Coastal Services Center

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Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Steps Environmental Analysis Extended Discussion

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Objectives:

Identify which hazardous facilities pose potential secondary hazards and can impact key environmental resources

Purpose:

Mitigate prioritized hazardous facilities and environmental resources to prevent secondary hazard impacts

Primary Steps:

1. Locate and gather data
2. Identify where primary hazards and secondary risk sites (hazardous facilities) intersect
3. Identify which of these secondary risk sites intersect (or are in close proximity to) environmental resource locations
4. Prioritize these secondary risk sites
5. For the public sector, conduct a vulnerability assessment on the higher priority secondary risk sites. Recommend hazard mitigation activities for these facilities
6. For the private sector, establish partnerships with these private sectors to educate them on the hazards and mitigation options or, if permitted, conduct a vulnerability assessment
7. Include these secondary risk sites in your critical facilities list

Description

This analysis focuses on identifying hazardous facilities or secondary risk sites that may threaten environmental resources because of the location in a primary hazard area. For example a sewage treatment plant located in a high storm surge area may be damaged in the next hurricane, thus releasing untreated sewage into a nearby water system, contaminating the water supply and potentially harming the local ecosystem. By identifying and prioritizing the hazardous facilities that intersect with environmental resources, mitigation strategies to protect both can be developed.

Identify Secondary Risk Sites (Hazardous Facilities)

Create a list of hazardous facilities in your community.

Hazardous facilities may include the following:

• Toxic Release Inventory Sites
• Oil Facilities
• Underground Storage Tanks
• Solid Waste Facilities
• Marinas
• Ports
• Nuclear Facilities

Identify where secondary risk sites (hazardous facilities) and natural hazard areas intersect

Overlay hazardous facilities with natural hazard areas to determine which of these facilities may cause secondary hazards

Figure 1. Overlay of hazardous facilities with natural hazard areas.

Prioritize the secondary risk sites (high-risk hazardous facilities) based upon their proximity to environmental resources

Overlay the hazardous facilities with environmental resource sites to determine their proximity to high-risk hazard areas. Prioritize these locations by listing which facilities are closest to environmental resources and might pose a threat in the event of a natural hazard. To prioritize which facilities pose the biggest threats, you can perform an in-depth structural and operational analysis on the selected facilities, collecting data to determine the structural integrity, such as construction type and quality, age, size, and other pertinent information. Also identify the types of materials contained at the facilities, as well as what impacts the materials might have on environmental resources.

Table 1. Example of risk summary scores and the number of environmental resource areas associated with each of the secondary risk sites.

Facility Type	Count	Risk_Sum	Environmental Sensitivity
NPDES Permit Site	2	14	3
NPDES Permit Site	9	14	2
NPDES Permit Site	6	14	1
Solid Waster Facility	1	14	1
Toxic Release Site	2	14	2
Oil Facility	1	14	1
Total	21	14

This table lists the hazardous facility type, number of hazardous facilities that intersect with a natural resource, the risk summary score, and the environmental sensitivity to that specific hazardous facility contents.

Information from the Table

• Count is the number of environmental resources that intersected with that particular hazardous facility.
• Risk_Sum is the score of the intersection of the hazardous facility with the natural hazard area. Each natural hazard area is assigned a score. Refer to the Identifying Hazards Extended Discussion to see how a hazard score is calculated.
• Environmental Sensitivity is a relative score illustrating how vulnerable a particular natural resource is to a specific hazardous material that may be contained at that hazardous facility.

Conduct a vulnerability analysis on prioritized secondary risk sites (hazardous facilities) and environmental resource sites

Conduct detailed structural assessments on all public-sector sites to identify potential mitigation actions. For private-sector facilities, establish partnerships with each facility and educate key facility personnel on potential hazards and ways to mitigate and prevent future losses. Also contact staff at the environmental resource sites about the potential impacts to their sites. Work with these individuals to develop plans on how to lessen the damage in the event of secondary hazard impacts.

Data Resources for Analysis

Primary Hazards:

• Flood Zones
• Storm Surge
• Erosion
• Wind

Secondary Hazards:

• Toxic Release Inventory Sites
• Discharge Areas
• Nuclear Facilities
• Oil Facilities
• Hazardous Substance Disposal Sites
• Solid Waste Facilities
• Ports
• Marinas
• Building Inventory for Each Site
• Building Footprints for Each Site
• Underground Storage Tanks
• Farms (cattle, hog, poultry)
• NPDES Permit Sites

Environmental Resources:

• Wetlands
• Protected Areas, Wildlife Refuges, Preserves
• Endangered Species/Threatened Species
• Cultural/Historic Sites
• Archeological Sites
• Fisheries
• Estuaries
• Environmental Sensitivity Index Maps
• Recreational Areas (tourism, beachgoers, boaters)
• Shellfish Harvest Areas
• Groundwater Recharge Areas
• Local Habitats (Corals, Mangroves, Salt Marshes, Sea grasses)
• STORET is a STORage and RETrieval database (Water Quality)
• Shoreline

Other Data:

• Railroads
• Highways (truck transport roads)
• Streams, Rivers, Lakes

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