Transboundary Environmental Assessment: Lessons from OTAG

Publication Date (Web): May 18, 2002 ...... the Emissions Marketing Associa tion Spring Meeting: San Diego, CA, 1999; p 19. ..... Published online 18 ...
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Policy Analysis Transboundary Environmental Assessment: Lessons from OTAG ALEXANDER E. FARRELL* Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213-3890 TERRY J. KEATING U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW (MC 6103A), Washington, D.C. 20460

The nature and role of assessments in creating policy for transboundary environmental problems is discussed. Transboundary environmental problems are particularly difficult to deal with because they typically require cooperation among independent political jurisdictions (e.g., states or nations) which face differing costs and benefits and which often have different technical capabilities and different interests. In particular, transboundary pollution issues generally involve the problem of an upstream source and a downstream receptor on opposite sides of a relevant political boundary, making it difficult for the jurisdiction containing the receptor to obtain relief from the pollution problem. The Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG) addressed such a transboundary problem: the longrange transport of tropospheric ozone (i.e., photochemical smog) across the eastern United States. The evolution of the science and policy that led to OTAG, the OTAG process, and its outcomes are presented. Lessons that are available to be learned from the OTAG experience, particularly for addressing similar transboundary problems such as regional haze, are discussed.

Introduction Environmental pollution often crosses political boundaries from upstream jurisdictions containing one or more sources to downstream jurisdictions containing one or more receptors. The residents of downstream jurisdictions, and their political leaders, have an obvious interest in controlling this pollution, while those in upstream jurisdictions are naturally loathe to bear control costs from which they will receive no substantive benefit. Despite this fundamental dilemma, successful agreements on the control of transboundary environmental pollution exist. There are many elements that go into the creation of such an agreement, one being its technical basis. Scientific and engineering research to better understand the relevant environmental phenomena and to better understand the technological options available to manage pollution are critical to the success of transboundary environmental management. The resulting knowledge can be used by political decision makers and government officials to advance their interests, including such things as reducing health and ecosystem impacts of pollution, preserving important industries, and acting responsibly. But how, exactly, is this accomplished? * Corresponding author phone: (412) 268-5489; fax: (412) 2683757; e-mail: [email protected]. 10.1021/es0106725 CCC: $22.00 Published on Web 05/18/2002

 2002 American Chemical Society

We use the term environmental assessment to describe the entire social process by which expert knowledge related to a environmental policy problem is organized, evaluated, integrated, and delivered to decision makers, who use this knowledge to find ways to advance their interests. Though one might think first of assessments in terms of the reports that they often produce, the implications of scientific assessment are better understood by viewing assessments as a communication process rather than just as a product (1, 2). Assessment processes are embedded in particular institutional settings, within which scientists and other technical experts, decision makers, and advocates communicate to define relevant questions for analysis, mobilize certain kinds of experts and expertise, and interpret findings. This process view raises a host of questions: Why are such processes created? What are the mechanics of organizing environmental assessments? And, more generally, how best can research inform governance? These questions all become more difficult when they are set in a context that includes competing, independent political entities. This paper presents an analysis of a transboundary environmental assessment process that took place in the United States, the Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG). This 2-year effort was led by the heads of the environmental regulatory agencies of 37 eastern states to develop strategies for decreasing interstate flows of tropospheric ozone, other oxidants, and their precursors, commonly called photochemical smog (3). In this effort, individual states acted as independent jurisdictions, similar to the way national governments act in international settings. We summarize the results of an in-depth study of the OTAG process and present lessons that are available to be learned about transboundary environmental assessment processes (see ref 4 and associated papers at http://environment. harvard.edu/gea for more information). Finally, we reflect on what lessons the OTAG experience may have for ongoing efforts to develop strategies for addressing regional haze in the United States. We will focus on the process of environmental assessment in our example rather than on scientific findings or recommendations on air quality policy.

