INTRODUCTION

      This report was prepared jointly by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Ohio Citizen Action (OCA), and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC). Together, these three nongovernmental organizations constitute the US team for the Access Initiative. Since its start in 1969, ELI has become an internationally recognized, independent research and education center that shapes the fields of environmental law, policy, and management domestically and abroad. OCA and its research and education affiliate, Citizens Policy Center, has twenty-five years of experience in promoting the right-to-know in Ohio, a major industrial state. The organization conducts research and public education projects on environmental and consumer issues. SVTC is a diverse grassroots coalition engaged in research and advocacy around the environmental and health problems caused by the rapid growth of the high-tech industry. Established in 1982, SVTC calls attention to and improves the environmental health and safety of the global electronics industry.
      The Access Initiative is a global coalition of public interest groups led by Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE, Uganda) Corporación Participa (Chile), Environmental Management and Law Association (EMLA, Hungary), Thailand Environment Institute (TEI, Thailand), and World Resources Institute (WRI, United States), collaborating to promote national-level implementation of commitments to access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making. At the WSSD, the Access Initiative will release nine national pilot tests of indicators of public access to decision-making, including this U.S. case study. The Access Initiative website (www.accessiniative.org) contains more information.
      This case study draws upon the application of a set of indicators that was developed in early 2001. This project started before September 11^th, and first application of these indicators focused on legislation and practice that prevailed at that point. While Box 1 discusses some of the implications of September 11^th and the subsequent governmental responses, the bulk of this assessment focuses on law, institutions, and practices before September 11, 2001. Future applications of the revised indicators will seek to reflect the more recent regulatory and institutional practices that have evolved since then.
      Briefly, the indicators are divided into four parts. The first part examines the legal framework for access. The second part and third parts consider representative case studies of how public access has been implemented in practice. The fourth part reviews some of the facilitating conditions for promoting public access, such as Internet connectivity, press coverage, and environmental education. Due to the strong roles of both the federal and state authorities in ensuring public access, ELI applied the first and fourth parts to the federal laws, institutions, and practice, while OCA and SVTC each provided case studies of the second and third parts in Ohio and California.
      This report integrates the key findings of the ELI, OCA, and SVTC research, while also drawing upon some of the broader literature and institutional knowledge of these three organizations. This is particularly true of general statements regarding state law and practice, as only two of the fifty states actually underwent rigorous application of the Access Initiative indicators. This draft was reviewed by NGO and government experts on access at the national and state levels.