The Federal facilities Restoration and Reuse Office appreciates this opportunity to work with the Department of Energy and Howard University s Urban Environment Institute to help build capacity in the Augusta community. We are aware of your many years of environmental activism in Augusta, and the public participation opportunities presented by DOE s Savannah River site. This project gives us another opportunity to forge a stronger relationship with another federal agency in the best interest of the community. There are other reasons that make this project and training workshop exciting. First, the effort to increase environmental justice and public participation through electronic access holds real potential for numerous community residents who would be otherwise unable to participate in environmental decision-making.
Environmental issues can be highly technical and often very complex.
If community residents can obtain technical assistance from reliable sources through e-mail, they will certainly be better able to handle these technical and complex issues. This will increase community participation in environmental decision-making. Second, we are interested to learn about other uses of a community technology center. The success of this community technology center holds implications for other community capacity building projects. Both of these reasons support the intent of the Federal Facilities Dialogue Committee and the Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office.