July 29, 1999
EPA-SAB-EEC-99-COM-003
The Honorable Carol Browner
Administrator
United States Environmental Protection Agency
401 M Street, SW
Washington, DC 20460
SUBJECT:
Environmental Impacts of Natural Hazards: The Need for
Agency Action
Dear Ms. Browner
The Environmental Engineering Committee of the Science Advisory Board
recommends that EPA develop programs to deal with environmental impacts of natural
hazards and their effects, including human health. The Committee first raised this
issue in its 1995 report Future Issues in Environmental Engineering (SAB, 1995) and is
renewing its recommendations at this time because some natural hazards have
increased in frequency and severity, mostly due to the indirect influence of human
activities. Floods and wildfires are in this category. The enclosure briefly summarizes
some recent natural hazards and their impacts.
This EEC commentary results from a series of activities at publicly announced
meetings. In February, 1998, colleagues from the National Science Foundation, U. S.
Waterways Experiment Station, and the Mitigation Directorate of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency discussed with the Committee, current and
anticipated environmental impacts, relevant literature and the ability of both Agency
and external programs to effectively assess and control such impacts. In December
1998, staff from the Office of Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention
briefed the Committee about relevant EPA activities. Committee members considered
the environmental impacts of a variety of natural hazards, such as floods, earthquakes,
hurricanes, landslides, tsunamis, wildfires and droughts.
1. Findings on the Agency's Capacity to Address Environmental Impacts
After reviewing reports on natural hazards within and outside the United States,
being briefed on a variety of federal programs, and the collegial discussions mentioned
above, the Committee reached the following findings and recommendations.
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a) Impacts of natural hazards such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes,
landslides, tsunamis, wildfires and droughts on both human health and
the environment are significant in most ecosystems. Such impacts
include erosion and silting of wetlands; washout of waste treatment and
storage facilities; dam failure and resulting inundation of wildlife habitats;
spreading of disease causing vectors; and release and transport of
chemical contaminants.
b) Both frequency and severity contribute to the intensity of natural hazards,
severity being a measure of the event itself, such as the Richter scale for
earthquakes. The meaning of the word "impact" varies by context. It can
be used to describe the primary event, structural damage, public health
risks, or ecological damage.
Some kinds of natural disasters have been more frequent in recent years
than would be expected on the basis of the historical record; however,
experts disagree over whether this difference constitutes a trend. While
these observations are not yet fully understood, the apparent increase in
frequency is one of the factors that motivated the American Society of
Civil Engineers to operate the Council on Natural Disaster Mitigation and
the United Nations to designate the 90s as the International Decade for
Natural Disaster Mitigation.
Impacts can be measured in different ways. Mortality and property
damage are common measures. However, the environmental impacts
associated with natural hazards have not been adequately investigated
nor has the potential for such impacts to exacerbate other environmental
problems. While an increase in intensity suggests that the impacts on
human health, property and the environment will also increase, this is not
always the case. In the United States, for example, mortality from
hurricanes has decreased markedly, while property damage has
increased.
c) In the context of natural hazards, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS),
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers focus on some preventive and mitigative activities. However,
these agencies only tangentially address environmental impacts. EPA's
efforts are relatively small and focused on emergency response activities
for contaminant spillages. There is no national program to address the
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totality of environmental and public health impacts of natural hazards.
d) The impacts of natural hazards in other countries can both jeopardize
U.S. interests and threaten public and environmental health in the United
States. For example, El Nino-driven wildfires in Central America and
Mexico have generated smoke that could affect public health in the
southern portion of the United States.
2. Recommendations on Program Needs
a) Develop a Program to Provide National Leadership on Research
The Committee recommends that EPA provide national leadership for
research on the assessment and mitigation of environmental impacts
arising from natural hazards because the major unaddressed issues fall
within EPA's area of expertise and existing elements of EPA's research
programs are compatible with the issues that need to be addressed.
