Federal responsibilities

The ultimate disposition of HLW or SNF is a matter of significant importance and is controversial for some. In the United States all FILW, including SNF, has always been a federal responsibility, beginning with the Atoms for Peace Program in the 1950s. A... 

Federal response teams cannot be on site in time to save lives or treat victims. Local response personnel need, but cannot afford, the same assets and training as federal employees are now receiving. Haz-Mat mitigation is a local responsibility. Someone must be on scene at once to isolate the area of a chemical or biological agent attack, evacuate, and care for the injured and the dead, and deny further entry. Any and every chemical or biological attack will be a crime scene that has to be isolated and guarded. 

National Contingency Plan Created by CERCLA to define the federal response authority and responsibility for oil and hazardous materials spills. The regulations are codified at 40 CFR300. 

Department of Health and Human Services Health and Medical Services Support Plan for the Federal Response Acts of Chemical/Biological (C/B) Terrorism. Washington, D.C. Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP), of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), undated. 

Support Function Protective Clothing for Hazardous Chemicals Operations - NFPA 1993. Quincy, MA. Technical Bulletin - Assay Techniques for Detection of Exposure To Sulfur Mustard, Cholinesterase Inhibitors, Terrorism Incident Annex to the Federal Response Plan. Washington, D.C. 1995. 

Primary Federal responsibility for fisheries management and development in coastal waters rests with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce. Within NOAA, Federal fisheries programs are administered by NMFS. 

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) Law, also known as Superfund, passed in 1980 and amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 and later amendments, that governs federal response and compensation for unpermitted and uncontrolled releases, including threats of release, of hazardous substances to the environment. An unpermitted release is any release that is not properly regulated under other laws. An important focus of CERCLA/SARA is remediation of old, unpermitted waste disposal sites that are closed or inactive. Basic objectives of the Superfund program are to protect human health and the environment in a cost-effective manner, maintain this protection over time, and minimize the amounts of untreated waste in the environment. 

Section 104 of Superfund authorizes the President to remove or remedy any release or threatened release to the environment of any hazardous substance, as defined in Section 101(14) of the Act, or any other containment which may present an "imminent and substantial danger" to the public health or the environment. He may accomplish this by removing the hazardous substance, or by taking "any other response measure," unless he determined that such removal or remedy will be done by some responsible person. Regardless of which course the President chooses, Section 104(a)(1) states that it must be "consistent with the national contingency plan." Section 111(a) directs that the costs of such federal response be borne by the response fund created by the Act. 

Provide a proactive and integrated federal response to catastrophic events. 

The NRP lays out the process for a federal response and designates the Secretary of the Department... 

Domestic Readiness Group (DRG) The Domestic Readiness Group comprises senior leaders from all cabinet-level departments and agencies. The White House will convene the DRG on a regular basis to develop and coordinate implementation of preparedness and response policy and in anticipation of, or during crises, such as pandemic influenza to address issues that cannot be resolved at lower levels and provide strategic policy direction for the federal response. 

Coordinates nonmedical federal response actions for an Incident of National Significance. 

Pinkson, R. G. (2002). The United Federal Response Plan. In D. Hogan J. L. Burnstein (Eds.), Disaster medicine (pp. 123-132). Philadelphia Lippincott Williams Wilkins. 

The scope of a disaster can vary greatly and is partially dependent on the location of the disaster. A disaster in a rural community may not be considered a major event in an urban area because of the greater resource availability characteristic of urban areas. Conversely, an event that would have an impact in an urban setting may have next to no impact in rural areas because of low population densities. State, regional, and federal support does exist and will likely be made available in the event of a disaster (Richards, Burstein, Waeckerle, Hutson, 1999). However, because a required chain of notification must be completed to obtain outside support and because it takes time for state or federal officials to marshal the proper resources, disasters are usually local for the first days (Auf der Heide, 1989, 2006 Kaji Waeckerle, 2003), which was exemplified by the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. After the first few days, the extent of the support may be limited by the nature of the disaster. A widespread infectious epidemic may require that... 

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). (1992). The Metropolitan Medical Response System. Federal Response Plan (Pub. L. No. 93-288). Retrieved February 10, 2006, from https //www.mmrs.fema.gov/default.aspx... 

In 1996, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was assigned the role of integrating the resources of the federal government with those of local and state authorities and the airlines to meet the needs of aviation disaster victims and their families. As a result, the Federal Family Assistance Plan for Aviation Disasters was developed and implemented. This plan describes the airline and federal responsibilities in response to an aviation crash involving a significant number of passenger fatalities or injuries (NTSB, 2006, 2007). 

After 9/11, the federal government adopted a National Response Plan (NRP), built on the template of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which adopts an all-hazards approach to emergency management, helping streamline a national response irrespective of the cause of the emergency (i.e., terrorist or natural DHS, 2004). The NRP applies to all incidents requiring a coordinated federal response and is scalable to the nature of the event. However, NRP maintains the local/state primary role in public health response, with a continued premise that state and local authorities will handle the first response. (A private-sector role is also envisioned.)... 

ESF 6 Mass Care - Mass Care includes sheltering and feeding victims of disaster, emergency first aid, family reunification, and the distribution of emergency relief supplies the American Red Cross (ARC) is designated by the Federal Response Plan (NRP) as the primary agency responsible for ESF Mass Care. 

ESF 8 Health and Medical - Led by the United States Public Health Service s Office of Emergency Preparedness, ESF 8 Health and Medical serves as the basis for federal response to the health needs of disaster victims, epidemic - The occurrence of any known or suspected contagion that occurs in clear excess of normal expectancy (a threatened epidemic occurs when the circumstances are such that a disease may reasonably be anticipated to occur in excess of normal expectancy). evacuation - An organized removal of civilians from a dangerous or potentially dangerous area. 

Social insurance matters are a federal responsibility as are narcotics, serum, blood cmd blood products, vaccines, poisons and foodstuffs. 

SNF constitutes about half of the HLW in the United States. The other half comes from the construction and existence of nuclear weapons. All HLW is a federal responsibility. About 90% of the radioactivity in nuclear waste is from HLW. The largest volume of nuclear waste is low-level waste (LLW) and that is mostly the responsibihty of the state (or group of states) in which it is generated. LLW is rather awkwardly defined, being everything that is neither HLW nor defense waste and consists of wastes from hospitals pharmaceutical labs research labs and the moon suits, tools, and the like from nuclear power plants. In the eastern United States, most of the LLW is in the form of the plastic beads that make up the ion-exchange resins used in nuclear power plants to clean various loops of water used in power production. 

In an average year, some 14,000 cases of oil pollution are reported. Many are corrected by those responsible. When clean up of a spill is beyond the physical or financial capability of those responsible, local, state, and federal forces become involved. Thus, there are many public agencies, at all levels of government, trained in all aspects of oil pollution control. The lead Federal Response Agency is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for land spills, and the Coast Guard for spills at sea. These agencies have published many information bulletins and letters, most of which are available on the Internet. Several are listed in the references to this chapter. 

Federal responsibility for public safety In this regard lies with the Food and Drug Administration. FDA regulations are... 

The structure of a typical spill response organization is shown in Figure 4. A popular command structure today is a system called the Incident Command System or ICS. This is similar to the organization shown in Figure 4, but involves common elements to ensure uniformity across organizations and to make it easier for federal responders to deal with contingency plans in areas other than their own familiar territories. The Unified Command System, or UCS, is similar to ICS, but involves the joining of the company, state, or province, and federal response structures. The... 

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