Evaluating public involvement programs in federally funded public works projects in the United States

Abstract

The citizen participation programs of two federal public works projects were evaluated using the case method approach--the North Expressway, San Antonio, Texas (the Federal Highway Administration and the Texas Highway Department) , and the Truman Dam, Warsaw, Missouri (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). For purposes of analysis and comparison the publics were divided into three groups--general, interested and involved--and those techniques used to reach these audiences, whether publicly initiated or agency initiated, were differentiated. For the North Expressway, the Texas Highway Department used four techniques--public hearings, speeches, a report, and a physical model. The public initiated twelve techniques including litigation, a report, media coverage, and referenda. Public hearings, news releases, local meetings, reports, and letters to congressmen and the governor of Missouri were among the nine techniques used by the Corps of Engineers to reach various audiences. Five techniques were initiated by the public, including litigation, petitions, and resolutions. The federal legal statutory requirements of seven federal departments or agencies were compared: Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation. The requirements vary widely from the statutes of the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior establishing advisory committees to the Department of Housing and Urban Development calling for written citizen participation programs. Nine issues fundamental to citizen participation were briefly discussed-representativeness and accountability, participation and apathy, experts and laymen, critical mass-spontaneous combustion, timing, promise-delivery gap, shifting audiences, scale, and setting...