U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC)
Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) Subcommittee
Meeting Summary
April 2-3, 2019
Dates and Times: April 2, 2019, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; April 3, 2019, 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Eastern Time
Location: EPA Research Triangle Park Research Facility, 109 TW Alexander Drive, Durham,
North Carolina
Executive Summary
On April 2-3, 2019, EPA's BOSC SHC subcommittee convened in Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina. The goals of the two-day meeting were to review the SHC Research Program's
draft Strategic Research Action Plan (StRAP)1 and propose research strategies therein, and
provide overall direction to the SHC program by responding to several charge questions. SHC
program staff members were available during the meeting to address StRAP content and specific
areas of input from the BOSC. The meeting format allowed for presentations, open dialogue,
program feedback, subcommittee questions, and EPA responses to questions.
Day 1 consisted of presentations and selected illustrations outlining the SHC program's three
main topics, 11 research areas, and respective outputs. Day 2 included continued presentations
and discussion between the subcommittee, SHC program staff, and program office and regional
partners. The subcommittee formed 3-4 person BOSC workgroups organized by SHC topic
areas to develop strengths, suggestions, and recommendations for the seven Agency-provided
charge questions for each topic area.
Dr. Bruce Rodan, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, Office of Research and
Development (ORD), welcomed the SHC subcommittee members and noted their role of
providing independent peer review of ORD planning and research implementation. He reviewed
the subcommittee charge to provide advice to ensure the SHC program completes research in an
appropriate way and implements EPA's strategic goals. Mr. David Dunlap, Deputy Assistant
Administrator for Research and Development, ORD, emphasized the subcommittee's role and
ORD's need for their input and commitment to assist EPA with StRAP implementation. Mr. Jace
Cuje, served as the Designated Federal Officer from ORD.
Overview of SHC's Strategic Research Action Plan
Dr. Michael Slimak, National Program Director, SHC Research Program, outlined the StRAP
structure of three topic areas, which divide into 11 research areas. He explained how the program
prepared the draft StRAP to align with EPA's strategic goals and objectives, specifically
Objective 1.3 (revitalize land and prevent contamination) and Objective 3.3 (prioritize robust
science). Dr. Slimak noted that EPA's Strategic Plan accelerated the pace of cleanups by creating
specific goals and metrics.
1 https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-03/documents/shc strap- feb 27 public review draft.pdf
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Dr. Slimak discussed the SHC program's need to increase the number of research products to
meet customer needs by 2022, emphasizing the program's work with program and regional
partners. He reviewed the strategic drivers and documents used to inform SHC's StRAP.
Mr. Stiven Foster, Science Advisor, Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM),
discussed partner engagement and provided background information on OLEM's organization
structure and how OLEM collaborates with ORD. He stated that OLEM's participation in
Research Area Coordination Teams (RACTs) provides an opportunity for great collaboration in
the development of the SHC program's planned outputs. Mr. Foster noted the involvement will
help better align the research with priority needs within OLEM's entire portfolio.
Ms. Regina Poeske and Dr. Jonathan Essoka, Region 3's Regional Science Liaison (RSL) and
Regional Superfund and Technology Liaison (STL), discussed how ORD and the SHC program
engaged with the regions to develop the SHC program StRAP. Ms. Poeske explained that their
role is to facilitate communication and transfer of ORD's products to regional offices, state
partners, and other stakeholders. She emphasized the benefit of regional participation in RACTs.
Ms. Sarah Mazur described how the Regional Sustainability and Environmental Sciences
Research Program (RESES) facilitates collaboration between ORD scientists, the regions, and
their stakeholders and has demonstrated success in building regional capacity, assisting
stakeholders, and influencing stakeholder decisions. She described the evaluation findings of
impacts and outcomes and noted that RESES project results influence stakeholder decisions or
actions, which influences EPA project outcomes.
SHC Research Program - Presentation and Selected Illustrations of Topic Area 1:
Contaminated Sites
Dr. Andrew Geller, Deputy National Program Director, SHC Research Program, introduced
Topic 1, Contaminated Sites, stating contaminated sites were a top priority for the new
administration. He explained how the SHC program reference a detailed list of partner needs
from OLEM, have face-to-face meetings with office directors, host engagement webinars where
the SHC program and program office scientists meet to determine what science is needed,
identify needs from RSLs, and engage with STLs to identify Superfund opportunities.
