Roundtable Meeting — June 2-3, 1999

Tape 10 ­ Sides 1 & 2

Discussion of Vision/Goals continues:

Jim Makris: Maybe it’s a vision, I’m going to hate myself for talking about process but those of you who have been through some of these process things, what we’re talking about on the left, and maybe it’s a mind set that will help the discussion or really strategies and tactics to get to that, their concrete they have to be concrete, measurable. I don’t know what the time frame is to reach that, and I don’t think the public, I think the public will accept because no body can argue with it and that’s why it’s a good national goal, who can be against that. What we’ve got to be able to demonstrate is that over some time period, year to year or whatever, we’re making measurable progress towards that and we’re serious. And those strategies and tactics are things that are measurable that we can define and that we can demonstrate that we’re doing.

John Susil: I think I’m saying the same thing Steve did, the problem I had, Jim, with what you said is if that’s where we stop and say our goal is zero releases, than where Irv was earlier, we walk away all feeling good, but people look at what we’ve done, so if we say that, I can agree with it, it’s got to be followed very quickly with the kind of stuff Steve is talking about.

Jim Makris: And I think it is possible. What happens is that we’re confusing the words goal and vision, and I’m as guilty of that. I think we as a group need to say that our vision for chemical safety in the United States is zero releases, zero injuries, period. That’s our vision, then we need to establish specific goals that lead us towards achieving that vision. And those goals include some tools with which to do it, that’s metrics, that includes interim stops along the way, whether it’s 50%, 90%, or 80%, it makes no difference. But I think everybody here can agree that our ultimate vision is zero.

Sam Mannan: One thing I wanted to make clear is that let us not confuse goals with activities. And let me bring you back with the example of the blood pressure. Bring your blood pressure down to 120 by 90 is a goal, but doing and following a regiment of exercises is an activity that helps you accomplish the goal.

Jim Makris: I agree, but I think we’re confusing vision and goal.

Jerry Poje: I would presume any audience 20 years ago, 100 years ago, would say their goal was zero. So, let’s not put ourselves into a foolish capacity here of saying we’re the first time a group has gotten together to invent the goal. It’s wonderful and I agree, vision put it down but let’s get onto the topic of doing as you said get much more explicit on what do we want to see as measurable outcomes around this vision.

Jim Overman: But I think it is visionary. I think there are people out there that might accept that as a vision. I think that’s an improved and stretched vision. And I think we need to set stretched goals to achieve that vision.

Jim Makris: I’d like to make three quick comments. One is let’s not get into that terribly complicated semantics of goal/vision setting, because you know one could argue now that vision is the wrong word for what we said and it should be a goal or should be a sub-objective, etc. Let’s not get into that. I think we should try for purposes of getting through this next little bit of exercise agree that there’s something that we can all agree on, which we call common ground yesterday. I think that’s common ground that we’ve been talking about for the last few minutes, which is where we think we all want to go and we’re all committed to getting there. I think what Jerry’s just saying is not how are we going to do that, how are we going to prove it, how are we going to demonstrate it, and I think there’s a lot of stuff on that wall that tells us how we’re going to do or demonstrate that. And I think Overman gave us a good example both yesterday and again this morning on how a company is willing to lay their line down and say this is what we’re going to do. I think if we could recognize that and say here’s a measure of what one company is going to do and other companies and other organizations can all contribute toward trying to achieve that same objective and again going back to the notion that we’re all in this together, we all need to help each other get to what we may be agreeing is where we’re trying to go. But I think we should try hard to avoid the semantics of goal setting, because we’ll end up not getting out of the box.

Sam Mannan: I will exercise my prerogative whatever that might be to suggest certain things. First, I think this debate about goals, of vision, and activities, I agree with Jim, let’s draw back from the semantics of wording and agree that the statement on the right should be our vision statement. That goes back to what Jerry Poje said that people 2000 years ago said yes we’d like to have zero accidents. I can’t think of anyone at anytime, like Irv said, saying we’re going to go out and have an accident today. So, yes I think that should be our vision. Having said that, I will suggest this now, that let’s get down to voting for the rest to establish our consensus goals. I have a pretty good feeling that after we get through the voting you will see that there is an assimilation of thought processes. Now, if after the voting you feel like the assimilation has not occurred we will reconsider something or go take another route.

