Research Recommendations for Writing Informed Public Comments

This guide is for individuals who want to write and submit public comments for federal environmental proposed rules and need help thinking through their research process. Such individuals might include policy analysts, academics, community activists, or concerned citizens.

How to cite this guide:

Gehrke, G., & Paz, A. (2024). Research Recommendations for Writing Informed Public Comments. Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. https://envirodatagov.org/research-recommendations-for-writing-informed-public-comments

Using This Guide

This guide consists of several sections, first going over important steps to take when you are considering writing a comment and then diving into specific types of research resources, most of which are produced by the federal government. Since proposed rules vary in scope and procedure, different sections of this guide may be more or less relevant to your needs. Feel free to skip through the different sections as you see fit.

Why do so many of these recommendations focus on government information and data? Federal agencies seek and act on public comments that introduce new or compelling data and scientifically-informed analysis. Effective comments thus tend to provide agencies with information they lack or had not previously considered. In order to write comments that persuade or compel agencies to revise rules or other actions, comment authors must be familiar with what information agencies have already reviewed. Depending on the matter being commented on, this information may be evident in the text of a rule, agency provided fact-sheets, or government websites. However, oftentimes the information that informs agency rules or actions is difficult to find, scattered across various technical documents, or requires contextualization from various government sources to understand. In addition, the federal government sometimes produces the very information that guides agency actions, but in some cases it takes members of the public seeking out, analyzing, and presenting that information to agencies in original arguments in order for agencies to consider it in rule making or other decisions.

This guide is not meant to explain how to write an effective comment, such as how to structure your comment or what tone to use, but rather give an overview of relevant research resources that will inform the content of an effective comment. However, at the end of the guide we include links to other resources that cover best practices for writing public comments. This guide also does not cover how to perform technical legal or scientific analyses for public comments, nor does it explain how to identify within the scholarly literature relevant scientific information pertaining to a proposed rule or agency action. For that, we recommend reviewing the resources at the end of this guide or seeking help from experts.

Research Recommendations

Find and read webpages about the proposed rule. Using a search engine and “site:epa.gov [rule name]”, search for the EPA webpage(s) specifically on the rule.

  • Note: there is usually a webpage for a proposed rule, especially if it is deemed a significant rule, but not always. There are also curious cases with empty webpages, such as this.
  • Note: for proposed rules that are revisions of previous rules with the same name, it is important to ensure that you go to the webpage about the current proposed rule.

It may be useful to search for EPA websites on the most salient topic(s) related to the rule as well. For example, for EPA’s Agricultural Worker Protection Standard, search for something like “EPA pesticide agricultural worker”.

  • It may be challenging to determine what the salient topics are. Here are a couple of approaches for helping sort out what might be relevant issues or topics:
    • If the rule has already been officially proposed, read the “Summary” or “Background” sections of the rule in federalregister.gov or regulations.gov. These sections will often identify the problem the new proposed rule is supposed to address or other critical questions at hand.
    • You can also look through the summary in the proposed rule or in the rule’s entry in the Unified Agenda, and take note of any technical or awkward phrases that may be regulatory or legal language. Use a search engine to find information related to those terms, for example searching “EPA unreasonable risk TSCA.”
    • Search the EPA website for pages relating to those topics.

Using a search engine, search for the rule name and see if there are any results from professional outlets you trust, such as specific professional news outlets and advocacy organizations that will contextualize the proposed rule and highlight the most important elements of the rule. It may be useful to read articles from multiple sources and follow links or citations provided in the articles for further information.

Advocacy organizations may offer a comment template, recommended language to use, or a full form letter to help you create a public comment on a proposed rule. However, be aware that, no matter how many individual public comments are submitted, any that follow a form letter are collapsed into a single public comment for the public comment reviewers to consider. Thus, whenever possible, it is more advantageous to craft your own public comment rather than pasting in a form letter.

It is often helpful to comment on specific technical elements of proposed rules. Review the Summary section of the proposed rule if available, or the abstract in the Unified Agenda, to see what other documents are referenced, and find those documents.

  • If a specific document is cited, you can copy and paste the citation into a search engine.
  • If a document is referred to but the full citation is not given, it may be more difficult to find.
    • First, try searching in your chosen search engine for the language provided about the document in the summary or abstract, for example, “2014 NATA results.” 
    • If the search engine does not point you to the document of interest, try adding the subject of the proposed rule to the search as well, such as “2014 NATA results ethylene oxide.” 
    • Occasionally it will be necessary to browse the proposed rule docket to find the referenced documents.