Mr. Daniel Powell, Acting Director of OLEM's Office of Superfund Remediation and
Technology Innovation (OSRTI), provided OLEM's perspective working closely with the SHC
program to characterize and clean up waste sites and an overview of key recommendations from
the Superfund Task Force related to technologies. He outlined OSRTI's needs, challenges, and
considerations.
Mr. Tom Holdsworth, Assistant Laboratory Director for the SHC program, reviewed Research
Area 2, Site Characterization and Remediation and the corresponding outputs, as outlined in the
StRAP.
Dr. Geller recognized ORD's work on lead in direct response to technical support needs from
states to help build their response capabilities. He emphasized that the SHC program is involved
heavily in lead research, including the development of multiple models of lead exposure.
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Dr. Elaine Cohen-Hubal of the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL), ORD,
described how the SHC program works on predictive models for understanding per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure, methods for measuring PFAS in different media,
and strategies for controlling sources and remediation. She noted that the SHC program's highest
priorities are multi-media exposure estimates for risk management and identifying locations with
high potential exposures. Dr. Cohen-Hubal discussed the benefits of the publically-accessible
Chemical and Products database (CPDat).
SHC Research Program - Presentation and Selected Illustrations of Topic Area 2: Waste
and Sustainable Materials Management
Dr. Geller introduced Topic 2, Waste and Sustainable Materials Management, and the SHC
program's ability to address waste that society produces.
Mr. Barnes Johnson, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR), OLEM, discussed
the different research areas occurring in ORCR, including landfill management and bioreactor
landfills. He highlighted ORCR's perspective and work in the SHC StRAP's Research Areas 7
and 8.
Dr. Thabet Tolaymat, National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL), provided a
selected illustration on Research Area 6, Landfill Management. He acknowledged the concern of
state regulatory agencies and the decisions regarding landfill closures, protection, and
temperature.
Dr. Wes Ingwersen, NRMRL, discussed Research Area 7, Life Cycle Inventories and
Methodologies, and the effect of increased global materials use on lifecycle inventories. He
highlighted the readily-accessible United States Environmentally Extended Input-Output
(USEEIO) model and the enhancement of measurement methods used for waste tracking. Dr.
Ingwersen explained the need for waste estimation tools, noting that NRMRL hopes to add new
waste types to USEEIO and integrate waste tracking.
The NERL and NHEERL staff conducted tours of the EnviroAtlas, Bioaccessibility, and Solvent
Vapor Intrusion laboratories.
The SHC subcommittee members and EPA staff engaged in discussion on various topics
including waste streams of e-waste, plastics, and recyclables. Other topics of discussion included
what processes the program uses internally or across ORD to determine the research question of
highest priority and how the SHC program addresses the customer's long-term needs.
SHC Research Program - Presentation and Selected Illustrations of Topic Area 3: Healthy
and Resilient Communities
Ms. Mazur provided an overview of Topic 3, Healthy and Resilient Communities, and an
overview of Research Areas 9, 10, and 11, as outlined in the StRAP.
Dr. John Thomas, Office of Community Revitalization (OCR), explained the process of OCR
funding and how OCR wants to create a space for the communities to have a conversation about
their vision for the future and develop action plans within the SHC program topic areas. He
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discussed OCR's recent collaboration with the SHC program through shared data layers in
EnviroAtlas.
Dr. Essoka provided a regional perspective on challenges surrounding the conversion of
contaminated lands into properties that could be considered assets for communities. He raised the
wealth of contaminated sites around the country and their proximity to humans, emphasizing
how regions have community engagement centers and community coordinators that establish
trust with local communities.
Dr. Joel Hoffman, a research biologist within National Health and Environmental Effects
Research Laboratory and lead scientist of the Great Lakes Lake Study, discussed the goals and
benefits of Research Area 9 and the R2R2R program (i.e., remediation to restoration to
revitalization), which is to help transform remediation projects into sustainable revitalization of
the surrounding community by maximizing the positive societal and environmental outcomes.
