Raymark Community Advisory Group
Meeting Agendas, Minutes/Notes and Presentations
Listing files in 'Raymark Advisory Community Group'
Meeting Schedule (calendar)
The Raymark Community Advisory Group meets monthly on the last Wednesday of the month.
Listing files in 'Meeting Schedule'
Community Involvement
Community groups have played a key role since the beginning of the Raymark project. The current, newly established community group is the Raymark Community Advisory Group.
What is a Community Advisory Group?
A Community Advisory Group (CAG) is made up of members of a community and is designed to serve as the focal point for the exchange of information among the local community and EPA, the State regulatory agency, and other pertinent agencies involved in cleanup of the Superfund site.
Who can be a member of the CAG?
The members of a CAG should represent various interests of the greater community. This allows different points of view and ideas to be shared and multiple groups within the community to be represented. To the extent possible, membership in the CAG should reflect the composition of the community near the site and the diversity of racial, ethnic, and economic interests in the community. Members of a CAG may include concerned citizens, citizens with environmental or public health experience, local business owners, religious organization members, cultural organization members, council members, state representatives, and members of other local groups and organizations. While it often is difficult to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard in large groups, the CAG should include enough members to adequately reflect the diversity of community interests regarding site cleanup and reuse.
What can a CAG do?
The purpose of a CAG is to provide an opportunity for community members to present and discuss their needs and concerns related to the Superfund site and learn about site updates. A CAG can provide important information about the site, express the community's environmental and health questions, and provide valuable feedback to the agencies. The CAG can also be useful in disseminating important information about the site to the rest of the community.
How can I become involved?
The Raymark Community Advisory Group meets monthly on the last Wednesday of the month. If you are interested in becoming involved in the Raymark Community Advisory Group, please email Alivia Coleman at
[email protected].
Historical Community Involvement
To learn about past community groups and the work they accomplished, visit Historical Community Involvement.
Raymark Advisory Committee
The Raymark Advisory Committee (RAC) was a group of approximately fifteen volunteers who met on a monthly basis for over seven years. The RAC discussed timely issues associated with EPA’s investigation of and cleanup plans for the remaining properties impacted by Raymark waste in Stratford. This advisory committee, appointed by the Town Council in 2000, provided a stakeholders’ perspective to the agencies. They worked with an EPA-funded technical advisor,
GeoInsight, Inc. to sort through the myriad environmental engineering and regulatory complexities of Superfund. Meetings were run by a professional facilitator from the Consensus Building Institute, also paid for by EPA.
The RAC’s accomplishments, from the group’s formation through September 2007, are summarized in
Section I of their final report. The RAC’s most recent efforts focused on evaluating EPA’s Feasibility Study on how to handle Raymark waste located on the remaining 26 commercial and municipal sites (referred to as OU6). They established a baseline of conditions and constraints that provide important context for developing subsequent recommendations acceptable to the wide range of affected constituents within the Town.
Section II of the RAC’s final report outlines those constraints.
The RAC released their recommendations regarding EPA’s approach to addressing the estimated 100,000 cubic yards of Raymark waste as part of OU6—the recommendations are contained in
Section III of their final report. Members of the RAC presented their recommendations to the Town Council on September 10th.
At this point, there are no plans for the RAC to continue meeting, largely because there are no more EPA funds to support the RAC’s technical advisors, GeoInsight’s or the CBI’s facilitator, Patrick Field.
For more information about the purpose and makeup of the RAC click here:
Bulletin #36
To download a copy of the RAC/EPA Consensus Agreement, click here:
Consensus Agreement