After their introductory meeting in late March 2017, the Evanston TEX team has determined that its major deliverable will be to cost out what a monitoring plan would look like, inclusive of samples and instruments that they would do, by end of summer 2017. TEX scientist, Gaj Sivandran (Loyola University) along with colleague, Mark Potosnik (DePaul University), will provide Kumar Jensen and Evanston Environmental Justice Committee with a draft number by early June 2017.
Both researchers say that community feedback on their recommendations would be useful. Jensen says community engagement can occur through several existing means such as an open meeting at a community center, a long-standing group of seniors that meets at the community center, and, a neighborhood organization. Because of Evanston’s highly engaged community, Sivandran says he is considering citizen science methodologies to help get the community more engaged with the data.
By June 2017, the Evanston team expects to have the following accomplished:
- Taskforce will have come to an agreement of what review of recommendations – what the different suite of options are for evaluation and monitoring.
- Scheduled initial outreach to communities (meeting with groups, combination of those, etc.)
- Full schedule and timeline of the project
- Estimates of the cost of different options