Consolidation and agreement on goals.

Sam Mannan: "National data systems for collection of near miss and accidents which can be related to actual causes" is the top vote getter. So a clear cut consensus on number 15, what was the second vote getter, #23, how many is that, 21 votes for #23, which is "establish targeted reduction goals for chemical safety incidents." And what is the next one, #22 is the third one with 19 votes, which is "establish metrics that relate to safety performance and business objectives," what is the next closest vote getter, Steve and Shelly?

Steve Mason: I think it is number H.

Sam Mannan: Number H is 9. Ladies and gentlemen I submit to you we don’t need a second round. We have the top three vote getters.

Lunch Break

Mannan: Since we have been doing things on a very scientific basis all along. We’ll do the same now, too. As you know as I said earlier there are three breakout sessions. One on infrastructure/process, breakout session two on databases/metrics, breakout session three on activities needed to accomplish the goals. I think we’ve discussed what each of these breakout groups mean. Right under those names of the breakout sessions are names of the people who are facilitators for these particular groups. Jerry Bradshaw if you’ll identify yourself for people who don't know you. Jerry will be the facilitator for session one. Irene Jones is going to be the facilitator for breakout session two. And Tim Gablehouse is facilitator for breakout group number three. What I’ve also asked each one of these session facilitators to do is to select a reporter who will report back to the general session about their action plan. And I’ll go over the action plan details in a minute.

Sectioned into groups.

Mannan: Let me give you some other instructions. The question’s been raised as to overlaps. Now, let me tell you this, that there are going to be overlaps. You know all these three areas, for example the database/metrics with activities and so on and so forth. Also the question has been asked that if you don’t know what activities you want or if you don’t have the goals defined or the activities a defined, how do you set up the infrastructure. So all of those are relevant questions, and I’ll tell you this that this may be a cyclical process that we’ll have to work on a couple of times before we get it finalized, but feel free to exercise some flexibility in the area you are in. If you are in the infrastructure area, don’t feel obligated or don’t feel shy about wondering into the database area. Don’t feel shy about going into the database area or the activities area. We’ll sort that out later.

Side 2

Reports from the breakout groups.

Jerry Poje: We had a small group discussion on the infrastructure issues. Some of the first things that we did was address the issue of stakeholders and who was missing from the discussion. One of Sam’s charges was to say who isn’t here, so how we’d might reseed the process for the future. First big group identified was small, mid-sized enterprises. Something that we’ve discussed throughout the day and a half, we made sure that we also said that chemical users as well as producers are part of our audience. That other agencies who might have some responsibility for chemical safety also should be considered, such as the NTSB, the Coast Guard and the DOT. There was a discussion on the importance of a grassroots community representation, particularly those who might represent low income and minority communities living in the shadow of some of the facilities. LEPC’s, our friend Tim is wearing twelve hats and we also call that the LEPC and Pam as well, need to be thought of more carefully and then surely the organized labor representation needs to be bolstered. In terms of what we thought steps of an infrastructure development should be, we went to our usual delineation of thinking of that. Coming out of this meeting is having committee structures, and the first thing we thought was needed was an administrative coordinating committee something we would like to charge Texas A&M’s leadership and Sam with doing fairly quickly coming out of this. We didn’t think there’s time today to solicit volunteers and to set up such a structure, but we’d love for people to be thinking about volunteering right now. The administrative coordinating committee would have the responsibility for keeping us on track and at least prodding along the rest of the infrastructure which would include two other committee type groups. The first would be an outreach committee to go and elicit potential volunteer representation from those sectors that are missing, to do a couple of things. One is to get more involved in right now, the other is though to start to think about the kind of outreach efforts that are going to have to be expended outside of this structure of people. Beyond the outreach committee that we thought each of the lofty goals and therefore identified should have its own committee structure whereby the implementation or the drafting of a proposal on how to act on those goals should be the objective of such a group. And we thought that the group should be small, some suggested no more than eight people, but it should be transparent in its work. Its goal should be to develop a white paper or a draft document within a year. That might talk towards meeting those goals, or implementing those goals or a strategy for that. It should be open to input from others, even though it would be only a small group of people that should be drawing upon the larger resource base of all of us. And at a minimum it should probably have a quarterly coordination with this administrative coordinating committee, with a short report that could be emailable to all of us, so that we have a sense of accomplishment. And some ways for giving ourselves if we’re not on a committee additional opportunity to give input. We were calling this group the standing 45, and that the thought was that we should also plan to meet annually if we could as a group with the addition of others who might be lesser represented as identified by this outreach group. The committee should try to be balanced, government representatives should be invited to be a part of it if that’s their inclination, but it shouldn’t be directed or controlled by government agencies. It should represent the broader group structure. We thought that Texas A&M should have an administrative role and providing the secretarial support or coordinating support out of the center here, then the virtual nature to committee work should be part of our planned process. We thought that in addition to the virtual nature of email and website activities we should be using phone conferencing. Those resources could be contributed by the private sector or other agencies as well as Texas A&M, that the committee structure should be seen as one of being sun-setted so that people shouldn’t feel like they’re on a perpetual committee machine, that their work should be accomplished and then they should feel free to get off of it at that point in time. That there also should be targeting of opportunities around other meetings. Putting this meeting together is an expensive proposition, if we got together again annually that would probably be something that would take a fair amount of resources to plan for, but there are likely to be other meetings occurring between now and the year hence, that we should be asking ourselves to say is there a portion of us that are likely to be there and can additional work be accomplished. In addition there may be planning that address some of the goal activities that have been identified here that might be met by some subset of activities connected to a chemical safety board activity or an EPA activity or an OSHA or a CMA activity that we should be thinking about how to get as much face to face meetings as possible. Any of the other members want to add anything.