Assessments and Credible Knowledge Scientific and engineering research has a major impact on environmental policy, but the processes by which this occurs are complex, contested, and poorly understood (1, 5, 6). Given the constant evolution of scientific and engineering knowledge, there is often a gap between what scientists are discovering and engineers are creating and what policy makers believe is scientifically supportable or technically feasible. Communication between the research community and the policy-making community is further complicated by different approaches to uncertainty. Researchers have an implicit understanding of the importance of uncertainties in their results, which they often use to define future research. However, few researchers routinely use available methods to explicitly characterize or quantify their understanding of important uncertainties. For policy makers, an explicit characterization of uncertainty is a two-edged sword. On one side, explicit characterizations can help better inform policy makers dealing with subjects for which they have little intuition. However, explicit characterizations of uncertainties may help support or undermine predefined political arguments supported by the policy maker. Assessment processes are an important class of mechanisms for bridging the gap between people and institutions VOL. 36, NO. 12, 2002 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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that create and hold scientific and engineering knowledge and those that use it to help make policy decisions (7). Environmental assessment processes involve the collection, evaluation, and synthesis of information from scientific and engineering research to address policy-relevant questions. They may be conducted by panels of scientists and engineers, as in studies by the National Academy of Sciences or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or by more diverse groups of stakeholders, as in the use of citizen advisory panels (8-10). Assessment processes are often important forums for interaction and negotiation between experts and policy makers. Through this interaction and negotiation, knowledge that is held by scientific and engineering experts may be transferred or translated into information that is widely acknowledged to be true by policy makers and other nonexperts. We refer to the result, which may serve as the basis or justification for public policy decisions, as “credible knowledge.” We intentionally use this label to highlight the importance of the question, “To whom is the information credible?” To have an influence on public policy, technical information must be accepted as credible by policy makers in the legal and political contexts in which they operate. In the example we present next, a key element of credible knowledge that was accepted by OTAG participants is that nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted by power plants can significantly influence tropospheric ozone concentrations several hundred miles downwind (called “long-range ozone transport”). While assessment processes, as we have defined them, may not have a large influence on what is known by an expert community (which is the function of research, per se), these processes can have an important influence on who knows what (i.e., who outside the expert community accepts the information as true). One of the principle outcomes of OTAG was to make ozone transport credible knowledge within an important part of the U.S. regulatory community. This was accomplished by the development, presentation, and validation of sufficient information so that it became impossible to deny ozone transport occurred without being labeled “unscientific”. We next explain how this issue came to be contested in the mid-1990s.

Scientific and Policy Context In the troposphere, ozone is formed through reactions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the presence of sunlight. These precursor pollutants are emitted from a variety of different anthropogenic and biogenic sources, and managing atmospheric ozone concentrations essentially requires controlling anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors. However, this extremely simple description belies the complex chemistry that is actually involved (see ref 11 pp 234-336 for a more complete description). Anthropogenic NOx emissions are almost entirely due to combustion processes in which high temperatures oxidize the nitrogen in the fuel/air mixture to form NOx. The reactions that lead to ozone formation may take several days to complete, during which time pollutants travel with the wind, so photochemical smog in any given location is the result of emissions from local as well as distant sources. Eventually, air pollutants are washed out by precipitation or deposited on surfaces. Even well before OTAG began, scientists understood that ozone transport implied that distant sources were important, but this had not been proved to many state environmental regulators. Furthermore, scientists had not achieved the difficult task of quantifying the impact of ozone transport and source apportionment, although this information would be very valuable to regulators. 2538

