Creating a Community Involvement Plan
March 2004
Once the community advisory group became established, they needed a comprehensive outreach plan, known as a Community Involvement Plan (CIP), to plan for community involvement within the Superfund site. The EPA sent critical pieces of information to the public so that residents could provide feedback to the CAG about the wants and needs of the Omaha Lead Superfund site. The group needed to identify areas with high lead concentrations, understand the demographics of affected populations, and coordinate testing across communities. However, before testing could begin, informing homeowners about the contamination was essential to ensuring their participation and consent.
The affected area was extensive. According to the CIP planning document, impacted sites included "numerous child care facilities, residences, and commercial properties that have been contaminated as a result of air emissions from lead smelting/refining and industrial operations, consumer products, and leaded gas exhaust from vehicles within the metropolitan area of the City of Omaha” (Black & Veatch, 4). Approximately 40,000 properties fell within the contamination zone, including 15 elementary schools, one middle school, two high schools, and two special study centers (Black & Veatch, 4). The CIP draft also stated that over 1 million people lived within a 50 mile radius of the Omaha metropolitan area, and at least 7% of people in 2002 were foreign- born, with many Spanish speakers among them.
As the owner and lessor of the ASARCO smelting site, Union Pacific committed to participating in the cleanup effort. Community leaders like Brenda Council became vocal advocates for addressing the contamination after the discovery of elevated blood lead levels in inner-city children.
Spreading awareness about the creation of the Superfund site and the CAG’s mission required media collaboration. Maintaining factual accuracy and transparency became critical to the project’s success. The CAG partnered with media outlets including the Omaha World-Herald, Bellevue Leader, Catholic Voice Publishing Co., and television stations KMTV, WOWT, KETV, KPTM. The Lead Safe Omaha Coalition arranged for broadcasts to be taped and aired live every Monday at 7:00pm and Thursday at 10:00pm on Channel 22, part of the public Community Telecast network. To accommodate residents with varying work schedules, the CAG staggered meetings between daytime and evening hours, ensuring broader community participation.
A crucial challenge remained. How could the CAG reach Omaha’s most vulnerable populations when roughly 5% of residents spoke a language other than English as their primary language? The group responded by drafting letters in Spanish, broadcasting on Spanish radio stations and news outlets, and creating bilingual advertisements and billboards. This multilingual approach ensured that critical information about childhood lead screening, yard sampling, and lead contamination awareness reached as many families as possible across the region. Board members mention in the CAG minutes that one of the biggest issues they were facing was making sure that the language used in documents is understandable for the public (CAG Minutes, 6, 03/31/2004). This included reducing redundancy and jargon but also being able to overcome the language barrier as well. The CAG also wanted to invest in creating a site on the Omaha World-Herald website similar to the Washington Post that has a special page devoted to lead. Other CAG members mentioned many people do not have access to the Internet and that creating a list of public places residents could visit these sites would benefit these marginalized communities immensely.
Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp., “Community Involvement Plan, Omaha Lead Superfund Site,” History of Environmental Inequalities, https://steppingintothemap.com/inequalities/admin/items/show/370.