HOPE - Helping Our Peninsula's Environment

Box 1495, Carmel, CA 93921 [email protected]

831/ 624-6500 www.1hope.org

 William J. Douros, Superintendent

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

July 31, 2003

Re: Sanctuary Plan Comment Process Hugely Defective and Inadequate

    • 40% of HOPE's Comments Lost in Staff Transcription
    • Commenters not Notified of Working Groups

Process Must Restart with a Proper Transcription and

Notice to All Parties Who Provided Comments

 

Hello Mr. Douros:

The Monterey Bay Sanctuary Management Plan update process claims to include public participation in three ways --

  • Public Comments at the Scoping Meeting and written comments afterwards,
  • Public Comments at the Working Group meetings, and
  • Public Comments at the July 30, 2003 Sanctuary Advisory Committee hearing.

In reality public comments were massively, if not wholly, ignored at every step.

  • Scoping meeting -- The public presented 12,500 oral and written comments. Yet at least forty percent (40%) of HOPE's 26 substantial comments were lost. How many more of the 12,474 comments were lost?
  • Working Group Meetings -- Sanctuary staff admits they did not notify the authors of the 12,500 comments -- even though they had their addresses, e-mails or phone numbers. HOPE was not notified. Also according to one member the working groups did not allow public comment!
  • Sanctuary Advisory Meeting -- attending the Committee's deliberations on July 31, 2003 -- I did not hear a single Sanctuary Advisory Committee member of refer in any way to comments made by the 300 members of the public the previous evening.

 

This is colossally inadequate - a mere pretense to public participation.

Details - Lost Commments

Forty percent (40%) of HOPE's comments for the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Management Plan were lost in simply transcribing them to the master comment list (the document mis-named "Full List of Issues Raised at Scoping Meeting and in Writing.")

Here is a summary analysis of your staff's transcription of HOPE's comments (Dec 8, 2001) on the update of the Sanctuary Management Plan.

HOPE submitted 26 separate requests for policies, strategies or tools. Of these 26, five are unarguably accurate and complete. We appreciate the care you took transcribing with our comments on noise, military operations and parts of our pesticide suggestions. (Sanctuary much.)

  • However, at least three (3) of our suggestions are entirely missing!

 HOPE's suggestions missing from the transcription included --

  • The "creation of a Monterey Peninsula Marine Park."
  • an "immediate halving of fertilizer use in the Salinas and Carmel Valleys."
  • Using the term "Natural Phenomena" instead of the term "Natural Resources."

Another six (6) of HOPE's requests are only half described, leaving our suggestions seriously incomplete, or easily misunderstood. Another dozen were renamed (Seawalls to armoring) or unrecognizable.

HOPE's major Oil Spill prevention suggestion (Oil Tanker Liners) was put in the wrong category and left wholly unexplained. Not surprisingly the Proposed Management Plan entirely overlooks that suggestion.

  • In summary, 10 out of 26, about 40% of HOPE's comments were either entirely missing, incomplete, misunderstood or misplaced.
  • Only 5 of our 26 comments made it to the master transcription list intact.

Astoundingly, this is the basic document from which all Sanctuary Advisory Council Decisions on the Management Plan were made. 

If a Comment never made it onto that transcription list -- the Sanctuary Advisory Council and Working Groups would never know it existed - and it could never get evaluated for prioritization !!!

This transcription document was not supposed to involve any judgment at all -- simply transcription.

 HOPE did not analyze comments from other individuals, organizations or agencies, but we will be astonished if ours are the only significantly improperly transcribed comments.

Details -- No Notice to Commenters or Public Notice

HOPE was given no notice whatsoever by the Sanctuary that a Comment evaluation process with working groups would begin in January 2003. HOPE did not learn about this process until a June 11th 2003 event put on in Santa Cruz by nonprofit organizations -- after all of the working group meetings were finished.

When I called the Sanctuary, I was told it was too late to have omitted items added. Upon complaining about commenters not being informed about the process, the staff person in charge was clearly dismissive, hostile and annoyed that we, HOPE, felt that the people and organizations who submitted some 12,500 comments should have been informed that a "public" process to eliminate their comments was beginning.

Apparently HOPE's submission of six pages containing 26 relevant, meaningful comments with substantial evidence supporting their importance was not enough evidence of our interest in participation for the Sanctuary to notify us by email, phone (a local call) or postcard that a process of Comment evaluation was about to begin.

You may have held 20 working group meetings,

but if we don't know they're going to happen -- we can't participate.

What must be done?

  • The Comment Evaluation Process Must Restart with a Proper Transcription

 HOPE feels strongly that the Comment Evaluation Process must be restarted.

 This does not mean that the efforts and materials created so far need be lost, but that they probably will be modified by the consideration of the omitted materials and the participation of individuals groups and agencies who are not notified.

 It does mean that --

  • a far more careful transcription process must be completed, and 
  • all the individuals groups and agencies who provided comments must be notified before any decisions are made by Advisory Committees or the Advisory Council.

 Please advise us when we may expect an answer to this letter.

 Thank you,

 David Dilworth, Executive Director

Cc: Congressmen Sam Farr, and George Miller,

Senator Barbara Boxer 

Senator Dianne Feinstein

U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Daniel Basta, Marine Sanctuary Program Director
Commerce

Daniel Basta, Marine Sanctuary Program Director