John Susil: In the database group we started just for a moment talking about the vision, we decided not to deal with it, but I did make a note but there is an issue that in the vision there were some in the group about the word zero from a credibility stand point. But we talked about vision versus goals, nonetheless that’s there it’s not committed but we decided that wasn’t ours to fool with at that point. There were three goals that we took in, we decided to focus on number 15, which reads comprehensive national data systems for collection of near misses and accidents which can be related to actual causes and used to establish baselines. We agreed in general that we would have to build the database from scratch. The reason is that the existing databases were all designed for other purposes and to try to make due with those, they’re already compromised, the information is not there, with the possible exception of EPA’s RMP five year accident history database which is just being built. That again won’t have everything we want, but there might well be some utility there for us. Need to be able to define incidents that would be entered, one possible basis again would be the EPA R&P definition. Then we went through the "who, what, where, when, why." Under the who, there’s a couple of questions first, should it be government, business, or private, should it be national or international as far as the database is concerned. Another question once you decide who and what area it’s in, is who builds it, who collects the data, who sponsors the database, who reports from the database, and who can access the database. We developed some options for the quote keeper of the database. It might be the chemical safety board, Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), EPA, OSHA, the ATSDR, that’s the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is a part of the Center for Disease Control. It might be someone in the insurance business or an integrated approach which could be some combination of any of those that we mentioned. Under the what they would be required to build a database and the sole purpose of the database is to be a repository for valid statistical data, that’s the sole purpose. There’s lots of things that you could learn from that database, but the database is not there for enforcement it’s not there for anything other than to have a valid statistical repository for valid statistical data. It would include the cause of the incident, for example perhaps ranked by the PSM elements and corrective actions that were taken plus other elements. Now the criteria for classifying elements in this database should be independent of regulations. It should be what makes good sense, what will give us information that we need, and not necessarily based on any regulatory requirements. A question here that we didn’t resolve, and would need to be resolved, how much of the information submitted would be anonymous and how much would be public information. Now, what I mean is, all of this data could be available to the public, how much of it would be anonymous where you wouldn’t know what company had the accident and how much of it would you want or would need to be identified by company. That’s going to be a critical question. Finally, this database would need to be accessible by the public, and that would mean it would need to be an electronic database. We didn’t deal with the when, you’ve got to wade through the what and the who and the how to determine when. So we just said to be determined there. The how, reports of actual incidents could be according to regulatory requirements and the system could be set up so that you automatically populate this database from the regulatory databases, and vice versa. Non-reportable incidents and near miss reporting would be voluntary, the only way you’re going to get it otherwise is more regulations, and that’s more than I think people want to tackle. Three questions here, there’s the question about anonymity for reporting of near misses and non-reportable incidents. Remember a minute ago we talked about anonymity for actual incidents, but when you get down into near misses or non-reportables that might be voluntary is that anonymous or not. The second question, would this be only reports form companies, or would the database take reports, could it be set up to take reports from members of the community on incidents. And the third question, how do you deal with quality control of the data that goes in with maintenance of the database with the universe that’s represented and then there was a question about initiating a baseline survey for this. And then finally under resources, resources meaning people, time and money, we generated a list of potential resources, and that could be academic, government, industry, consultants, industry associations, advocacy groups, labor or some combination of the above. And that’s what we got, any clarification or any additional comments from members of group two?

