Taming the ‘Monstropolous Beast’: Combining models and public outreach for environmental risk management at Florida’s Lake Okeechobee

Since the mid-20th century, social scientists have highlighted ways in which tools of rationalization and technoscientific expertise obscure or erase subjectivity, moral decision-making and concerns about equity and inclusion. Such work points to a fundamental tension between rationality and democracy, namely, that rationalization tools and processes frequently limit what knowledge is recognized as valid, whereas democratic processes validate multiple knowledges and ways of knowing. In this paper, I analyze an attempt by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to combine rationalization (models) and democratization of expertise (public outreach) in the development of a manual for managing Lake Okeechobee, the heart of Florida’s Everglades. Drawing on 13 interviews with agency staff and stakeholders, I first assess simplifications and subjectivities within the Corps’ technical decision-making tools. I then describe how the Corps attempted to overcome these shortcomings and democratize decision-making through public engagement focused on achieving “balance” among multiple, sometimes competing needs and priorities. Building on work by standpoint theorists and scholars of science and technology studies (STS), I argue the Corps’ efforts demonstrate how models and public engagement – rationality and democracy – may usefully be combined to increase equity, inclusion and transparency in managing anthropogenic environmental risks.