Local Emergency Planning Committees – The Forgotten Ally

Whether active or not, every community in the United States has a Local of Tribal Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC).  Created as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), these committees provide valuable planning resources to emergency responders and can offer gateways to identifying community gaps and remedies.  At the very least, LEPCs must develop an emergency response plan, review the plan at least annually, and provide information about chemicals in the community to citizens.  But some LEPCs perform other duties, including hosting and funding exercises and training, developing improvement plans for enhancing community readiness, assist with risk reduction activities related to hazardous materials, perform commodity flow studies to identify hazardous materials in transit in the community, and even conduct all-hazards planning. 

By law, LEPCs are intended to be inclusive and gain input from a variety of stakeholders, including elected officials at the state, local, and tribal levels, law enforcement, emergency management, fire, EMS, public health, healthcare, environmental organizations, transportation officials, facility representatives, community-based organizations, and the media.  By including a wide variety of stakeholders, the LEPC can leverage each partners unique knowledge and skill to improve the health, safety, and readiness of the community. 

The LEPC serves as a repository of facility reports related to the storage and use of hazardous materials in the community.  From this, they are able to determine the community threat profile related to hazardous materials and develop emergency response plans.  These response plans include the following information:

• Identification of facilities and transportation routes of extremely hazardous substances.
• Description of emergency response procedures, on and off site.
• Designation of a community coordinator and facility emergency coordinator(s) to implement the plan.
• Outline of emergency notification procedures.
• Description of how to determine the probable affected area and population by releases.
• Description of local emergency equipment and facilities and the persons responsible for them.
• Outline of evacuation plans.
• A training program for emergency responders (including schedules).
• Methods and schedules for exercising emergency response plans.

Once the plans are developed, they are reviewed annually and should be exercised on a regular basis.  Exercising the plans allows communities to identify weaknesses or gaps in the plan and determine activities to correct the deficiencies. 

LEPCs are critical to community preparedness and effective response to hazardous materials emergencies.  Members of hazardous materials teams and all emergency response personnel should be familiar with their LEPC, its activities, and should ensure that they are represented at meetings and planning activities.