Such research would be, for example, consistent with the primary goal of
the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), for example, is to
"determine the local, regional and national climate change and variability
in the context of other existing and potential future stresses on human
health, the environment, society and the economy." One approach would
be to expand the scope of the Global Change Research Program to
include a research program on extreme events (natural hazards).
b) Develop Hazard Zoning Schemes in which Environmental Sensitivity is a
Key Parameter
Facility siting and structural design considerations vary with the nature of
the facility, intensity of extreme events and the vulnerabilities of the
ecosystem(s) involved. The Committee recommends EPA help public
officials and the private sector make decisions on siting and design by
developing environmental sensitivity information at various spatial scales.
and presenting it in conjunction with existing frequency-severity indices
for various hazards. (There are new data visualization techniques for
both spatial and temporal information which make these relationships
easier to understand.)
This initiative would contribute to resolving long-standing Agency
concerns about facilities in sensitive environments. The initiative is
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consistent with SAB's recommended model for futures analysis. This
analysis combines the use of scenarios with an analytical framework,
such as the ecorisk framework, to provide systematic approach for
assessing future environmental risks. Finally, this initiative is consistent
with the draft recommendations of the Risk Reduction Options
Subcommittee (RROS) of the SAB's Integrated Risk Project on the
screening, selection and implementation of environmental risk reduction
options.
c) Revise Current Design Approaches for New Facilities that may be
Located in Vulnerable Areas
At this time, the impacts of transient stresses from natural hazards are not
adequately considered in the design of waste management facilities such
as surface impoundments, waste piles, and landfills. Currently, designers
who wish to address the effects of transient events find it difficult to do so
because the Agency's technical guidance manuals generally describe
design methods based on deterministic rather than probabilistic models.
The Committee makes these observations based on the participation of
members in the Review of the Office of Solid Waste's Proposed Surface
Impoundment Study (SAB, 1998) and in a Consultation on Alternative
Approaches for Disposal of Federal Low-Activity Radioactive Wastes
(SAB, 1998).
Because designers have difficulty using Agency manuals to address
transient stresses that may cause catastrophic failure or accelerate
gradual failure, the Committee recommends that EPA revise its design
methodologies to cover the reliability of structures in hazard-prone
locations. Such methodologies could be connected and extended to
ecosystem and human health risk assessments through estimates of
probable contaminant release quantities and concentrations and their
effects.
d) Require Consideration of Facility Vulnerability to the Location-Relevant
Natural Hazards During Environmental Impact Assessments
The Agency can reasonably expect that natural hazards will continue to
occur, that there will be impacts on the environment and human health,
and that it is possible, in general, to both anticipate the ramifications of
extreme events to prevent or reduce them. The Committee recommends
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that Agency expand its activities to reduce environmental impacts of
natural hazards. A range of options is available to the Agency including
research, communication, education, guidance, permit requirements, etc.
For example, if permit applicants for facilities in high risk areas were
required to address this topic in their applications, the analysis could be
articulated in the form of a hazards summary directed at each particular
event and its environmental effects, arrayed in terms of magnitude,
importance, and estimated probability, fortified by pertinent commentary
that could be drawn from antecedent knowledge and experience.
e) Collaborate with other Agencies Programs at Various Levels
Several regional, national and international agencies currently operate
programs on natural disasters and sustainable development. Among
these agencies are the World Health Organization, the United Nations
Environment Program and the World Bank. Virtually every federal
department plays a role in economic or technical aspects of disaster
management. This issue provides an opportunity for EPA to partner with
federal (and state) agencies with management responsibilities for natural
resources, such as the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service,
and Forest Service.
In the United States, implementation of disaster management programs
occurs at the state and local level. Without their support, programs
designed by federal agencies, including EPA, cannot be effectively
implemented. Therefore, the Agency should develop a coordinated plan
for defining its sphere of activities and appropriate level of collaboration
with other organizations to implement an integrated natural hazards
program that goes beyond the current focus.
In this context, it may be worth making an analogy to the prevention rubric
used by most public health problems which classifies prevention actions
as primary (preventing or lessening impacts), secondary (mitigating
effects which have occurred), and tertiary (keeping things from getting
worse). Currently, most disaster management activities would be
considered secondary or tertiary. This commentary advocates increased
attention to primary prevention, that is the proactive efforts where EPA
could exercise useful leadership.
The Environmental Engineering Committee looks forward to increasing its
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interaction with the Agency on approaches to minimizing adverse environmental
impacts of natural hazards and to a written response to the recommendations in this
commentary.