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The science of tropospheric ozone has undergone major changes in the last several decades, which we discuss in more detail elsewhere (4, 12). Here, we will simply assert that by the early 1990s long-range ozone transport, a preference for NOx control over VOC control, and the importance of power plant NOx emissions were part of the credible knowledge about air pollution held by policy makers in the EPA and state governments in downwind regions, such as the Northeast and the Lake Michigan areas. In contrast, this information was not considered credible knowledge by state decision makers in upwind regions in the Midwest, Southeast, and Central states. The reasons for this division stem from the differences in the knowledge and interests these regional groups had. The Northeast contained many areas with chronic high ozone concentrations, which made it necessary for the states in the region to invest in the often costly process of planning and implementing emissions controls. It also suggests that state and federal environmental regulators concerned with those areas were more ready to accept the idea that “upwind” states in the Midwest and Southeast contributed to the problem. In contrast, Midwestern, Southeastern, and Central states had few areas with ozone problems, so state regulators had little reason to control emissions or to invest in analyses of the issue. In addition, they were naturally skeptical of claims that they should do so for the benefit of “downwind” states in the Northeast. These differences were exacerbated by the basic framework for the Clean Air Act (CAA), which was written before the significance of long-range ozone transport had been recognized by the scientific community and is built on a basic assumption that local pollution is dominant. In the 1970 CAA, Congress established a national air quality management framework based on conjoint federalism that remains largely in place today (13). Under this framework, Congress assigned responsibility for establishing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to the newly created EPA. Responsibility for determining how to achieve those goals was left to the states, who were required to prepare State Implementation Plans (SIPs) that define many of the controls that would enable the state to attain the NAAQS. The 1970 CAA also set a deadline for attaining the NAAQS in 1975. Most parts of the country were unable to achieve this deadline, which was subsequently pushed back to 1987 in the 1977 Amendments and then again to 2010 in the 1990 Amendments. Figure 1 shows the worst of these “nonattainment areas.” The 1977 Amendments also introduced the first provision, known as Section 126, that allowed downwind states to petition EPA for control of specific stationary sources in upwind states that are interfering with the attainment of the NAAQS in the downwind states. These provisions were the first effort by Congress to deal with the question of the interstate transport of air pollution and were used to press for smoke and sulfur dioxide controls, although the results have been marginal (ref 14, p 386, 15). From the mid-1970s through the start of the OTAG process, significant scientific knowledge about long-range ozone transport was developed, as was the ability to conduct detailed, accurate atmospheric modeling of the effect. Atmospheric modeling occupied a key role in the OTAG process. EPA’s guidance on SIP preparation required that states predict how ozone concentrations in areas with air pollution problems would change given different sets of assumptions, each set representing an emission control policy. This sort of “what if” analysis undertaken by air quality planners seeks to understand the implications of specific emissions control policies for a single set of legal and economic conditions. It does not attempt to develop a more general understanding of the environmental system; therefore, it is more appropriately described as policy analysis rather than science research. This type of policy analysis,

FIGURE 1. Air quality areas: (black) serious, severe, and extreme ozone nonattainment areas, ca. 1994; (diagonal lines) Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium (LADCO); (horizontal lines) Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) states; (rectangles) OTAG modeling domain (large: coarse grid; small: fine grid); (colors) Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs) (green) Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP, includes Alaska and Hawaii); (gray) Central States Regional Air Partnership; (red) Midwest Regional Planning Organization; (yellow) Visibility Inprovement State and Tribal Association of the Southeast (VISTAS); (blue) Mid-Atlantic/North East-Visibility Union (MANE-VU). however, clearly requires substantial scientific understanding of atmospheric chemistry and physics. By the time of the OTAG process, several decades of science research had produced a relatively accurate and detailed approach called the photochemical grid model. In these models, the atmosphere is divided into a three-dimensional grid, with each grid cell assumed to be well-mixed. The model tracks the chemical reactions of pollutants within each grid cell and the advection and diffusion of pollutants between grid cells over time. In the bottom layer of the model, pollutants are added by ground-level emissions and are removed by surface deposition. While these formulations allow for the representation of complex three-dimensional wind fields, in practice, they are limited by the sparse observations of wind speed and direction, particularly above the surface layer, as well as other problems. Photochemical grid models require substantial computer resources and a great deal of spatially and temporally resolved inputs (16, 17). By 1990, the results of predictive photochemical grid models were considered credible knowledge by those environmental protection agencies that had been involved in the issue (i.e., those that had to deal with photochemical smog problems). Both observational research (i.e., field studies) and model development began to focus attention on the regional or transboundary nature of the ozone problem. For instance, Figure 1 shows two multistate groups that conducted regional ozone studies and coordinated ozone control strategies, the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC) and the Lake Michigan Air Directors’ Consortium (LADCO). It is also worth noting that industry (especially the electric power sector) played a significant role in these efforts as they became aware of the increased scrutiny their emissions were receiving. In 1990, 20 years after the passage of the 1970 Act, 112 million people (45% of the U.S. population) still lived in areas that did not attain the ozone NAAQS. Congress attacked the problem in the 1990 CAA amendments, which contained a few steps toward addressing ozone transport and NOx control, although less, perhaps, than the best scientific information at the time would have suggested. One important step was the creation of the OTC, which by the start of the OTAG process had begun developing a strict emissions trading program (the OTC NOx Budget) focused on the electric power sector (18, 19).

