Community engagement
Communities are important partners in our mission to protect a healthy, flourishing environment for all people in Washington. Ecology has long been committed to public participation and outreach. Under the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, we are increasing our focus on meaningful engagement.
About the Community Engagement Plan
Our Community Engagement Plan describes how we seek to engage with communities so that everyone impacted by our work can have a say in how decisions are made. The Plan identifies ways we can support meaningful engagement with communities by promoting access and addressing barriers. The Plan especially focuses on effectively engaging with communities that face multiple, combined environmental harms and risks to human health.
Connecting with communities
We are eager to learn from communities with firsthand knowledge and lived experience of environmental issues, especially in areas overburdened with environmental hazards. Community members are experts in their lives have unique understanding of the places where they live, work, and recreate. The Plan helps us meaningfully engage communities so that our work better reflects community-identified impacts, needs, priorities, and solutions.
Addressing barriers
Communities face many barriers that make it hard to access public processes. These barriers make it difficult to share experiences, needs, concerns, and solutions. The Plan describes how we will identify and address barriers, so that our engagement processes work for the communities we’re trying to connect with.
Meaningful engagement
We follow the Environmental Justice Council’s Values and Guidance for Community Engagement as a general framework for meaningful engagement. Meaningful engagement might look different in different contexts, depending on the community and the project. Some of the core pillars of our approach are accessibility, accountability, transparency, and relationship-building.
Our community engagement process
The Community Engagement Plan describes our general process for community engagement. The process has four parts: scoping, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Each part includes guidance, best practices, and resources to help us plan for meaningful engagement that is equitable, accessible, and creates accountability.
Connect with us
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Contact information
Office of Equity & Environmental Justice
EJ@ecy.wa.gov
360-972-6366