LSPA April 2023 Membership Meeting

Annually the LSPA meets with MassDEP Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup leadership in all four MassDEP regions. In 2022, leadership at the Southeast Regional Office suggested that environmental professionals need to better understand and be reminded of their role in the Incident Command System (ICS). The ICS is a standardized approach to the command, control, and coordination of emergency response providing a common hierarchy within which responders from multiple agencies can be effective. All LSPs and other environmental professionals should understand the ICS, especially during MCP emergency response situations.

Captain Burris will cover:

• What is the Incident Command System and National Incident Management System?
• Common terminology, Scalability, & Manageability.
• Federal funding = federal mandate (by law).
• Establishing Command and command structure, prevents duplication of effort/prevents ego-driven conflict.
• ICS: providing a template for assessing and addressing incidents, resources to address those incidents, and to identify additional needs.
• Unified Command: creates representation by participating entities in multi-agency responses with knowledge of their capabilities.
• Do’s & Don’ts of how to insert oneself into the Incident Command System:  how the Command Post and Staging function.
• Pseudo-paramilitary structure, professional bearing & credibility.
• Communicating your role concisely.
• Balancing priorities: between mitigation & recovery.

Mr. Donoghue will address the following from the perspective of an on-site LSP:

• How LSPs operate within the Incident Command System:  benefits and challenges, balancing the ICS and adhering to the MCP. 
• Examples of ICS in action at MCP sites.