SEWRPC Still Twitchy About Environmental Justice

The region's planners continue to display a weird caution-driven anxiety about its social justice task force - - in this latest episode appearing to grudgingly agree to allow the task force to finish its most important work to date in, of all places, a public meeting.

I've got to ask: what gives?

The specific matter these past few weeks: establishing a procedure wherein the Environmental Justice Task Force, an arm since 2007 of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, would up wrap work with a consultant to examine whether a larger ongoing SEWRPC effort - - the drafting of a regional water supply plan - - would reach conclusions with socio-economic consequences for the region's low-income, disadvantaged and minority communities.

SEWRPC, citing the wishes of some task force members, and the consultant, wanted to have the work completed by email.

Some community activists, and perhaps some task force members, wanted the work finished out in the open, and SEWRPC finally agreed to have the task force finish this project at a public meeting set for September 2nd.

You can read the history of this episode here.

What I find baffling is that SEWRPC continues to fumble its relationship with the task force and its mission, and squander an easy policy and public relations win at hand if it would only accept the task force as a genuine and valuable planning partner in our region - - a region beset by a myriad of social, racial and economic disparities and difficulties that need the full embrace of regional planners and the full participation of those disadvantaged groups if we are ever going to overcome around here.

The task force was more or less imposed on SEWRPC by federal monitors after a contentious hearing in 2004 had revealed deep discontent with the agency's existing relationships - - or lack of same - - with minority communities.

An excellent case in point: the agency's establishment in 2005 of that water study advisory committee, with an approximate $1 million budget, and 33 members - - including one Hispanic male, and no African-American or other racial minority.

Certainly not representative of the region.

Thus it was not surprising that the study rolled along towards recommendations in draft form that some suburban communities receive diversions of Lake Michigan water - - recommendations made without any analysis of potential socio-economic consequences.

SEWRPC's then-executive director Phil Evenson last year refused the task force's request for an independent consultant to add that very analysis to the study.

Under pressure, SEWRPC later relented, agreeing to hire an independent consultant and to somehow graft the task force perspective into the water study (even at this late date in the process) - - a study still incomplete, and in draft form, but with about five years of technical water work having already taken place.

But still the agency couldn't bring itself to close out the task force work at a properly-noticed, public meeting.

Just as SEWRPC had to be rhetorically-bludgeoned by the task force into adding an independent socio-economic analysis to the water study, it feel like the agency had to be dragooned into wrapping up the task force and consultant's work in a setting more open and democratically-based than the first plan - - an email exchange.

You'd think at this point, SEWRPC would position itself as the region's champion of inclusion and openness both as planning practices, and as good government leadership, too.

What is it about environmental justice that gives SEWRPC managers such anxiety, and leads them to initial decisions that have to be rolled back by citizens and advocates who simply want the agency to do the right thing?