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The Community Impact Statement is a concept developed by Lenny Siegel during his tenure on the National Environment Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) subcommittee on Hazardous Waste. It differs from conventional environmental assessments in three major ways:

First, judgments are made by members of the affected community, not proponents of what are often environmentally questionable projects.
Second, instead of reacting to proposals by others, community members develop a baseline assessment of environmental conditions in their own neighborhood.
Third, it doesn't boil assessments down to one or two numbers. Instead it gives people the chance to describe issues in ways that make it easy to understand why they might be important.

The Community Impact Statement can be used to serve at least three functions:

  1. It can guide government agencies in the allocation of environmental and related funds.
  2. It can flag problems requiring an environmental or regulatory response.
  3. It can guide the private sector and other developers in the design and preparation of proposals. At NEJAC, corporate participants liked the idea because under the current system they don't officially seek community feedback until they have invested substantial resources in putting together a proposal. This is its principal value for Brownfields.
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