LACoFD's Health Hazardous Materials Division Moves Toward Electronic Reporting

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The Los Angeles County Fire Department's Health Hazardous Materials Division (HHMD) is working to streamline the process for industrial facilities to report on their hazardous materials inventories by creating a pilot project involving electronic reporting. This move is a result of the California Environmental Protection Agency's (Cal EPA) implementation of the California Environmental Reporting System (CERS) which requires that all regulated businesses use the internet to file information on toxic substances instead of paper forms by January 1, 2013.

This includes facility and ownership data, chemical inventories, business plans and detailed inspection/enforcement information on the Underground and Aboveground Storage Tanks, Hazardous Waste and Treatment, Hazardous Materials and the California Accidental Release Prevention programs. Industrial facilities and first responders will eventually have real time access to the most recently updated information of facility hazardous materials and emergency response/business plans in CERS. Cal EPA is providing grant funding to assist local agencies in meeting this requirement.

To qualify for this funding, local agencies were required to submit a plan which outlines how they will implement the electronic reporting requirements of the bill. HHMD's CERS grant of $592,904 was approved by Cal EPA and formally accepted by the Board of Supervisors on September 13. As part of the pilot study, a field inspection system will be used by HHMD inspectors to capture a greater level of violation data required by CERS and to evaluate field inspection tablet systems and the necessary software.

Also, the State CERS system continues to develop with additional capabilities of an extensive chemical dictionary and an organizational level record which facilitates the management of access rights for business users. In the future, coordination with a multitude of participating agencies in Los Angeles County will be necessary, and HHMD is working to establish business information and assistance tools for using the internet capabilities found in CERS. This new approach will save time and effort for both the regulated businesses and inspecting agencies.

Republished with permission of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. View original article here.



Author:LACoFD