The 1990 CAA also required states with “serious” ozone nonattainment problems (or worse) to submit new SIPs based on photochemical grid modeling by November 1994 ( ref 20, 182 (c)(2)A). Seventeen states were required to do so; only one managed to submit a new SIP. There were two reasons for this. Some states subject to this requirement simply had not been required to perform detailed modeling prior to 1990, so they had not made the investment in detailed emission inventories or modeling capabilities and simply underestimated the scope of the job ahead of them. Other states, mostly downwind, conducted their analyses and realized that they would not be able to show attainment without assuming either (i) politically infeasible in-state emission control policies (e.g., restricting automobile traffic) or (ii) emission control policies in upwind states over which they had no authority. Under the Clean Air Act, the failure of states to submit SIPs could have led to EPA’s imposition of Federal Implementation Plans and financial sanctions or a string of lawsuits from environmental advocates. However, these methods were not pursued for a number of reasons, including concerns about reprisals by the “radical conservative” 104th Congress (elected just days before the SIP deadline), a belief that state environmental agencies were the appropriate level of government to address this problem, and an interest in replacing the highly combative method of making policy with a more cooperative approach (21-23). A sense of crisis was accentuated by the pending deregulation of the electric utility sector, which was by then subject to widely varying emission control requirements (24, 25). Thus, the SIP process had broken down, and air quality planning in much of the country was operating in unknown, extra-legal territory. A “gentlemen’s agreement” was achieved shortly thereafter between key states with photochemical smog problems and industrial and environmental groups to hold off on lawsuits and, instead, engage in a “consultative process” and “to reach consensus on the additional regional, local and national emission reductions that are needed for the remaining rate-of-progress requirements and attainment [of the ozone NAAQS]” (26). This “consultative process” allowed the EPA, environmentalists, and the political leadership of the downwind states to seek progress on the problem of transboundary photochemical smog while making it difficult for the upwind states, industry, and the new Congress to VOL. 36, NO. 12, 2002 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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FIGURE 2. OTAG organization. Components identified in the April 13, 1995, letter from Mary Gade have bold borders. All other components were added later (27). question the appropriateness of a state-led assessment effort.

The OTAG Process To implement this agreement, Mary Gade, then Director of the Illinois EPA and Vice-Chair of the newly formed Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), invited environmental commissioners from the eastern United States to join her in an assessment effort (27). Their first meeting was held on May 18, 1995, and OTAG quickly began to take on a character and direction of its own. By August 1995, there were over 300 participants, and by 1997, about 1000 people were engaged in the process. OTAG conducted the largest photochemical modeling effort undertaken up to that time, spending over $20 million. The entire modeling domain covered 37 states in the eastern United States and parts of Canada, divided into a fine resolution grid nested within a coarse resolution grid, as shown in Figure 1. Four separate modeling centers ran over 400 strategy simulations and sensitivity analyses based on four different meteorological episodes between 9 and 15 days in duration that covered periods of high ozone in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast (28). To downwind states facing statutory deadlines, OTAG was a mechanism for delaying expensive and unpopular emission control programs and for obtaining long-sought emissions reductions in upwind states. However, to the upwind states that were not subject to statutory deadlines, OTAG was a mechanism being used by downwind states that were subject to these deadlines to unnecessarily extend these same expensive and unpopular emissions control programs to them. Many of these upwind states (e.g., Ohio or Nebraska) had no nonattainment areas and so had not been required previously to invest in ozone modeling. Naturally, they were quite leery of the whole endeavor. The organizational structure of OTAG, shown in Figure 2, was not planned out in advance but evolved to address the various needs and issues identified by the participants. It grew “top-down” as areas of controversy were identified for 2540