Sincerely,
/signed/
Dr. Joan Daisey, Chair
Science Advisory Board
/signed/
Dr. Hilary I. Inyang, Chair
Environmental Engineering Committee
Science Advisory Board
/signed/
Dr. Frederick G. Pohland, Co-Chair
Subcommittee on the Environmental Impacts of Natural
Hazards
Environmental Engineering Committee
/signed/
Ms. Lynne Preslo, Co-Chair
Subcommittee on the Environmental Impacts of Natural
Hazards
Environmental Engineering Committee
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APPENDIX - A BRIEF SUMMARY OF RECENT NATURAL HAZARDS
AND THEIR IMPACTS
1. INTRODUCTION
Natural hazards are extreme environmental phenomena that may occur at
various magnitude levels and spatio-temporal scales, often causing direct and
indirect disruption of physical facilities, infrastructure, and environmental and
socio-economic systems. The principal classes of natural hazards are
earthquakes, floods, hailstorms, hurricanes, landslides, tornados, tsunamis (tidal
waves), volcanic eruptions, wildfires, droughts and storms. Popular thinking,
born out of review of historical records and recent observations, is that the
severity and frequency of natural hazards are increasing at an alarming rate.
The issues involved with natural hazards encompass a broad array of
constituent events that may be triggered or driven by the coincidence of such
events with a vulnerability situation. Vulnerability varies in time and space, thus
making it necessary to develop and use hazards severity/frequency zoning maps
for scaling hazards for location-specific risk assessments. Vulnerability is
interactively determined by its anthropogenic and natural components.
2. PATTERNS OF OCCURRENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
GENERATION
The categories of factors that interact to exacerbate or attenuate the impact of
natural hazards are illustrated in Figure 1. Natural activity systems are
phenomena that occur without significant enhancement (in intensity) by
anthropogenic systems. The latter may be intense enough at a location to
magnify the effects of the natural phenomena into a hazard. For example,
excessive development of a Florida lowland can magnify the effects of a
rainstorm into a flood. Essentially, there is a threshold intensity, defined by both
magnitude and frequency of a phenomenon, above which the natural
environment of the specific site or location can not attenuate negative impacts
without human intervention. From the illustration in Figure 1, the Florida
lowland could still not be vulnerable to the flood if adequate flood control
schemes are in place. Control schemes which range from structural schemes
such as levees to facility siting controls, provide a management opportunity for
minimizing the impacts of natural hazards on lifelines (such as power and
telephone lines, water mains, sewers), structures, environmental and socio-
economic systems, and public health. Disasters often occur only when control
schemes are inadequate.
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Anthropogenic activity systems such as those listed in Figure 1 are directly
proportional to population for most regions. Considering that population has
increased rapidly in most countries, hazards and impacts have also increased.
Within countries, population redistribution to coastal areas also tends to
increase the frequency of natural disasters. About 50% of the U.S. population
lives in coastal states; including 34 million people in Texas and Florida where
hurricanes are frequent (J. Golden in Parfitand Richardson, 1998).
Meteorological hazards tend to be more intense in coastal regions and island
communities. A combination of location, dense population and inadequacy of
hazard control schemes, such as those described by Wright et al. (1993), has
made southeast Asian countries very prone to natural disasters. In general, it is
estimated by the World Bank (as reported by Showstack,1998) that about 95%
of deaths caused by disasters globally occur in developing countries.
Nevertheless, during the period 1975-1994, the United States spent about $0.25
billion per week on meteorological disasters alone (Forrest and Nishenko, 1996).
3.
The large size of the United States, which spans near-tropical and temperate
zones, exposes it to several hazards. An elaborate analysis and illustration of
the severity and spatial distribution of historical data on natural hazards in a
recent issue of National Geographic magazine (Parfit and Richardson, 1998)
reveal the following patterns: several volcanoes that have been active within the
past 2000 years (the time frame often identified with high risk of eruption) are
located on the Pacific Coast of the United States; earthquake hazards are
highest in the western one third of the United States as well as the mid-western
region around New Madrid, MO, and Charleston, SC; Florida, Texas, Louisiana
and the Carolinas bear the brunt of hurricanes, which peak in August and
September each year; the frequency of tornadoes which sweep through the
United States is 800 -1100 per year, and exceeds the frequency in any other
country; tornadoes are restricted largely to the eastern half of the United States;
and since 1930, the major droughts have been more severe in Utah, Wyoming,
Colorado, New Mexico, California, Oklahoma, northern Texas and the western
portion of the Dakotas.