Female voice: It was a good summary, but I think one thing that needs to be added is that we felt like we were covering a lot of material in a very short time and we left a number of open issues and there was some discussion on the anonymity, whether the existing databases would have to be revised. When we say non-recordables it’s unclear whether we’re talking about what is the current situation is in not reportable, or whether there’d be some changes. So there’s a lot of open questions that we couldn’t completely flush out.

John Susil: And that’s an excellent point. There was some discomfort, and I shared that too, at the end, that we had to move pretty fast in the time we had allotted and we weren’t comfortable that taking this and running with it without some additional thought is valid. Because we didn’t have enough time, we had the same amount of time everyone else did.

I think also the person who put in the point about whether data is submitted just by companies or by the public, I think there was also another one, possibly employees, if an employee felt that he had something from his company they might want to supply that, is that acceptable?

Irv: Along the same lines, we did not define the issue, or we did not settle issue of how we are to define near misses.

That’s correct, so a lot of open questions.

Tim Gablehouse: Well our group was chartered with trying to come up with activities so we tried to do that. And of course we had the same amount of time everyone else did. So it’s hardly a complete list. First thing we sort of decided on was an over arching principle is the responsibility of everybody involved in process. And that is that we need transparent communication with public and others of whatever data we’re collecting. So you can keep that in mind as we go through the rest of this. We believe that the NRT, all the effort involving the Chemical Safety Board, other government agencies such as the EPA, prime identities such as SOCMA and CMA along with public and other sorts of stakeholders, to establish a broad based cooperative effort to unify databases and reporting activities. And I’ll talk about how to do that in a minute. The what we think they ought to try to establish, is beginning with regulatory reporting requirements, adding to that a layer of voluntary reporting requirements with full recognition that we have potentially CSB rules upcoming in the future. And further recognizing that ultimately we may need additional statutory regulatory authority. We think the database ought to be electronically maintained with broad internet availability, and we think that ought to have hot link potential into NRT’s that we should supplement on a long term basis. So if you want to know more about specific amnesia you ought to be able to get there. The how, we think frankly a group like the NRT ought to look at a consensus building organization, Mary Kay O’Connor Center came to mind immediately of course. And in our view there are a couple of activities that that sort of center should do. One is, we ought to reconvene in some stakeholder group as early as even October, along with the meeting that is already set for October. I’d like to talk about progress, and in the interim it would probably be useful to establish some work groups that could get together electronically, phone conference, or otherwise, to make some progress on some of these things. I don’t think any group believes that they had enough time to really deal with this stuff specifically and it would be useful to flush it out in the intervening months. We don’t think October is too soon, we want to maintain some emphasis here. In general we also believe that all the stakeholders involved in this process, be it entities, corporate, public, private, whomever, need to use there influence with academic institutions in the business and engineering fields primarily to make sure that process safety, community involvement, and so forth are things that are talked about as part of risk management and that now they’re being incorporated as an integral part of the curriculum. It’s not so much that we need big deal, expensive, additional curriculum to these institutions, but to make sure that it’s an integral part. We had I think a commitment on the part of the chair of the NRT, that they might be willing to work on this stuff, so hopefully we made some progress. Anybody else that cares to add feel free.

I think that an interesting item that we that talked about was a kind of unified data collection or unified reporting. Recognizing there are lots of statutory requirements to report from OSHA, EPA, DOT, and to leverage that to try to come up with something similar to a one-plan concept in the beginning is I’ve been through it recently and to point it or to use that as a model for data collection. The advantage for the regulated industry is that it would cost savings, there would be just one effort as opposed to multiple ones on the other side there would just be one report, one comprehensive report to deal with.

