Local Emergency Planning Committees Research Articles

Geographic Response Plans: Preparing for Inland Oil Spills in California Waterways

ABSTRACT #1141189 Emergency regulations governing the development of oil spill contingency plans in California, along with financial responsibility for inland facilities, pipelines, refineries and railroads, became effective in 2015, with final regulations being adopted in January of 2019. With the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's (CDFW's) Office of Spill Prevention and Response's (OSPR's) authority for oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response being extended to inland waters of the State, the need to develop Geographic Response Plans (GRPs) for priority watersheds with higher risk of an oil spill became a top priority. Given the successful history with developing, implementing, and maintaining the California marine Area Contingency Plans (ACPs), OSPR has implemented a similarly effective GRP program. GRPs are driven primarily by access to sites along river systems and lakes where response activities are feasible. The process of developing GRPs for the State has consisted of: 1) developing a consistent document framework based on recently developed GRPs including the Region 10 Regional Response Team (RRT) and Northwest Area Committee (NWAC) GRPs in the Pacific Northwest, the Feather River GRP developed by Union Pacific Railroad in California, as well as previously developed GRPs by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Region 9 (California, Nevada, Arizona); 2) implementing a Statewide GRP Steering Committee (SGSC) consisting of State, federal and local agencies, industry, oil spill response organizations (OSROs), an environmental Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), and a tribal representative; and 3) developing partnerships with industry representatives, and federal, State and local agencies, including first responders [Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) and others] to ensure critical local expertise and information is incorporated in each, individual GRP. With the emerging trend of oil by rail transportation; historical spill threats from pipelines, fixed facilities, and truck transportation; and the promulgation of emergency regulations extending OSPR's oil spill preparedness activities to inland waters, the development of GRPs for at-risk watersheds became critical.

Risk communication infrastructure and community resilience: does involvement in planning build cross-sector planning and response networks?

ABSTRACTThe community resilience needed for effective disaster response and recovery depends in part on robust cross-sector, interorganizational networks, but differences among networked stakeholders can make building community resilience difficult. Local emergency planning committees (LEPCs) may help by acting as risk communication infrastructure. LEPCs help conduct emergency chemical hazards planning and support the public's right-to-know about those hazards. Focusing on an LEPC situated in a major U.S. petrochemical corridor, this study surveyed LEPC stakeholders (N = 171) to investigate their perceptions of a hypothetical hazardous materials (HazMat) incident and their planning and response networks, comparing differences among agency and non-agency stakeholders. Respondents reported being part of robust planning and response networks, indicative of capacity for community resilience. Stakeholders' involvement in planning efforts was associated with their perceptions of the HazMat incident and their networks. This study provides evidence for the efficacy and limits of the LEPC as risk communication infrastructure.

Vulnerable voices on fire preparedness: Policy implications for emergency and community services collaboration

AbstractAn investigation of household preparedness and community connections was undertaken in the NSW Blue Mountains. The research employed a qualitative approach. Upon receiving ethical approval, interviews and focus groups with a total of 31 vulnerable residents were recorded and transcribed. Data analysis included the manual coding of individual transcripts and key word queries entered into NVivo 10. Fire planning for community resilience within Australia focusses on property preparation and an emergency warning system designed to assist the evacuation decisions of residents. In this article, we report on vulnerable residents and their preparedness for the October 2013 bushfires. Our findings demonstrate that the vulnerable people interviewed did not consider property preservation as a priority, and their knowledge and engagement with the warning system and evacuation procedures was limited. Of practical value, the research found local community services and emergency planning committees should collaboratively plan for vulnerable community members who are unable to take a very active role in preparing themselves or their dependents to face a bushfire or similar disaster. In addition, preparedness and warning communications should be devised and targeted to more clearly assist vulnerable people during the lead up to, and in the midst of, a disaster.

Chemical Manufacturing and Refining Industry Legitimacy: Reflective Management, Trust, Precrisis Communication to Achieve Community Efficacy.

Calls for emergency right-to-know in the 1980s, and, in the 1990s, risk management planning, motivated U.S. chemical manufacturing and refining industries to operationalize a three-pronged approach to risk minimization and communication: reflective management to increase legitimacy, operational safety programs to raise trust, and community engagement designed to facilitate citizens' emergency response efficacy. To assess these management, operational, and communication initiatives, communities (often through Local Emergency Planning Committees) monitored the impact of such programs. In 2012, the fourth phase of a quasi-longitudinal study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of operational change and community outreach in one bellwether community. This study focuses on legitimacy, trust, and response efficacy to suggest that an industry can earn legitimacy credits by raising its safety and environmental impact standards, by building trust via that change, and by communicating emergency response messages to near residents to raise their response efficacy. As part of its campaign to demonstrate its concern for community safety through research, planning, and implementation of safe operations and viable emergency response systems, this industry uses a simple narrative of risk/emergency response-shelter-in-place-communicated by a spokes-character: Wally Wise Guy.