Dr. Susan Julius, National Center for Environmental Assessment, addressed Problem
Statements 1 and 4 under Research Area 10, Community-Driven Solutions. She explained how
extreme weather events affect how EPA provides tools, which enables communities to become
more resilient.
Dr. Nicolle Tulve, NERL, reviewed health outcomes in Research Area 10 and explained how
EPA wants to use the tools and information from the national research programs to organize,
evaluate, and prioritize the interrelationships between exposure to chemical and non-chemical
stressors, inherent characteristics, and health outcomes.
The SHC subcommittee and SHC staff discussed the topic of resiliency research and how EPA
must consider risks of revitalization at different scales and present these risks to their partners.
The SHC subcommittee also discussed the topics of spatial delineation at a contaminated sites,
EPA's partnering with other agencies, temporal aspect within restoration, and asset mapping.
SHC subcommittee members emphasized the value and resiliency focus of tools such as
EnviroAtlas, and the availability and dissemination of SHC product and tools.
The SHC subcommittee discussed each of the seven charge questions including the SHC
subcommittee-specific charge questions on the program's problem statements with solutions
approach and the impact of natural disasters. The subcommittee formed 3-4 person workgroups
organized by SHC topic areas to address all charge questions, with the goal to produce a draft
response.
SHC Subcommittee Report-Out and Summary of Preliminary Recommendations
Each workgroup identified strengths, suggestions, and preliminary recommendations pertaining
to the draft SHC StRAP, each specific charge question, and designated topic area. The SHC
subcommittee discussed the recommendations of each workgroup and presented an initial
summary for SHC program staff. These recommendations and supporting suggestions will be
reviewed and refined by the subcommittee over the next few months and finalized in a draft
report for the BOSC Executive Committee (EC) meeting.
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Topic 1: Contaminated Sites
The workgroup did not propose suggestions or recommendations for Charge Question la. The
workgroup proposed the following suggestions and recommendations by charge question.
•	Include additional detail on state and tribal needs and how those needs are represented.
(CQ lb)
•	Add methods to increase flexibility of participation from states (e.g., hosting one-day
meetings or funds to attend conferences). (CQ lb)
•	Develop strong science to engage, inform, and empower communities with the data and
tools to maintain sustainable environmental protection. (CQlc)
•	Place stronger emphasis on strategic long-term vision. (CQlc)
•	Assist states with the capacity to measure and understand the potential effects or
communicate risk to the public for unregulated contaminants in drinking water. (CQld)
•	Include ORD's role of support to city planning at contaminated sites to balance concerns
regarding infiltration and migrating contamination. (CQld)
•	Include area of exposure research in the total environment approach and make more
explicit. (CQld)
•	Explore strategies to improve the quality of community engagement and transfer of
control to local communities as EPA's role at the site lessens. (CQld)
•	Develop and expand examples of market-based solutions and incentives to adopt new
technology and financing (i.e., federal tax incentives to incent remediation and
community engagement). (CQle)
•	Engage with the community early to identify community research and data needs to help
design a remedy to meet that need. (CQle)
•	Develop an implementation plan to identify how the program will address problems and
requested further clarification and categorization regarding strategies for community
engagement. (CQ2)
•	Explore a partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics to obtain consistent,
ongoing, and comprehensive data on children's blood levels. (CQ2)
•	Access a chemical class-based approach for PFAS compounds (i.e., a simple
organofluorine measurement might need to be explored as an output) due to the broad
extent of contaminated sites. (CQ2)
•	Foster a better understanding of how the SHC program works with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support
community resilience. (CQ3)
•	Expand the promotion and understanding of EnviroAtlas to a larger audience.
Topic 2: Waste and Sustainable Materials Management
The workgroup emphasized the need to build stronger partnerships with research partners, both
within EPA and across other agencies and institutions. The workgroup did not propose
suggestions or recommendations for Charge Question la. The workgroup proposed the following
suggestions and recommendations by charge question.
