related issues of community concern, and can serve both as liaisons between their communities and those conducting monitoring activities, as well as points-of-contact for their neighbours, which can help to identify and defuse rumours or public tensions before they reach unmanageable proportions. While there are invariably some pitfalls that will arise as a result of increased public participation and transparency, the authors believe that the overall benefits conveyed by maximizing public involvement to the greatest extent practical generally far outweigh any detrimental factors.

Fig. 6. Residents of 23 communities in southern Nevada, south-eastern California, and south-western Utah in the U.S., most of whom are schoolteachers, come together for regular workshops that train them to become effective communicators on issues related to the monitoring of ionizing radiation in their communities.