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analysis. Membership in the Policy Group, the official decision-making body, was limited to state officials, while the subsidiary groups were open to all stakeholders interested in the topic they would address. The leadership of key subgroups was balanced between leaders from upwind and downwind states, while industry led some of the workgroups that quickly evolved to address specific issues. Few scientists from universities participated in OTAG because it was essentially a substitute for the air quality planning process that experts in environmental agencies routinely conducted and no special effort to recruit (or fund) university scientists was undertaken. The notable exception was the Air Quality Analysis (AQA) Workgroup. Given the intensity of the meeting and work schedule of OTAG, it may have been infeasible for university researchers, who typically have teaching and other commitments, to participate in the process significantly. However, the addition of relatively disinterested technical experts might well have improved the process and its credibility with individuals who did not participate. The technical analysis accomplished during OTAG was performed by the subsidiary bodies which contained experts from different organizations who previously had little chance to interact. They worked together to develop analyses that all believed were well-supported by scientific and engineering evidence. State environmental agency staff, EPA technical staff, and their contractors did most of the work in OTAG, although the electric power industry played a significant role. Policy makers in the EPA participated in OTAG but did not take leading roles. While the federal government provided the core funding for OTAG through grants to ECOS and the modeling centers, state governments provided at least as much support through in-kind contributions of staff time and resources. One of the key features of OTAG was that information “filtered up” to the Policy Group in parallel formal and informal pathways. The formal pathway might be, for instance, from the Biogenics Ad Hoc Group, to the Emissions Inventory Workgroup, to the Modeling and Assessment

Subgroup, and finally, to the Policy Group. At each step along this path, a technical expert (or experts) would present information, receive comments, perform further analysis if necessary, and then be authorized to present the results to the next higher group. The informal pathways would operate privately to deliver more quickly the same information to the same members of the next higher group. This allowed for like-minded participants to review and debate the information and to prepare for the formal, public meeting, when even more review and debate would take place. A few groups (e.g., EPA and the electric power industry) had representatives on most of the 23 working groups and would convene privately to discuss what was going on across OTAG at any given point. This process of repeated public discussions of particular issues, shadowed by multiple private analyses, served somewhat like peer-review. The main result was that by the time information was presented to the Policy Group, it had been thoroughly discussed and vetted, so the information was generally regarded as both legitimate and credible by all participants. Thus, there was little new information presented at Policy Group meetings, making them a bit like play-acting, but the fact that these meetings were public and widely watched (by stakeholder groups and the press) meant that they were important as a key means of certifying that the information was credible knowledge. However, people outside this process, such as university researchers, would not have recognized the credibility of this process because they were not part of it or because it did not use the quality-control methods they rely on, such as peer-review by academic journals. There were two important exceptions to the “filtering up” process previously described. The first was a 2-day “Stakeholder Presentations” meeting of the Policy Group that occurred near the end of the OTAG process that the leadership felt they needed to hold to give participants (and late-comers) a chance to present their case using whatever information they chose. OTAG participants reported that the introduction of new information from outside the OTAG process at this point tended to undermine, not improve, stakeholder arguments. Newcomers to the process who insisted on presenting were essentially ignored thereafter. The second exception were the negotiations on the exact text of the final OTAG conclusions and recommendations, which proceeded through the sort of public debates and behind-the-scene negotiations that are common to school boards, legislatures, and international treaty negotiations alike. Initially, OTAG focused on developing an adequate baseline of information for a rigorous analysis across all 37 states, which included reviewing existing ozone control programs, reviewing existing modeling and monitoring studies, selecting the photochemical model and meteorological episodes, evaluating the technological and economic feasibility of various control technologies, preparing emissions inventories and meteorological data, and so forth. This took about a year, which was followed by about 8 months of detailed modeling of potential control strategies and other analyses. The technical analysis that was generated by OTAG largely confirmed the views of the EPA formed during the ROMNET photochemical modeling study (29, 30). This earlier study involved participants from a number of the Northeast states that participated in OTAG but was largely an EPA-led effort and did not involve many of the upwind states. Thus, while ROMNET convinced EPA staff of the reality of long-range ozone transport, it was only participation in OTAG’s multistate modeling centers that allowed ozone transport to become credible knowledge in the view of many state environmental agencies and other stakeholders.

