October 9, 2002—The US Environmental Protection Agency a recently announced its Strategic Plan for Homeland Security. The plan is intended to support the President’s National Strategy for Homeland Security and the efforts undertaken by a new Department of Homeland Security.
The plan will serve as a blueprint on how to enhance EPA’s ability to meet its homeland security responsibilities. The activities and initiatives in the plan represent an enhancement of EPA’s capabilities to detect, prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from terrorist incidents.
The plan identifies goals in four mission-critical areas: Critical infrastructure protection; preparedness, response, and recovery; communication and information; and protection of EPA personnel and infrastructure.
Since September 11, 2001, EPA has taken a number of steps to ensure its abilities to meet its homeland security responsibilities. The agency is adding seventy-five response staff personnel to strengthen its ability to respond simultaneously to multiple incidents. In addition, it is providing advanced training and state of the art equipment to those who will respond to any chemical, biological, or radiological incident and is establishing a new Environmental Response Team West in Las Vegas to provide a quicker response time to any incidents that may happen in the western United States.
The full plan can be downloaded in PDF format at the EPA Web site.