Balancing the Rhetorical Tension Between Right to Know and Security in Risk Communication

This study examines tensions between participants’ roles as emergency planners and as points of contact for public access to chemical reports. The two organizations in this study, both Texas Local Emergency Planning Committees, maintained web sites and were concerned about the misuse of chemical reports. Each organization used ambiguity to give members a sense of control over right-to-know access to reports. One largely avoided online mention of such access. The other used strategic ambiguity to encourage the public to access reports locally rather than through a state office and to discourage unwelcome viewers. The study found that the former organization’s use of ambiguity impeded action, but the latter organization’s use of strategic ambiguity was productive.

Group Backs Emergency Contraception

businesses, and governments together to create their own plans. Benjamin said such efforts are already under way in many communities, spurred on by the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and subsequent concern of bioterrorism. But Eric Weinstein, MD, past chair of the section of disaster medicine at the American College of Emergency Physicians, is not as optimistic about local pandemic flu planning. “What the college believes is that if you’re prepared for any hazard, such as a hurricane, then you can do the same for a pandemic,” said Weinstein, who is also attending emergency physician at Colleton Medical Center in Walterboro, SC. “The problem is the only communities really ready for a pandemic are those that have already gone through an emergency such as a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake.” Weinstein also wants to see more active planning at the local level. “The missing piece for me is the coordination of the health care system with the local emergency planning committees,” he said. “We need public health agencies, hospitals, physicians, the big employers meeting once a month to talk about how they will deal with disasters across the board.” Many details remain to be worked out. For example, who gets the 20 million doses of prepandemic vaccine? Is it the vulnerable general population such as infants, older people, and those with suppressed immune systems? Or is it those who manufacture the vaccine, the health care workers who will treat patients during a pandemic, and the government and business leaders who keep the nation running? Other issues to be resolved on a local level are where to put patients when hospital beds are full, where to hold inoculation clinics, and how and where to deploy health care workers. Libbey said much planning remains for both the pandemic and postpandemic periods. “We’ve built a health care system and financial model predicated on very thin margins; carrying excess capacity is not built into our system,” Libbey said. “So the notion that we can turn our existing medical system on a dime and ramp up to handle surge capacity—that’s a premise that needs to be challenged.”

A risk management initiative implemented in Canada

This paper describes recent initiatives in Canada that lead to a new regulation on environmental emergencies under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999. The regulation includes a list of hazardous substances with threshold quantities. It has requirements for prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. The regulation is based on voluntary guidelines developed by industry, public authorities, municipalities and representatives of the public. The guidelines are a reference for industry and municipalities to help them manage risk related to major industrial accidents. The guidelines released in July 2002 are innovative in the sense that municipalities are strongly involved in the risk management process through the creation of Local Emergency Planning Committees (Joint Committees) with representatives from industry, municipalities and public. This work appears as a relevant approach to involve the public in the decision-making process and makes people aware of the hazards and the measures taken to control risk.

The role of local communities in chemical accident prevention and preparedness

Since the adoption of community right-to-know programs in the US there has been an increase in the number of groups known as local emergency planning committees. These committees have matured in focus over the intervening years since the Bhopal incident and even more so since the events of September 11, 2001. There is a strong recognition that local communities working very closely with chemical handling facilities in their areas can directly and meaningfully reduce the threat of a chemical release incident, regardless of cause. Likewise, through similar means they can better prepare themselves to respond should an incident occur. Especially as regards modern concepts of process chemical safety and facility security, local communities can be of great assistance to smaller facilities that do not otherwise necessarily have the resources to accomplish these tasks. As the vulnerabilities of a facility to accident or intentional act, the impacts of these events and the ability of communities to react are all a function of local conditions, it is clear that these local efforts can be more meaningful than large-scale national efforts. While national legislation is certainly helpful to the process of bringing people together, it is the local relationships that produce results.

HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES EMERGENCY EVENTS SURVEILLANCE (HSEES) – PREVENTION OUTREACH ACTIVITIES IN URBAN AREAS

ISEE-309 Introduction: The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) maintains the Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) system to track public health consequences associated with acute hazardous substance release events in 15 states. The goal of this surveillance system is to reduce the morbidity and mortality from hazardous substance events. This presentation will describe how state HSEES data have been used for prevention activities. Methods: The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Texas Department of Health, and Washington State Department of Health have presented county specific data to local emergency planning committees in urban areas within each state. Results: The Texas Department of Health HSEES staff prepared information for the counties that make up both the Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas. The Dallas metropolitan area comprises Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties, and is the second largest metropolitan area in Texas. The Dallas area medical community requested information to help guide the placement of their hazmat teams and decontamination units to better control and respond to hazardous substance spill events. The Houston area, including Harris County, is the largest metropolitan area in Texas. It also is a highly industrialized area in Texas and has a large number of transportation-related hazardous substance events. HSEES staff of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is assisting the local emergency planning committees of Wake, Guilford, and Mecklenburg counties, which include the metropolitan areas of Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte. In each instance, the counties evaluated the HSEES information to see where they should target their outreach efforts to prevent future releases. Prevention outreach activities in Thurston, Clark, and Snohomish Counties have benefited from HSEES data provided by the Washington State Department of Health. These counties comprise the Olympia, Vancouver, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Marysville and Everett areas. Local emergency planning groups requested HSEES data and assistance in planning for hazardous events intervention and prevention activities. Discussion: The HSEES information from each of these state agencies included county specific data about the most common types of spills, locations of events, contributing factors, chemicals, industries, and victims involved in hazardous event. National, state, and county specific HSEES data are available to all 15 states participating in the HSEES system, and can help reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with acute releases of hazardous substances. HSEES data are used on a local level to help guide decision making processes in the allocation of resources and development of prevention strategies.

Local Emergency Planning Committees: Working together to increase chemical safety in our communities

Local Emergency Planning Committees: Working together to increase chemical safety in our communities

Member Commitment and Participation in Local Emergency Planning Committees

Research on Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) has suggested that members’ perceptions of group processes and participation activities mediate the relationship between organizational context and LEPC effectiveness. Data from 57 LEPCs support the importance of organizational commitment in predicting member participation and the predictive power of some of organizational commitment's previously identified antecedents. However, the data failed to support two hypotheses about the effects of organizational context on group process and of member participation on LEPC effectiveness. These findings suggest ways to increase the effectiveness of voluntary, quasi‐public organizations such as LEPCs, citizen advisory panels, and planning boards.

Emergency response to environmental toxic incidents: the role of the occupational physician.

A survey of accidental environmental releases of hazardous chemicals conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry indicates that fixed facility events accounted for 77% of the episodes whereas 23% of the releases were related to transportation activities, such as loading or unloading materials. In nearly all the events (88%) only one chemical was released. Volatile organic compounds, chlorine, herbicides, acids and ammonia were the most common substances involved. In nearly one out of six reported events, an injury occurred. To prepare for emergencies associated with the accidental release of hazardous materials, the federal government, industry and professional organizations including the medical community have all been involved. In the United States, the Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act (SARA) Title III passed in 1986 addresses the need to establish local emergency planning committees, to report and collect data, and a number of other matters. Professional societies, including the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), and the American Industrial Hygiene Association, have all attempted to ensure proper education and training of those professionals called to assist in such emergencies. The occupational physician can assume numerous roles in the challenge related to emergency response, by becoming familiar with computerized information available to promptly determine the type of hazard released and its appropriate antidote, advising on the proper personal protective equipment, awareness of secondary contamination and participation on local emergency planning committees among many others. Emergency release of hazardous materials continues to occur with a frequency in the United States that deserves active vigilance and planning.

081064 (E44) Effects of organizational environment, internal structure, and team climate on the effectiveness of Local Emergency Planning Committees: Lindell M.K., Whitney D.J.,Risk Analysis, Vol. 15, Number 4, pp. 439–447

081064 (E44) Effects of organizational environment, internal structure, and team climate on the effectiveness of Local Emergency Planning Committees: Lindell M.K., Whitney D.J.,Risk Analysis, Vol. 15, Number 4, pp. 439–447

Effects of Organizational Environment, Internal Structure, and Team Climate on the Effectiveness of Local Emergency Planning Committees1

This study proposed and tested a model of factors influencing the effectiveness of Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs). Data were collected from the chairs of Michigan LEPCs, who were asked to provide information about their LEPCs’staffing, activities, resources, and team climate, as well as information about community hazards and relationships with other organizations in their communities. The model was partially supported. As hypothesized, team climate substantially mediated the relationships between an LEPCs effectiveness and many of the attributes of its internal structure and external environment. In addition, three (emergency planning resources, community support and LEPC staffing and structure) out of four categories of variables hypothesized to influence team climate were, in fact directly related to it. There were two major inconsistencies with the model. First, two types of emergency planning resources were found to have a direct influence on LEPC effectiveness rather than an indirect effect mediated by team climate. In addition, hazard vulnerability was hypothesized to have a direct effect on team climate, but the data showed this relationship was mediated by community support and by LEPC staffing and structure. A revised model was proposed that suggests ways in which members can change the structure of an LEPC and strategies to enhance its effectiveness.