In addition to the evidence provided by the modeling centers, the AQA Workgroup provided a different type of evidence to characterize ozone transport and a different style of participation. Rather than forecasting air quality through the use of models derived from first principles, the AQA Workgroup applied statistical tools to air quality and meteorological observations to gain insights into transport patterns. Prior to OTAG, these approaches were not used in regulatory processes very much. Through an open collaboration between state agency experts and university scientists, the AQA Workgroup provided a separate line of evidence to support the conclusions of the predictive modeling and, in the process, gained wide acceptance for observational-based modeling and analysis as an acceptable method for creating credible knowledge (31, 32). Over the course of the OTAG process, the technical modeling and analysis results shifted the theme of the policy debate at the state level from whether long-range ozone transport occurs at all, to which states should control emissions, and by how much. Responding to this shift, the technical work conducted by the modeling centers, as well as other participants, began to focus on quantitative source apportionment; in this case, how much ozone in a downwind location Y was due to emissions in an upwind location X? Just as OTAG was largely born of a political crisis, when the 1996 elections largely repudiated the antiregulatory agenda of the 104th Congress, pressure to conclude the OTAG process began to grow. In addition, by 1996, the Clinton Administration signaled its intentions to require decreases in emissions of NOx from power plants, with or without state cooperation (33-35). Under increasing pressure to reach closure, the OTAG process entered its end game in the spring of 1997. As the Policy Group began to formulate conclusions and recommendations, four regional voting blocks emerged: the Downwind states, comprised of the members of the OTC and LADCO; the Ohio River Valley states; the Southeast states; and the Central states, also referred to as the “Coarse Grid” states based on the OTAG modeling domain as shown in Figure 2. While the Downwind states sought strict emission controls, the Ohio River Valley and Southeastern states argued for less stringent controls and more flexibility. Meanwhile, the Central states sought to be excluded from any future emission control recommendations. The Policy Group’s negotiations culminated in a meeting on June 2 and 3, 1997, in which the key recommendation on NOx controls for electric power plants was worked out. The debate over this recommendation was stretched out over 2 days and eventually resolved by the decision to recommend a range of controls, from the status quo (minor reductions for some plants) to 85% emission reductions. This skillful compromise was the key to a successful resolution to the OTAG process because it allowed almost all participants to argue that their position was supported by the final recommendations. After coming to this agreement, the remaining issues before the Policy Group were settled in relatively short order, often simply calling for more research or affirming EPA’s planned course of action. In July 1997, the OTAG process came to a close with a brief executive summary document that was mailed to a few hundred participants, plus a technical report that appeared only on the Internet (28). There were several key outcomes of the OTAG process. First, the 37 states, which started the process with fundamental disagreements about the nature of ozone transport and about the general strategies to address the problem, did manage to work together to reach consensus conclusions. This ability to work together is partly due to the fact that if any state had walked away from the process, it would have looked bad for that state in particular and for the idea that the states, in general, can act responsibly on transboundary VOL. 36, NO. 12, 2002 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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environmental problems. The recommendations on emission controls that were developed by OTAG were approved by a large majority (32 to 5) but are relatively weak. Nonetheless, these agreements are important because, before OTAG, it was not clear that the states were capable of agreeing to anything at all and the leadership of OTAG deserves due credit for this accomplishment. International experience in transboundary environmental policy has shown that effective regimes often begin with weak, least-common-denominator agreements that, over time, grow into stronger ones (36, 37). This experience suggests that the weak agreement that resulted from OTAG is all one could realistically have expected from the OTAG process, given that it was the first effort to negotiate a solution to the interstate transport of ozone. Had the collaborative approach taken during the OTAG process been allowed to continue, it is interesting to speculate how negotiations might have evolved similarly from a weak agreement into stronger ones, as some of the participating decision makers have indicated privately to the authors that they thought it could have. Second, the extensive technical analysis conducted during OTAG was more important than the weak policy decisions. This work improved and broadened existing knowledge about ozone formation and transport by producing consistent, highquality emissions inventories for many states, improved air quality data analysis techniques, and extensive regional-scale photochemical modeling. Ozone transport, per se, was no longer questioned by policy makers, the debate shifted to what to do about it. While OTAG did not really change what was known about ozone transport, OTAG did change who knew it. Thus, the process created credible knowledges technical information broadly accepted as true by decision makers. Third, the technical efforts created new analytical capacity at the state level that has continued to contribute to improving the understanding of regional air quality and the development of management strategies. During OTAG, a number of states increased their technical staffs and resources. Furthermore, OTAG gave air quality professionals from different states and the EPA a chance to work together, many for the first time, creating a lasting professional network. Many states have continued to cooperate formally and informally in developing technical analyses of regional ozone, fine particles, and haze. Fourth, a number of federal actions to achieve cleaner air were delayed for 2 years. To those who felt no such action is warranted, this was obviously a positive outcome; to those who felt it is important to reduce emissions further, this delay was a disappointing necessity imposed by the political situation. A number of things did not happen during OTAG. First, no firm agreement to deeply reduce emissions was reached, which many participants had hoped for. Second, OTAG did not substantially advance the science of atmospheric chemistry in the strict sense, although it did provide further evidence that supports the long-held scientific view of longrange ozone transport, and it made some initial steps toward quantification of this effect. Third, OTAG was not a substitute for federal decision-making; EPA was always expected to use its authority to require the states to reduce emissions, and it did so shortly after OTAG ended. Fourth, OTAG did not lead to a new, cooperative approach to creating air quality policy in the United States. After the OTAG process, states and the EPA returned to the traditional approach of federal regulation and lawsuits.