GENERAL DAMAGES AND LOSSES
Annual damages to physical infrastructure and socioeconomic costs of natural
disasters are staggering. For the period between August, 1992 and December,
1995, statistics (NSTC, 1996) show the following structural losses from natural
disasters in the United States: Hurricane Andrew, $25 billion; Hurricane Iniki,
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$12 billion; March 1994 blizzard, $6 billion; 1993 Midwest floods, $30 billion;
1993-1994 winter storms, 1994 spring floods and summer wildfires, $25 billion;
1995 spring floods, $7 billion; and 1995 hurricanes, at least $6 billion.
A recent report by the Associated Press in the New York Times (Monday,
November 30,1998, pp. A-18) indicated that the 1998 hurricane season was the
deadliest in 200 years in North and Central America and the Caribbean: more
than 10,000 people were killed. The averaging effect reduces the national
burden per community, but the loss in the specific disaster areas may be very
significant. For example, direct losses from the 1993 North ridge earthquake was
about 3% of the California Gross State Product (Forrest and Nishenko, 1996).
Globally, 85% of all insured losses of property are attributable to natural
disasters, a realization that has prompted the United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP) to develop an Insurance Industry Initiative (III) for mitigative
action.
4. ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGES AND RISKS
Environmental damages that result from natural hazards are often less dramatic
than structural damages to lifelines (such as power and telephone lines, water
mains, sewers) and buildings. Environmental damages also may. be linked in
series to structural damages as direct consequences. The slower manifestation
of environmental damages relative to lifeline damages has resulted in neglect of
complete environmental impact assessments beyond actions needed for
contaminant spill response when natural disasters are analyzed. One of the
problems is the difficulty of establishing causal links from a manifested non-
immediate environmental damage back to the catastrophic event in a multi-
hazard situation. Also, beyond initial efforts to rehabilitate and restore damaged
lifelines and structures, the continuous monitoring of the affected area, which is
needed to identify and characterize human and environmental impacts, is often
not conducted. Nevertheless, despite the general lack of data on the
environmental impacts of natural hazards, a few analyzed events have
exemplified the environmental and human health risks that can result from
uncontrolled impacts of natural hazards.
Floods can induce significant negative ecological impacts. The SAB (1995) has
presented a natural hazards sequence tree to help summarize damages inflicted
by floods (shown in Figure 2). The 1993 Midwest Floods washed out several
waste treatment and storage facilities, as discussed by Inyang (1994a). Salinity,
toxins and zebra mussels were spread downstream. Reportedly (NSTC, 1996),
ecological impacts were observed as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. In the
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summer of 1992, Hurricane Andrew left more than 20 million cubic meters of
debris in its wake in the Florida Keys, challenging the waste disposal system
capacity of the area (Keck, 1996). The scale at which floods can affect
ecosystems is illustrated by the 1998 Chinese floods which inundated about 64
million acres of land around the Yangtze River.
Between May 25 and June 28,1998, wildfires destroyed valuable ecosystems in
about 218,000 acres in Florida. During the same time frame (Boston Globe, May
7, 1998, pp. 17), wildfires raged across the Canadian prairie, destroying about
360,000 acres of grass and timberland. Sometimes, environmental and public
health effects may impact another country, when the source of the initiating
phenomena is external. For example, during mid-1998, smoke drifted into
Texas, Oklahoma and Florida from a belt of El Nino-driven wildfires in Central
America and Mexico. As reported in U.S. News and World Report (June 1,
1998, pp. 38), the resulting air pollutants also produced dramatic increases in
asthma and other respiratory ailments in Central America.
5. EMERGING MONITORING SYSTEMS AND PROGRAM NEEDS
Although the impacts of natural hazards have been recognized, preparedness
and mitigation strategies have not adequately addressed environmental effects.
