Our group is working on a soil and air (testing) citizen science project as an outcome of a Federal court ordered community project (Tonawanda Coke v USA) in Tonawanda, NY . The study has gone awry ( by a local University ) and now we are trying to get the project back on track. Our first step is to form a technical advisory committee. Any suggestions on how to do this, what kind of people we should be looking for, etc is appreciated. thank you
Are you required to meet any parameters by the terms of the lawsuit? Or are you asking more about best practices?
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no requirement from lawsuit, just best practices, thx
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Presumably, Tonawanda Coke is now appealing its 2014 violation(s) of the Clean Air Act, based upon the US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's recently announced "Review" of both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, consistent with the President's executive order calling for relaxation of "regulatory burdens" on the energy industry. (James Ayre "US EPA to Review Clean Air Act & Clean Water Act in Search of 'Regulatory Burdens'" Oct. 31, 2017 https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/31/us-epa-review-clean-acir-act-clean-water-act-search-regulatory-burdens/ . There are no rigid requirements for establishing Technical Advisory Committees; however, having served on some, I have found that the optimal guidance one could deploy would be to emphasize development of a diverse group, ideally including the array of interdisciplinary skills/expertise focused on the complexity of the specific problem area, who may be potentially called upon as expert witnesses (i.e. litigation expertise [in addition to one's group of attorneys actually representing the community litigants in this case]; epidemiologists; engineer(s) with specialization in aspects of coal mining; environmental advocate(s); business leaders whose businesses may be adversely impacted by compromised air quality; physician board certified in respiratory diseases; philanthropist(s) able to contribute to and/or generate external third party funding for environmental testing and for legal representation, in the absence of pro bono legal service; laboratory technician with access to HPLC, X-ray fluorescence, LIDAR, etc.; statistician with scientific visualization expertise). This listing is suggested only by way of example.
Gilebert, this is great info. Thank you. btw- Toawanda Coke is not appealing . the fine monies have already been distributed.
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