Discussion The OTAG process illustrates the limits of consensus and the challenges of using open, stakeholder-based processes to develop public policy. Such processes are likely to proliferate in U.S. environmental policy making because of broad social 2542

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and political forces supporting their use. However, the OTAG process proved to be inadequate as a substitute for the authoritative decision-making institutions created by national and state law. Thus, while multistate participatory processes have the potential to deliver important benefits to public policy, they are likely to remain only part of the whole picture, supplementing but not replacing the work of legislatures, the Courts, and environmental agencies at both national and state levels. On the basis of our study of the OTAG process, we recommend that the participants in future participatory transboundary environmental assessment processes consider the following lessons. (1) Limits of Consensus. By definition, states cannot be coerced into agreeing with the outcome of a consensusbased process, so the potential for such processes to create binding agreements that go against the interests of any state is small. Thus, multistate environmental assessments should focus on other goals, such as expanding the body of credible knowledge, establishing communication, and developing professional respect and relationships among the participants. There is a danger, however, that domestic U.S. environmental policy makers might be reluctant to devote resources to consensus-based processes unless they understand their value or (as in the case of OTAG) there is no real alternative. (2) Importance of Process and Participation. Multistate environmental assessments serve as important routes for communication and negotiation on both technical and political issues. Thus, who participates and how they do so are critical issues. Environmental assessments serve as a means of communication among experts and decision makers and must contain mechanisms for two-way interactions at multiple organizational levels, often repetitively. Most importantly, assessments are generally only credible to those who participate or, at least, are represented. Thus, to gain both technical credibility and political legitimacy, broad participation by experts and decision makers from a variety of stakeholder perspectives is needed. (3) Improving Communication. Because the initial perceptions of the problem may vary widely at the start of the assessment process, it should begin with an opportunity for each participant to outline their perception of the problem and the questions they hope to resolve. To maintain communication, a regular mechanism, such as a newsletter or website is very helpful. The OTAG process was probably the first environmental assessment to effectively use the Internet and World Wide Web, providing discussion papers and data to participants electronically. Telephone and electronic communications can be used to reduce the time and cost of face-to-face meetings once sufficient professional respect has been built between previously unfamiliar participants. During OTAG, the demand for communication lead to the development of multiple websites, as well as a commercial newsletter. (4) Importance of Adaptability. Environmental assessments are mainly learning processes, so that plans for the assessment made at its outset might need modification as new information comes to light over the course of the process. The leadership should recognize the importance of adaptability and should identify an explicit point in the process for considering a midcourse correction. (5) Importance of Leadership. Successful assessments require astute and respected leadership that is not committed to a particular outcome a priori, that is genuinely interested in developing credible knowledge, and that has incentives to achieve positive outcomes from the process. Their most important task is to push the limits of consensus as far as possible in developing what is accepted as credible knowledge.