Sam Mannan: My friends, and I am amongst friends. I sincerely believe I am among friends. And I think you will agree with me that when I said this morning and yesterday evening that we are going to get where we want to go, you will agree with me that we’ve gotten there. Now I will also remind you that I told you that these might not be the final things that we’re going to do, but that’s going to happen sooner or later. We’ll have to go through these committee reports and work in progress and go from there. But what I want to do now is first of all tell you my feeling of what the next steps should be and ask your response to that. But before I do that, some of you have earlier flight schedules I want to make sure that I do the duty of the host and the organizer of this event to make my thanks to the appropriate people. And when I was thinking about this a little while ago I said who should I start with and where should I end. I really don’t know where because each of you have played such a unique and very important role that it would be really unfair of me to say Luis you did very good an then go onto Dave Willette saying you’re doing very good in alphabetical order because then you’ll say why did I pick Luis first. And that is true, you all contributed quite heavily. As Jim Makris was remarking a little while ago that the level of involvement, the level of activity, the level of engagement is really amazing. So I am going to give thanks and I’m going to pick certain groups to thank in order, but that’s not done with the intent of belittling anybody in comparison to others. But with the intent that I want to recognize different entities that are here that made it possible. First I want to thank the Texas A&M University, the department of Chemical Engineering, you met Dr. Ray Anthony yesterday for a little while. Yes yesterday I was probably trying to get a raise, but he’s not here today right. I’ll still say that the things I am doing here, the things that are happening here would definitely not have been possible without the strong support that I’ve gotten from him, from the dean of engineering, and from other people involved. Those of you who are, have seen the support behind the center, Mike has to some extent, Mike O’Connor, Jerry Bradshaw, and others know what I’m talking about. The chemical engineering department and Texas A&M University are completely behind it. A single person cannot do what we have embarked upon. It doesn’t matter if it’s Sam Mannan, Jim Makris, Jim Overman, Lois Epstein, you name it, it doesn’t matter who it is, a single person cannot do that. An organization has to be behind it. And I want to tell you the department and the university are behind it that’s why I want to give them my thanks for recognizing these things. Really I would be remiss if I did not pick up and thank Mike O’Connor again about his generosity in endowing the Center and by his active involvement, and also about his recent gift to the department itself. So, that he has become a believer not only in the center but also the department. You know I joke around a lot with Jim Makris, and a lot of times give him a hard time too. And somebody said yesterday that when I have to deal with government agency people I make sure I wear my Mickey Mouse tie, but putting jokes and soliloquies aside, I must admit that it takes the vision of people like Jim Makris and support to get thing going. Yes we came up with this idea, we kicked it around, but it took a Jim Makris to say I believe in you and I will put out the first few dollars to get this going. I really thank him for that, Jim I think it has been a great pleasure working with you on this, but you do have a great vision on this subject. I also would be remiss if I did not thank all our sponsors, now different people have supported different activities in the center, not directly this particular project. And if I don’t mention some of them and you’re here, please do not take any offense but it’s always interesting that people remember their most recent friends, right. CMA, Chemical Manufacturing Association, Kari Barrett. Steve Brouillard, Conoco; Irene Jones Huntsman, who have we got I don’t want to miss somebody who’s here. John Susil Celanese. We also have a lot of other sponsors who are not represented here, and I’m going to try to remember some of their names for example BASF Corporation, Warren-Forthought, OSHA, Oxychem. So, let’s recognize them. Anyway, so without the support of these sponsors, even though they don’t regularly support this project they support a lot of the activities of the center, these things wouldn’t happen. The next group that I want to thank, is the presenters. Somebody I think in the first breakout session asked me, who decided on these briefing papers and who decided who the presenters are going to be. And to tell you the truth, what do you do when you’re starting a thing from scratch, you have to throw something together, hoping that it meets the needs and the vision and objectives that you have in mind. And maybe I’ve been able to read your mind better and be able to produce that kind of agenda that you wanted to, but in the future we want to make sure that that is done in a much more systematic manner. But the presenters they were given a clean slate, they had no idea where you wanted to go. They were just told that they needed to cover this broad issue, and I think they did a remarkable job starting from Dr. Irv Rosenthal, I feel honored to have been a co-author with him, it has been great working with you Irv. Jon Averback I think you just did a great job on putting together the stuff on regulatory history. Eboni McCray, a great job on getting the database stuff together. John Noronha, I think the benchmarking issue is a difficult issue and to bring it to the floor and to bring it to our attention was very good. And Paris Stavrianidis on the insurance perspective issue was very good.

