Local Emergency Planning Committees and Risk Management Plans: Encouraging Hazard Reduction. NICS conducted this study for the USEPA's Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office to identify opportunities and challenges for LEPCs in using the RMP [Risk Management Plan] tool to improve community safety and to highlight those LEPCs that use RMPs to promote hazard reduction.

Evaluating Hazardous Materials Transported Through the Kanawha Valley. NICS conducted this study for the Kanawha Putnam Emergency Planning Committee. It is an update of a study done in 1994.

Sheltering in Place As A Public Protective Action. Conducted for the USEPA, this study provides a look at chemical accidents where sheltering n place was used as a public protective action.

As a community service, each year NICS analyzes Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data submitted to the USEPA by companies in West Virginia and publishes the results in the West Virginia Scorecard. The Scorecard is a widely respected yardstick used by concerned citizens, regulators and industry to measure changes in the state's environmental quality compared to a 1987 benchmark.

In 1999, NICS conducted a national conference, "Protecting the Public '99," in Concord, California. The conference's purpose was to evaluate current efforts to protect communities from chemical accidents and releases. LEPC members, emergency responders, federal and state regulators, industry representatives and others attended. A one-day "Protective Action Decision-Making" workshop was held following the conference.

NICS produced a video and model shelter-in-place plan to encourage businesses to adopt and practice shelter in place plans.

For several years, NICS instructors have conducted workshops around the country on "Protective Action Decision-Making.". Current workshops are based on the program, "Protecting the Public in a Hazardous Materials Emergency."

NICS has made available to the emergency planning and emergency response community in the United States a training program, "Protecting the Public in a Hazardous Materials Emergency." The program, on a compact disc, allows local instructors to select from various subject modules to construct a workshop to meet the specific interests of local emergency planners and responders. NICS instructors can come to your jurisdiction and provide the training. Funds to cover the training costs are often available from State Emergency Response Commissions through HMEP grants.

NICS manages a Brownfields Assistance Program for the WV Department of Environmental Protection. The program is part of an effort by the DEP and WV Economic Development Office to learn the development potential of several hundred potentially polluted sites in the state. NICS will coordinate the development of a brownfields site database and the creation of a technical and financial assistance program for local governments and economic development authorities. The effort will result in the first comprehensive list of contaminated sites with development potential and will help remove obstacles to cleanup and redevelopment of the sites.

NICS reviewed an industrial safety ordinance for a county board of supervisors in California to determine whether the county could implement and enforce the ordinance, land-use aspects of the ordinance and its overall public safety elements.

NICS reviewed three investigation reports on chemical accidents for the USEPA to determine the technical soundness, overall approach and completeness of the reports and to recommend ways to improve future accident investigations.

NICS reviewed assumptions used by two federal agencies to develop shelter-in-place policy recommendations for communities near a chemical weapons storage depot.

NICS analyzed toxic chemical releases into the environment of a 12-county area in southwest Pennsylvania. A group of businesses, public interest organizations and government agencies sponsored the project. The project tells citizens about trends in toxic chemical releases.

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