The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council discussed yesterday the challenges of engaging communities affected by Gulf Coast restoration efforts in the council's first public meeting of 2011.

Language barriers, scheduling difficulties and federal bureaucracy all contribute to what NEJAC members said is a constant struggle to not only inform local residents but also keep them involved in long-term decisionmaking.

"I think that when we're talking about communities and community engagement, it's not only about prioritized non-exclusion," said Derrick Evans, a member of the council's Gulf Coast working group. "It's recognizing that these community members are truly assets and should be recognized and treated as such, for the benefit of all."

NEJAC has been around since 1992, when U.S. EPA created it to address environmental justice issues. But the committee has taken on new importance under EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who has prioritized environmental justice and hired an associate administrator to solely focus on it.

Yesterday's meeting -- open to the public via teleconferencing -- focused on efforts in the Gulf Coast to involve communities in restoration efforts. John Hankinson Jr., the director of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, briefed NEJAC members on his panel's progress in developing a regional ecosystem restoration strategy.

One of the main obstacles to involving communities thus far, Hankinson said, is scheduling. Many residents can only meet with task force staff during evenings or weekends, since they work during normal business hours.

But holding listening sessions and tweaking staff hours can fix that issue, he said. A bigger challenge is helping federal agencies increase their dialogue with communities. Currently, communities can get lost in a jungle of programs, grants, committees and scientific jargon.

"It's very difficult for communities to understand what resources might be available and the number of programs that exist at the federal level," Hankinson said.

The task force provides an opportunity to improve that communication, thanks to the involvement of several federal agencies. Though headed by Jackson, it also includes officials from agencies such as Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Justice. Created by President Obama, the panel is also required to include local stakeholders.

That cooperation might cause EPA's experience with community engagement to rub off on the rest of government, said Hankinson, who was EPA Region 4 administrator under President Clinton.

"I think it's excellent that you're working with so many agencies because the issues are complex and require all agencies to be on board," said NEJAC Chairwoman Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE Inc. in New York.

"I am hopeful that this task force will create a kind of model" that can be replicated in other areas that require community input, Yeampierre said.

Overcoming language barriers

Interagency panels can also save time for community leaders and activists, Evans said. There are currently so many different panels and efforts that even those seeking information have trouble keeping up with them all.

"There is a slice of members of the communities along the Gulf Coast who ... spend a lot of time attending and paying attention to and often even advising the multiple and sometimes separate discourse that the various agencies are undertaking," he said.

Daryl Malik-Wiley of the Louisiana Sierra Club raised similar concerns during the public comment period of the meeting, pointing out that even the three-hour teleconference was a significant investment of time for groups who have little funding and staff.

To consistently involve communities, he said, federal officials have to create a panel that does not filter members through political appointments. The aim, he said, should be to staff councils "without jumping through hoops where the governor and politicians are the ones deciding who's going to be on the panel."

Yesterday's meeting also covered the progress of NEJAC's Gulf Coast working group. The group is investigating community engagement obstacles in order to make recommendations to the full council, which will then present final recommendations to Jackson in July.

Over the course of seven conference calls, the group has pinpointed some top concerns, including language barriers and the possible exclusion of local tribes.

"If you can't get into the language that is spoken by these communities, that in and of itself is frequently a dealbreaker before you can get to anything else," said Jodena Henneke, the working group's co-chair and a program manager at the Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Group in Texas.

Furthermore, some of the local tribes directly affected by the oil spill and Gulf Coast contamination are not federally recognized, meaning they could miss out on compensation and restoration efforts.

Vien Nguyen -- a Louisiana pastor who is also on the working group -- said communication as a whole is a concern: both in terms of language and bureaucratic jargon.

"For our community, ecology is something that is really new," Nguyen said. "To explain the impact it would have on the people -- both positive and negative -- I think that would keep them engaged in the long term."