Review the abstract to see if this proposed rule is an update or companion to an existing rule. 

  • If there is a related rule, you can find the docket for that rule at Regulations.gov. Search for the rule name or docket number, and then filter the results to dockets (rather than documents or comments). You can then filter the results using filter options on the left hand side of the screen. If there are multiple versions or steps of a rule, dockets may have identical or very similar names. You can check to see which year the docket was created by looking at the Docket ID which includes the agency, year, and unique identifier.

What is in the 'Regulatory Impacts Analysis': 

  • For any rule that is deemed “economically significant” – generally one that is likely to have an effect on the economy of $100 million or more – the agency proposing the rule must develop a 'Regulatory Impacts Analysis' (RIA). The RIA provides a wealth of information about the proposed rule, including its goals, potential alternatives, and a detailed costs and benefits analysis.
  • When a rule is estimated to address XX% of the pollution of concern, or to save $YYY in healthcare costs annually, or some other estimate of a rule’s impact, the RIA is where the agency must “show their math.” It is often important to find details in the RIA about what types of benefits and what types of costs are included in the cost-benefit analysis. 

Finding critical information in the 'Regulatory Impacts Analysis':

  • The Executive Summary section of the RIA summarizes the main analyses and findings, usually with enough detail to pique questions or concerns you may have about the agency’s approach or conclusions. Follow up in the corresponding section of the RIA for further details on what you find interesting or worrisome in the Executive Summary.
  • The data used in analyses should be cited. If the data is embedded in publications rather than a publicly available database, search in NEPIS for that publication. If the data is contained in a federal dataset, try searching in data.gov for the dataset. If it is not available through data.gov, it may be possible to identify it through the primary data portal for the agency proposing the rule (e.g. Environmental Data Gateway for the EPA).
  • Depending on your interest, it may be worthwhile exploring the assumptions and limitations described in the RIA.

To get more context on an agency’s performance on the topic of the proposed rule, look for relevant reports by oversight bodies, specifically GAO (www.gao.gov) and EPA OIG (https://www.epa.gov/office-inspector-general/oig-reports).

  • While time consuming, the most straightforward way to do this is to search on these websites for the subject of the rule, e.g. “ethylene oxide” or “waters of the United States” and browse the results.  

For EPA’s proposed rules, it can be especially helpful to look for reports written by EPA’s own advisory committees. 

  • Committees are listed here.
  • Each committee’s web presence is structured differently. Some have portals where you can search for reports directly, some have committee proceedings wrapped up in meeting notes.

It can be helpful to understand the actions that the proposed rule may be a response to, or to reference relevant actions that should be responded to by the agency. Skim EPA webpages related to the proposed rule for reference to executive, legislative, or judicial actions, and find the documents detailing these actions.

Executive actions include executive orders, memos from White House offices like the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) or Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), or regulations. Use a search engine to find these documents. 

Legislative actions include acts, bills, and congressional hearings. Use a search engine or go to www.govinfo.gov to search for referenced legislative actions. Reports by the Congressional Research Service may be particularly helpful for some proposed rules. You can search for CRS reports at www.crsreports.congress.gov or at www.everycrsreport.com. 

Judicial actions include legal decisions. If a court case is cited, it is often possible to find the text of the decision on www.govinfo.gov. Search for these actions in the federal register, congress.gov, govinfo.gov, https://www.uscourts.gov/federal-court-finder/search, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx, and https://case.law.

If no court cases are referenced in the proposed rule Background section or webpages related to the rule, it may be very challenging to determine whether there is relevant case law that the proposed rule should consider. If you are interested in searching through case law, it may be helpful to first find legal blogs related to the issue by searching for the subject and “case” or “law” in a search engine. 

If you have access to them, you may also search in subscription databases such as Lexis Nexis, ProQuest, HeinOnline, and WestLaw.

The following resources might be of use to individuals who want to learn more about writing effective public comments.

 

EDGI's How to Write Effective Public Comments

Public Comments Project shortlist of tips for writing effective public comments

EPA website - Tips for effective public comments

A citizen's guide to the federal regulatory process (see section titled "12 Tips for Effectively Communicating Your Views")

Tips for submitting effective comments (Regulations.gov)

A guide to writing public interest comments using economic analysis

See something that needs changing or want to contribute to this work? 

If you have feedback, comments, or would like to get involved, please contact Gretchen Gehrke at gretchen.gehrke@envirodatagov.org.