Rouge Project Comments: Reply from the Army Corps of Engineers

I've discovered "The Agency Tone" of written voice. Very polite! Possibly because I submitted comments over a month ago (several agencies dealing with the National Environmental Protection Act [NEPA] are obligated to give response within the month of communications from the public).  Having spoken to EPA employees, the EPA has legal obligation to respond to any citizen communications--probably within a month timeframe too.  

The Army Corps of Engineers  (ACE--what a fine acronym to have!) was supposed to respond with 30 days (I'm no longer sure, but I suspect it's a direct stipulation from NEPA), but I had to prod them earlier in December to see if there'd be any follow-up.

This is about as exciting as I'd imagine getting a personal letter from an elected official. For those who can't really see what's here--it's a personal letter from the DOD's Army Corps of Engineers in response to my questions--stamped and signed too! 

In reply to my procedural and project comments to the Army Corps of Engineers from November, Detroit district sent a personal letter with detailed replies to both comment sets I submitted.

One of my primary concerns involved the poor degree of outreach--had it not been for friends who major in environmental studies/science and work with the Friends of the Rouge, I might not have known about the proposal at all!

It turns out (as you'll see in their reply letter) the Army Corps of Engineers did what they could and needed to inform local governments and organizations. From what I read, the ACE's response to one of my questions (about watershed outreach plans) means that promotion/marketing/pr is more of an issue than having the right community stakeholders and closer coordination between federal and local government.

I suspect poor infrastructure for communication and outreach is an endemic issue for our beloved but under-budgeted/staffed local governments and not-for-profit organizations alike.

Also, I learned county government plays a more significant role in the project than previously thought.

I believe PR organizations/institutions and colleges (with education and marketing programs or willing interns from any discipline) can better help coordinate and promote the outreach in the future.

Page 1 (click the image[s] to read)
I'll let you decide what happened with
the date that they entered--by the looks of things
I submitted my comments in the future!
Also, I couldn't resist blacking out my address
on a government document,
it now looks even more official than the original.

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4  Hand signed with a real person's signature!

A random remark: this post has a lot of meta text--I wrote (and you read) about photos of writing--how odd!


And my follow-up e-mail (from Dec. 8th):
To whom it may concern,

I submitted a procedural recommendation on Monday Nov. 7th and (according to my e-mail) comments on Nov. 8th at 12:00 AM and would like to know about the status of the project. I did not receive any message of acknowledgement or reply within the 30 day timeframe and therefore am writing to request for follow up.

I hope the procedural recommendation merits a reply since it was submitted within the comment deadline.

Thank you...

An EPA afternoon: participatory community learning and education

First, there's still time to participate in the EPA's Environmental Justice Conference here in Detroit--it's free, they take walk-ins, and your participation is meaningful!  Go here to see where it's at and what's going on tomorrow:  http://www.cleanairinfo.com/ejconference/agenda.htm

This is a mix of summary and commentary on today's events from the afternoon EPA Federal work group session.  I participated in the community organization working group, and later attended the panel for "The Detroit Story".

Interesting news came out of the ongoing EPA Environmental Conference today. This afternoon we realized that people all over the U.S. are striving to organize, but there's a lot of organizational fragmentation.

[More after the page break]

Meeting July 11th, other news

We'll be meeting 
Monday July 11th 6:00pm 
on the second floor of the University Center in the SAOC
to plan for Fall Semester, take care of various projects, lay out some of our collaborative event plans, etc.

We're updating our mailing list too. To better plan how and what we communicate with you, please let us know:
1) if you'd like to be removed from the list
2) do you find the occasional job notices, conferences, internships, and volunteer opportunities valuable?
3) is there anything you'd like to lead or see happen in the future?
You can reach us at greenwolverines (at) ymail.com


Interesting news tidbits:

• Ready or not, your city may be very capable of adapting to accelerated climate change--Detroit's ranked in the top 3 (Cleveland got 1st place)! http://t.co/7MDYya8
• Check out the 1000 scientists in 1000 schools initiative. This would be a good complement to the NOVA ScienceNOW and Future City programs. http://bit.ly/mRKsjw
• Bright ideas by youths of Detroit (and some from Dearborn) gave ideas and some plans at the ESD Future Detroit symposium, the report has been published and one of SEA's members got to facilitate and author with workgroup 4. http://t.co/7UzuDOX  Issues of environmental justice and asthma didn't fit the final publication, but you can read the full unedited write up by requesting for a copy from the ESD (http://esd.org).

• The Pentagon has announced its energy/environmental strategy, hear parts of it discussed on the Diane Rehm Show: http://bit.ly/p269Qw  There'll be a time when the necessity of peaceable education overcomes the present reality of global conflicts soon, but all things considered it's still relatively good news as these perspectives in energy use are being put into action and will likely trickle into other parts of administrative and public attitudes toward sustainability.

For the 4th of July several of us went out to Ann Arbor to help with the last hoop house build for the 20 hoop houses in 20 days project--only to find a neighborhood without people building hoop houses (we probably rsvp'd too late and missed out on important details).  We saw a guy with a cello standing on the sidewalk without a shirt, a rockin' community garden in the Waterhill neighborhood, and then all three of us carpooled to visit the Michigan sailing club to partake in their potluck instead discussing bits of democracy and good books on a fine sunny day.  Hope you had a great and enriching 4th of July too!