Since the declaration of the decade of the 1990's by the United Nations as the
International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), several
international and national programs have been developed. In the United States,
responsibility for relevant activities is shared at the federal level by several
agencies as described by NSTC (1996). The principal agencies are the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Department of
Energy (USDOE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (USHHS), the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (USHUD), the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Advances in telecommunications, data management and visualization methods,
and sensors within the past ten years have provided new opportunities for data
acquisition and interpretation for prediction of natural hazards and development
of environmental and public health disaster prevention and mitigation strategies.
Earth observation satellites can attain spatial resolutions of a few meters, while
others have high observation frequencies (about 0.5-6 hours). The U.S.
LANDSAT 5 satellite has a spatial resolution of about 5 meters, although
resolutions are increasing as military technology is adapted to civilian uses.
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Multi-spectral sensors such as those on LANDS AT can provide spatial
distribution information on wetlands, population centers, waste treatment and
storage facilities, and roads/bridges. Radiometer sensors such as NOAA's
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors mounted on
meteorological satellites have a relatively low resolution, but their measurement
repetition makes them useful for flood and wildfire monitoring.
Data obtained from these satellites and other ground-based methods, such as
those summarized in Table 1 (NRC, 1989), have utility beyond their primary
purpose. Secondary use of such data in environmental risk characterization,
planning and mitigation requires the development of linkages among different
analytical techniques that are traditional to various professional disciplines, each
of which covers narrow segments of this problem. Relevant technical issues
include hazard (geologic and meteorological/climatic) event prediction; hazard
control options selection methodologies; environmental damage/impact
assessment for probable events; waste management facility design reliability
analysis; ecosystem and facility monitoring system design; and linkages of event
probabilities and facility/ecosystem physical damage to ecological and human
health risk levels. The SAB (1995) has described how network analysis can be
applied to natural hazards problems.
Approaches that could be adopted to control environmental pollution that could
be caused by damages of fixed waste management facilities include choice of
suitable sites, structural design conservatism and incorporation of external
redundancy. These approaches are discussed in greater detail by Inyang (1991,
1992, 1994a, and 1994b). Figure 3 shows the probable damages that an
earthquake may cause on a waste landfill. Such damages which could be
internal, may not be readily/initially detectable unless monitoring schemes such
as those illustrated in Figure 4 are implemented. The operational mechanisms
of the sensors range from fiber-optic sensing to sensor cable swelling and
consequent voltage drop upon contact with contaminants.
Contaminant source term concentrations which are usually computerized for risk
assessments may become significantly erroneous as release mechanisms
change from permeation of barriers to flow through flaws in the structural system
that result from natural hazards. Traditional and innovative monitoring
techniques that could be used in hazard-prone environments are summarized in
Table 2. Advances in electro-chemical sensing have increased the capacity to
continuously monitor contaminants in surface and subsurface environments.
These monitoring systems need to be used more widely.
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Current design methods for waste containment systems are mostly based on
deterministic mathematical expressions. Considering that natural hazards
enlarge performance uncertainties, probabilistic analyses should be used in
design, at least for facilities in hazard-prone environments. Among the
techniques that could be assessed for use are Cause-Consequence Analysis
(CCA), Event Tree Analysis (ETA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and Failure
Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). Some of these techniques are
being used in the analysis and design of nuclear power plants against accidents
and natural hazards.
Natural hazards are producing environmental impacts that may coalesce with
other traditional stressors to enhance environmental degradation rates. It is
difficult to decouple post-disaster impacts from those that are attributable to
ever-increasing anthropogenic activities. Nevertheless, environmental aspects
should be addressed adequately in the emerging programs. Components
should include, research, education, technical guidance, technology transfer and
collaboration between public agencies and the private sector at appropriate
levels. For example, at the federal level, the National Disaster Reduction
Initiative (NDRI) an interagency program developed by the National Science and
Technology Council (NSTC) has a funding level of about $155 million for the
1999 fiscal year. Other programs such as the U.S. Global Change Research
Program (USGCRP) started in 1997, and the Public Private Partnership 2000
(PPP 2000 of NSTC) provide additional opportunities. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, with its mandated mission of protecting the environment and
public health, should provide leadership for these important programs related to
natural hazards.