Are Local Emergency Planning Committees Effective in Developing Community Disaster Preparedness?

Five years after SARA Title HI set a deadline for communities to establish community emergency plans for releases of toxic chemicals, it appears that many— if not most—jurisdictions have failed to filly comply with the requirements of this legislation. However, there are a number of LEPCs that have made significant progress and, in this regard, SARA Title III compliance is quite comparable to that of other federal hazard mitigation and emergency preparedness programs. Moreover, the planning process mandated by this legislation does provide some significant improvements over previous methods of emergency preparedness. Some of the impediments to the effective performance of Local Emergency Planning Committees are identified and policy and implementation changes to overcome these obstacles are recommended.

SARA three years later. Emergency physician's knowledge, beliefs, and actions.

Investigate Emergency Physicians' knowledge about the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) Title III legislation, passed by the United States Congress in 1986, and to determine the factors contributing to their level of preparedness in dealing with patients exposed to toxic chemicals. A 115-item questionnaire was mailed to the medical directors of all emergency departments (EDs) in the State of New York. The results of the cross-sectional survey were analyzed using standard statistical methods. One hundred and eighty-seven (72%) of the directors of EDs in New York State responded to the survey. Three years after SARA was enacted, only 33% of the directors had heard about this legislation. Only 18% had been invited to attend the meetings of the Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPC). Sixty percent of the directors knew whether or not the LEPC had devised plans that defined a role for their EDs in responding to environmental emergencies. This knowledge about community planning mainly had an effect on preparedness of the EDs. Preparedness also was predicted by how recently the EDs had treated patients exposed to toxic chemicals, the perception that emergency physicians had a legitimate role in planning for and responding to chemical emergencies, and how often emergency physicians had attended continuing education courses about hazardous materials. Despite the finding that some emergency physicians are involved in community preparations, two main problems persist in planning a medical response to environmental emergencies. First, the ED directors generally are unaware of the legislation that mandates these preparations and are not interacting with community planners. Second, there is not full involvement by the local EDs in the LEPC planning efforts. A procedure is needed to disseminate information about legislation which affects emergency physicians, such as SARA, and about regional planning for environmental emergencies. Dissemination should include education about the professions' role in planning for and providing care for patients exposed to toxic chemicals.

“Indirect Regulation” of Environmental Hazards Through the Provision of Information to The Public

Title III of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 seeks to reduce the risks of chemical accidents through a strategy of indirect regulation that relies on providing the public with information about chemical hazards. For this strategy to be effective, citizens must aggressively utilize the information provided to monitor industrial practices and press for risk reduction. Since prior research suggests it is very difficult to evoke the degree of citizen action that would be required to make a strategy of indirect regulation successful, and since the federal legislation provided no funds for implementation, there is a question of whether the structures set up by Title III are sufficient to achieve its objectives. This article reports the results of anational study that examined selected aspects of the implementation of Title III in an effort to assess the likely outcome of its attempt at indirect regulation. Our focus is on the degree to which the Title III‐mandated Local Emergency Planning Committees are pursuing policies that are likely to get the necessary information to citizens and foster community debate on hazardous materials issues.

Industry's Voluntary Program: Community Awareness and Emergency Response Program and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act

This paper describes the chemical industry's Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) Program, and voluntary and mandatory actions by the chemical industry to comply with the major environmental legislation. The chemical industry started the voluntary CAER Program soon after the Bhopal Disaster in 1984; it is coordinated through the Chemical Manufacturer's Association. This program, which began in March 1985, is a long-term industry commitment to develop a community outreach program and to improve local emergency response planning. The Congress of the United States began, in 1985, to consider proposals for mandatory programs. This led to enactment of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986, known as SARA. A portion of this Act, entitled Title III is also known as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. Although this legislation has many mandatory requirements, it should be emphasized that a significant degree of voluntary industrial participation is needed if the purposes of the statute are to be achieved. Title III has created an intricate and still evolving system that ties together the EPA, industrial plant managers, state emergency response commissions, local emergency planning committees and fire departments with jurisdiction over the facility. Each of these groups has a different role and responsibilities but must work cooperatively with other participants. Because of the intricate network of participants, the magnitude of the information flow, and the continuing evolution of the system, unique public relations problems exist in order to comply with Title III.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Florida Solid and Hazardous Waste Regulation Handbook: Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA)

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was passed in 1986 to improve emergency response to accidental releases of toxic and/or hazardous chemicals into the environment. EPCRA primarily serves a planning purpose. It required governors to set up State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs). Those commissions then set up Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs). This is EDIS document FE448, a publication of the Department of Food and Resource Economics, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, UF/IFAS, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Published December 2003.
 https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe448