Environmental incident and emergency response

Project description and aims

There is a diversity of national laws and regulations requiring operators to put in place plans and arrangements to prevent, respond to, and remediate environmental damage as a result of natural and technological incidents. Environment Protection Agencies also operate under a variety of duties and requirements to help operators prevent incidents, and to plan and execute incident and emergency response. This diversity of duties and requirements is likely to have resulted in inconsistent arrangements to prevent, and respond to, environmental incidents.

This project is an opportunity to identify, learn from, and facilitate the implementation across EU EPAs of, best practice in responding to environmental incidents and emergencies. This, in turn, will afford greater protection to the environment in Europe, particularly where transboundary impacts are possible, and help ensure more effective remediation of environmental damage following an incident.

Expected outcomes:

• A desk study of environmental incident and emergency response arrangements in selected EPAs in the EU and beyond to identify the current range of practice and the core components of current arrangements.
• Development of a simple questionnaire identifying what incident and emergency response arrangements are already in place in EPAs in Europe and beyond.
• Report of best practice case studies, and guidance based on core components, for dissemination in various formats to EU EPAs to encourage and inform best practice. Identification of opportunities for face-to-face communication of project findings and best practice guidance to collected EPA representatives.