(6) Leaving a Legacy. The positive outcomes of a multistate environmental assessment are ephemeral and will erode away unless action is taken to document the newly created credible knowledge and to maintain the network of communication. The assessment process should be thoroughly documented, and an adequate budget for this purpose should be identified at the outset. Useful cooperative practices developed in the assessment should be institutionalized, such as the creation of permanent technical workgroups, periodic workshops, and well-maintained websites. (7) Transcending Crisis Management. Environmental issues often have to reach a state of crisis before they are able to compete for the time and attention of decision makers. To avoid reaching a crisis, environmental assessments may need to be performed under constructed or self-imposed deadlines to provide decision makers with an appropriate sense of urgency. The state participants in OTAG were driven by a deadline to provide input to the EPA, after which the EPA would act with or without the input of the states. Without such a deadline and default decision-making process, there is little incentive for transboundary environmental assessments to come to any common conclusions or recommendations. These lessons are particularly relevant to the work of the multistate Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs), shown in Figure 1, that have been formed to develop management plans for regional haze in the United States. The composition of the eastern RPOs resembles the voting blocks that developed at the end of the OTAG process. The OTAG experience suggests that the formation of RPOs is just the beginning of the process of developing regional solutions. RPOs provide an opportunity for stakeholders in a region to come to a common understanding of the regional haze problem in their area. It is worth noting that tribal governments are participating in several of the RPOs, placing them alongside state governments for the first time in regional air quality management. By pooling resources, RPOs will be able to conduct more extensive and sophisticated analyses of management strategies and, thereby, may develop better, more widely accepted solutions. The RPOs, however, should not be expected to develop aggressive binding agreements on emissions controls due to (a) the limitations of a consensus-based process described here and (b) the discrepancy between the geographic scale of the haze problem and the RPOs themselves. While these groupings reflect common interests, the geographic scope of regional haze problems may be much larger than each of these groups. Thus, the most contentious transboundary issues will arise where emissions from within one RPO are believed to contribute to haze in another RPO. Given the limits of consensus, though, it is not clear that a larger RPO would be able to resolve such issues. Where the costs of environmental policies are borne by one state and the benefits accrue to another, there will always be a role for national policies. Given this reality, the RPOs as configured can focus on improving the technical capacity and political will to act within their own regions and provide laboratories for developing alternative strategies for addressing issues on a national scale.

Acknowledgments This research was supported, for the most part, by a grant to Harvard University from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9521910), a grant to the National Center for Environmental Decision-Making Research from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9513010), and a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Some of A.E.F.’s support came from the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, which was created through a cooperative agreement between the National Science

Foundation (SBR-9521914) and Carnegie Mellon University and has received subsequent support from private organizations. Some of T.J.K.’s support came from the American Association for the Advancement of Science Environmental Science and Engineering Fellowship Program, which in turn is funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The authors thank Bill Clark, Ellis Cowling, Mary Gade, David Hawkins, Rudy Husar, Mary Nichols, the other Global Environmental Assessment project fellows, and the many OTAG participants we interviewed for their encouragement and assistance. The insightful comments of the four reviewers helped greatly improve the paper, for which the authors are grateful. The views expressed are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the EPA or any other organizations or their sponsors with which the authors are affiliated or their sponsors.

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Received for review February 22, 2001. Revised manuscript received March 12, 2002. Accepted March 19, 2002. ES0106725