Tape 11 ­ Closing remarks continued

And I start from here and say Dave Willette, Johnny Wright, Harry West and so on so forth and name each of your names and say, "Hey, you did a great job." But that would take time and you guys have schedules to go for and things like that so I am not going to do that. However, I am going to single out some people that I really want to thank because they have taken their personal time out and in some cases spent some of their own money to come here. For example, Lois Epstein, I know your organization paid for some of your trip, but it takes a lot to take time away from other things to come here. Tim Gablehouse, I don’t even know who funded his trip, but I am not going to ask. Pam Kaster, thank you for taking the time out in coming here. Harry West, I think that the fact that you take your time and personal expenses out to do these type of things, we really appreciate that. Others have put their time in too, but I am hopeful you are being supported by your organization in coming to these things, otherwise it becomes hard to do it out of your own pocket. Other than that I want to thank everyone that has come here. (Applause)

I really want to thank the staff of the Center. You know somebody once said, "You are only as good as the people who work for you or work with you." And that is very true, if your staff and employees don’t make you look good, you can never look good. So please join me in thanking them. (Applause)

And then I thought who else do we need to thank? The person who knew the least subject-wise on process safety issues, and the person who came into the midst of this and made it their responsibility to make sure that there was coherence and things moved on, I think that person deserved a round of applause and some thanks, and I mean Dr. Haskell Monroe, the facilitator, Our Dean of Faculties Emeritus, and former president of the University of Texas El Paso. (Applause)

I told Donna to make an award for everybody, each one of them, and she came back and said this is the budget that is going to be needed… Then I said let’s just give one to Haskell and say that this is for everybody. So, Haskell, we are going to give you this award for facilitating the session, but make sure that you pass it everybody and let them have it for at least a day… It reads, "The steering committee and staff of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center recognizes the diligence and commitment of Dr. Haskell Monroe in facilitating the Chemical Safety Program Assessment Roundtable Meeting on June 2 & 3, 1999 ­ George Bush Presidential Conference Center, College Station, Texas."

I think I have done my job as the host in terms of recognizing everybody. From now on, if your schedule needs it, feel free to leave, we won’t be offended by that. What we want to do in the next 15 minutes to half hour is to give you some instructions, particularly the people who did the facilitations and reporting, as to what should happen from here on. The people who did the reporting, what I would like for them to do, is within the next week or so, if you could put it in writing the report and email it to me, I will make sure that that report plus the transcript of the whole meeting goes out to all the attendees. The next thing that is going to happen is that we are going to ­ what I would like to do is have some follow-up phone calls or email exchanges with the duo ­ for example the facilitator and the reporter ­ to determine what the next steps should be. Another thing I should mention is that John Susil grabbed this up and I thank him for this is that how you bring more involvement of stakeholders in this whole nation. I think the best way to do it is to make as much information available to as many people and seek their input. The best way I think to do it is to put it on the web. So what we are going to do is put it on the website ­ all the proceedings of this meeting, the action items, and in the meantime as we develop the workgroups and some of the more intermediate work is done, we will put that on the web site too. As the next meeting is scheduled, if as someone suggested that the next meeting be held in the general symposium, then people can come prepared with those items. I or some of the administrative committee don’t have to put a new agenda together. So that is the way to approach it. Having said this, I would like to open it up for discussion, but before I do that, since Jim Makris was the one who first stepped up to the plate to support and endorse this program, I would like to give the podium to him for a few minutes.

