Fenceline Community Engagement Air Permitting Project
Hummingbird Firm provided community engagement training and alternative dispute resolution services for the state of Minnesota. We led bi-weekly meetings with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, non-profit organizations, the environmental justice community, the tribal community, Tribal Government, municipal representatives, and private facilities to identify and resolve the roots of the conflict related to land development, air quality, and the citizen commenting processes.
We successfully used various web-conferencing platforms to conduct stakeholder webinars, meetings, interviews, and internal team planning sessions. While working with such a diverse community, we continued to ensure that we provided multiple avenues for participation during the calls and training, including video-conferencing, teleconferencing, and the physical mailing of training material. The conversations and training aimed to resolve the concerns and help repair the relationships between the community and the facilities.
There has been significant contentious past interaction and our aim was to facilitate building meaningful relationships to foster collaborative and transparent communication. Accordingly, we were responsible for planning and facilitating the training, developing training material, and leading two sessions: one on effective community engagement and the other on how to use EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool. We are now replicating this process for the state of Oregon.
The end of the project marked a richer understanding for stakeholders about what effective community and facility engagement looks like, greater confidence in their ability to engage, and a greater level of familiarity with the steps that need to be carried out at each stage of the process. In conjunction with the training, stakeholders will have long-term access to an online resource toolkit with a suite of materials including lessons learned, tip sheets, and good neighbor agreements.