The Environmental Response Team (ERT) serves as a valuable provider of technical resources, counsel and support for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the federal, local and state levels. Both the headquarters and regional stations of the agency benefit from what the Environmental Response Team can assist with when it comes to hazards jeopardizing the environment. The ERT serves an important role in terms of ecological health and safety, emergency response, proactive risk assessment, quality assurance, and remediation.
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Proper emergency response protocol
Though an oil spill cleanup project might seem to many like a relatively straightforward problem to address, there are actually many different aspects of the issue to be concerned with when it comes to resolving it properly. Cleanup procedures for oil spills are accompanied by a generous number of other logistical tasks that demand no shortage of care and finesse in order to ensure the safety of people, wildlife and the environment alike; for this purpose, the ERT is specially designed to ensure that all the proper protocols are run through appropriately.
Risk assessment
When it comes to any incident that threatens the environment, one of the most essential aspects of responding to said incident is proper risk assessment. By taking an accurate account of just what the most pressin risks are, the most well-advised response operations can be enacted in an efficient window of time. After accurately analyzing the risks, the ERT can proceed to run through their emergency response procedures on the scene in a manner that appropriately accounts for the nature of the incident at hand.
The ERT does not outright supersede risk assessors that are already on the scene, but can work concomitantly with on-site risk assessors to help the final verdict on risk be better-informed with their ecological expertise.
Policy advisement
In addition to taking an accurate account of the risks associated with various ecological disasters, the ERT can also offer a valuable form of assistance in the form of policy advisement. Before any big decisions are made regarding the response policies adopted toward various ecological disasters, the ERT can lend it expertise towards ensuring that these decisions are not made without the highest degree of conscientiousness towards the most relevant factors at hand.
To strengthen the credibility of their advisement, the ERT has an active hand in various aspects of ecological analysis to draw inferences from highly important metrics; these analyses include sampling, site modeling, endpoint assessment and more.Through the detailed sampling and monitoring services that the ERT provides, enlightening metrics about the state of water and air pollution can be kept current with consistently.
Treatment system assessment
Based on the information that the ERT collects through its risk assessment and sampling services, it can provide the EPA with a valuable information regarding the efficacy of potential or actively-used treatment systems. The ERT can ensure that any treatment systems being considered for implementation are up to standard by putting them through a rigorous series of performance monitoring test. Ideally, depending on the results of the ERT’s performance monitoring tests, treatment systems can be fine-tuned and optimized for the best level of efficiency.