Jim Makris: You have been very courteous to myself and to Shelly and Kim and the EPA staff that has been here working with you. I thank you Sam, hopefully, your graciousness and your courage in trying to hold a meeting to discuss something that we have been trying to talk about for fifteen years. Wayne Bissett, yesterday in his introductory comments, made mention of the fact that he was part of a FACA that was chaired by a former administrator of the EPA, as we tried to struggle with measurements of success in terms of chemical process safety progress some fifteen years ago. Wayne has also been part of an international group of the OECD looking at exactly the same thing. I am glad he was here, as he helped us get an international flavor to what we are doing. I am also very glad that because he was here it helps a lot to have others looking at what we do. If there is anything that came out of this meeting that was really important to me, it was a sense of good feeling. I think that folks who had tensions with each other mended their ways. I personally felt a lot of folks very warm about what was going on here. I had a sense that this was a happening, people were working on something that they really believed, that they were frustrated. I think a lot of people got out of their own organizations and looked at it from a standpoint higher than they normally do. Certainly, after the first day. The first day was pretty traditional, but today starting yesterday afternoon it has been a very sharing kind of opportunity for us all. I hope we can continue it. I think that part of it is a result of the powerful spirit and energy that emerges from this institution, which is based substantially on the generosity of Mike O’Connor and the conditions that caused the formation of this Center in the first place. Indeed, while several people talked about agency turf and several people talked about the importance of our own places and how we are destined to go in our own ways, in our own agencies, and own companies and organizations, no one here can deny the fundamental foundation upon which this was built, or its unquestioned neutrality and commitment toward dealing with this problem. I think it places the Mary Kay O’Connor institute in a very unique place. I think it allows it to do things that others might not be willing to do and it constitutes a place to which all of us could put a great deal of energy, including money, resources, intellect and data. I am hoping that we are on our way. The idea that we are going to meet again in a year is very positive. It is suggesting that there is an institution where responsibility has been accepted by Sam and an obligation to help support it that has been accepted by all of the rest of us, each in our own ways. So that is a good sign. The fact that some of us can’t wait until a year from now, but indeed saw the opportunity of October’s meeting, as a chance to get together sooner is another good sign. And a third good sign is that if you can’t wait until October, I’ll get in touch with you next and I’ll have reports in ten days, all of this is suggesting let’s get on about the business of doing these things. Sam, I am honored to have been part of this to the extent that you have paid EPA compliment for trying to initiate it, I own it no more, if I ever did, it is yours. I wish you all the best. I think you have a lot of folks in this room that want to help you make this successful. It is now yours.

Dr. Mannan: Thank you. One of the things that I started out believing in, and as the meeting has progressed from yesterday to today, I feel that it is going to happen without a doubt, that is a comprehensive collaboration or integration, whatever you want to call it, exchange of communication between stakeholder groups. We really don’t want a situation where one group is trying to put a block on another group. We have to establish clear lines of communication and I think if this roundtable setting, the center activity, if one of the things that accomplishes that, is that it provides that opportunity to all the stakeholders, we will have better luck. Where people can come together and say that yes, I do agree that the credit here belongs to you, we have done this, instead of doing it around the block so that you can’t score a touchdown. Let’s all get into the act where we can support each other and give each other credit for what we are doing. With that theme I will end my formal remarks. I would like to open it up for discussion for whatever time we have as to our next steps and whether you have any comments.

Voice: Sam I assume here that part of your idea here with follow-up and facilitators and breakdown sessions is to potentially implement a working group concept. And if that is the idea you have in mind, I simply would recommend that you would support that none of the groups felt that they had enough time to really work things through in their minds. There were an awful lot of good ideas flying and it would be useful I think to continue that process. Especially if we are going towards potentially getting together again. A little additional conversation and discussion to flush things out would be good, and it will also be useful to judge some progress. Assuming that is what you had in mind I think that is correct.

Dr. Mannan: In fact, what I am going to do go beyond and suggest the sign-up sheets that we had for these three breakout groups, that becomes the starting point of the working group of committees for that particular area. That reminds me that somebody should collect the signup sheets. That is a very good comment.

Voice: I think that you should give people the opportunity to self-select and readjust their membership.

Dr. Mannan: Then what we will do, we publish this on the web, and let them react to it, and then on that basis we will change it. Any other comments? You guys must be worn out…

Voice: When you said you were going to put the minutes up ­ the whole transcript ­ are you also putting up the papers…

Dr. Mannan: I will call this meeting to a close then.