ISO 14001 Registration at EPA's Environmental Science Center

The US EPA Ft. Meade Environmental Science Center (ESC) is a unique facility. Located on 25 acres within the US Army's Ft. Meade, Maryland, the facility is an analytical chemistry laboratory occupied by EPA's Region III laboratory and an Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) program laboratory. Commissioned in February 1999, the building incorporates many state-of-the-art laboratory features and, by all standards, provides first-rate space for the resident scientists. It is 145,000 grass square feet with 89,000 finished square feet including over 70 lab rooms.

In addition to being a state-of-the-art laboratory, the ESC is a leader in practicing state-of-the-art environmental management. Beginning in August 2000, the ESC embarked on a journey to implement an environmental management system (EMS) that is based on ISO 14001, the international standard for EMSs. Among the reasons that managers in Region III and OPPTS decided to invest in the EMS are the desire to be a good neighbor in the Ft. Meade community and to realize operational benefits of EMSs such as cost savings and lower risk profile. Now, a little over two years later, a self-directed team of volunteers has lead the facility through implementation of an EMS and recognition by a third party registrar as having an EMS that conforms to the international consensus standard ISO 14001. The ESC has been issued a certificate of registration and is the first non-industrial "civilian" (non-DoD, non-DOE) federal agency facility to be registered to ISO 14001.

Benefits of EMS implementation to date include:

• Better cross-facility cooperation;
• Greater awareness of environmental impacts and linkage of environmental aspects;
• Complete documentation of environmental management programs; and
• Greater awareness and integration of Executive Orders.

As new initiatives are launched in the coming months under the guise of EMS targets, the ESC expects to see more return on investment with regard to pollution prevention, cost savings, and creative environmental management practices. The overall goal is to establish a culture that institutionalizes the consideration of environmental impacts in the daily business conducted at the ESC.

For more information, please visit Environmental Management System.

How the EMS at EPA's Environmental Science Center Is Being Viewed in the Federal Community

The efforts at the US EPA Ft. Meade Environmental Science Center have been the subject of several presentations at ISO 14000 technical and environmental conferences and are considered by that audience as representative of Federal efforts in the EMS arena. In addition, the Ft. Meade Science Center has been recognized by the Federal community for its robust documentation of EMS elements such as activities and impacts register and environmental management program form. These documents have been used as exhibits in EMS implementation training and awareness training to provide examples of how the EMS elements are addressed during implementation and the outcome of initial EMS efforts under "real world' circumstances.

The Ft. Meade Science Center experience is particularly important due to the facility's status as a small (165 people), civilian facility. This type of facility represents a significant portion of the Federal community affected by the Executive Order 13148 requirement to implement an EMS and therefore serves as the model for many other facilities. The Ft. Meade Science Center has provided presentations during training exercises for broad Federal audiences and is helping the 10 EPA labs that will contribute to implementing EMSs at EPA facilities.