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•	Engage the matrix interface (MI) staff and RACTs to further enhance the coordinated
engagement process. (CQlb)
•	Create a longer-term vision and an integrated and overarching framework to explain how
specific problems and outputs contribute to overall research goals and priorities. (CQlc)
•	Include life-cycle assessment modeling as a tool to conduct additional research in
materials technology and innovation, identifying sources of contaminants and researching
how to efficiency reduce these (e.g., through incentives). (CQld)
•	Explore the use of price-based incentives to motivate waste avoidance, reduction, and
recycling. (CQle)
•	Develop circular economy case studies to identify sustainable financing opportunities to
avoid waste costs. (CQle)
•	Increase program evaluation to better identify effectiveness of research need. (CQ2)
•	Explore the adoption of a multi-level approach regarding disaster management. (CQ3)
Topic 3: Healthy and Resilient Communities
The workgroup did not specifically address each charge question, but they provided a summary
of the workgroup's main points.
•	Include goals of public participation and prevention into the draft SHC StRAP (similar to
the EPA Strategic Plan).
•	Provide a greater emphasis on the strategy for addressing and reducing vulnerability (i.e.,
more participation of communities).
•	Incorporate a process or social learning as a benchmark, and structuring the report to
replace "outcomes" with objectives, methods, or strategies.
•	Recognize communities and ecosystems are distinct and nuanced, and they should be
treated accordingly.
•	Apply case studies in a broader framework or process for wider use.
•	Include emerging research area of rising heat index, which is cross-cutting and applicable
to other topics.
Conclusion
The SHC subcommittee will compile responses from each workgroup's suggestions and
recommendations into the draft SHC StRAP review report. The subcommittee will convene via
teleconference to discuss the final revisions as a group before the BOSC EC meeting, which will
convene in June 2019. The EC will consider the subcommittees' recommendations and finalize
the overall BOSC report, which will include reviews of each research program.
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Meeting Agenda and Charge Questions
The agenda2 and the draft charge3 can be accessed at https://www.epa.gov/bosc/sustainable-
healthv-communities-subcommittee-meeting-documents-april-2-3-2019.
Meeting Participants
BOSC Sustainable and Healthy Communities Subcommittee Members:
Courtney Flint, Chair
Matthew Naud, Vice Chair
Jay Golden
Kimberly Gray
Elena Irwin
James Kelly
Rainer Lohmann
Jonathan Meiman*
Donald Nelson
Barrett Ristroph
Leslie Rubin
Derek Shendell
Michael Steinhoff
*did not attend
EPA Designated Federal Officer (DFO): Jace Cuje, Office of Research and Development
EPA Presenters:
Elaine Cohen-Hubal, National Exposure Research Laboratory
Jonathan Essoka, EPA Region 3
Stiven Foster, Office of Land and Emergency Management
Andrew Geller, Deputy National Program Director, Sustainable and Healthy
Communities Research Program
Joel Hoffman, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory
Tom Holdsworth, Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program
Wes Ingwersen, National Risk Management Research Laboratory
Barnes Johnson, Director, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, Office of Land
and Emergency Management
Susan Julius, National Center for Environmental Assessment
Sarah Mazur, Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program
Regina Poeske, EPA Region 3
Dan Powell, Office of Land and Emergency Management
Michael Slimak, National Program Director, Sustainable and Healthy Communities
Research Program
John Thomas, Office of Community Revitalization
2	https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-03/documents/bosc shc2 Of agenda tabular 3-27-19-rev.pdf
3	https://www.epa.gOv/sifes/production/files/20I.9-03/document.s/1bosc she f2f charge as .pdf
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Thabet Tolaymat, National Risk Management Laboratory
Nicolle Tulve, National Exposure Research Laboratory
Other EPA Attendees:
Other Participants:
Lucinda Johnson, Vice Chair, BOSC Executive Committee
Contractor Support (ICF):
Canden Byrd
Blake Riley
Catherine Smith
Karen Bradham
Karen Chu
David Dunlap
Emily Eisenhauer
Amanda Fitzm orris
Megan Fleming
Greg Grissom
Intaek Hahn
Laura Jackson
Anne Neale
Carolyn Pugh
Bruce Rodan
Melissa McCullough
Megan Mehaffey
Marc Russell
Mike Tornero-Velez
Pai-Yei Whung
Alan Williams
Antoni o Yaqui an-Luna
John Zimmerman
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