According to Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, Public participation is one of the principles of Environmental Education, understood as a public policy focused on ensuring the fundamental right to an ecologically balanced environment. Based on case-study research, this article focuses on an experience of participation in public environmental management involving a process of community organization promoted by the Environmental Education Nucleus Project of the Campos Basin Region, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, which belongs to the Environmental Education Program for Federal Environmental Licensing of Oil and Gas-Brazil. The documentary analysis identified vseveral forms of community participation working jointly with the municipal authorities, including meetings with members of the local executive, participation in city council sessions and in public budget hearings. A remarkable outcome of this participatory process was the approval, in 2018, to build a sewage treatment plant in a fishing community that has been affected by the oil industry in Campos dos Goytacazes. However, at the moment of writing this article, the project was not yet completed.