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U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Science Advisory Board
Environmental Engineering Committee (FY99)
CHAIR
Dr. Hilary I. Inyang, University Professor and Director, Center for Environmental
Engineering, Science, and Technology (CEEST), University of Massachusetts,
Lowell, MA
MEMBERS
Dr. Edgar Berkey, Vice President and Chief Science Officer, Concurrent Technologies
Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA
Dr. Calvin C. Chien, Senior, Environmental Fellow, E. I. DuPont Company, Wilmington,
DE
Mr. Terry Foecke, President, Waste Reduction Institute, St. Paul, MN
Dr. Nina Bergan French, President, SKY+, Oakland, CA
Dr. Domenico Grasso, Head of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Environmental Research Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Dr. JoAnn Slama Lighty, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor of
Chemical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Dr. John P. Maney, President, Environmental Measurements Assessment, 5 Whipple
Road, Hamilton, MA
Dr. Michael J. McFarland, Associate Professor, Utah State University, 130 South 1000
East, River Heights, UT
Ms. Lynne M. Preslo, Senior Vice President, Technical Programs, Earth Tech, Long
Beach, CA
Science Advisory Board Staff
Mrs. Kathleen W. Conway, DFO, Science Advisory Board, U.S. EPA, Washington, DC
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Mrs. Dorothy M. Clark, Committee Secretary, Science Advisory Board, U.S. EPA,
Washington, DC
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Science Advisory Board
Environmental Engineering Committee (FY99)
Subcommittee on the Environmental Impacts of Natural Hazards
CHAIR
Dr. Frederick G. Pohland, Weidlein Chair of Environmental Engineering
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
MEMBERS
Dr. Hilary I. Inyang, University Professor and Director, Center for Environmental
Engineering, Science and Technology (CEEST), University of Massachusetts,
Lowell, MA
Ms. Lynne M. Preslo, Senior Vice President, Technical Programs, Earth Tech, Long
Beach, CA
Science Advisory Board Staff
Mrs. Kathleen W. Conway, DFO, Science Advisory Board, U.S. EPA,
Washington, DC
Ms. Mary Winston, Committee Secretary, Science Advisory Board, U.S. EPA,
Washington, DC
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Figure 2. Natural Hazards Sequence Tree
FIGURE 2 AVAILABLE IN HARDCOPY ONLY
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Figure 3. Schematic of a landfill showing potential deformation of leachate
collection pipes by seismic stress (landfill geometric details are not
provided. (Inyang, 1992)
FIGURE 3 AVAILABLE IN HARDCOPY ONLY
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Figure 4. An illustration of external monitoring systems using point, linear
and area! sensors, that could be configured to detect damages in
sensitive environments (adapted from Inyang et al, 1996).
FIGURE 4 AVAILABLE IN HARDCOPY ONLY
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Table 2. Examples of traditional and innovative monitoring techniques for
specific waste containment problems, for possible use in high
hazard situations. (Inyang, 1994b)
TABLE 2 AVAILABLE IN HARDCOPY ONLY
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REFERENCES
Forrest, B. and Nishenko, S. 1996, Losses due to natural hazards. Natural
Hazards Observer, Sept., pp. 16-17.
Inyang, H. I., Betsill, J.D., Breeden, R., Chamberlain, G.H., Dutta, S., Everett,
L., Fuentes, R., Hendrickson J., Koutsandreas, J., Lesmes, D.,
Loomis, G., Mangion, S.M., Morgan, D., Pfeifer, C., Puls, R.W.,
Stamnes, R.L., Vandel, T.D. and Williams, C. 1996. Performance
monitoring and evaluation. Chapter 12 of Assessment of Barrier
Containment Technologies, editors: Rumer, R.R., and Mitchell, J.K., Text
prepared under the auspices of U.S. Dept. of Energy, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, and DuPont Company, pp. 355-400.
Inyang, H.I. 1994a. Mitigation of flood hazards to waste treatment, storage and
disposal facilities in flood-prone areas. Technical Guidance and
Resource Document, Office of Solid Waste, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 94 pages.
Inyang, H.I. 1994b. Cost-effective post construction integrity verification
monitoring and testing techniques for subsurface barrier containment
facilities. Technical Analysis Document, DuPont Chemicals, Wilmington,
Delaware, 78 pages.
inyang, H.I. 1992. Aspects of landfill design for stability in seismic zones.
Journal of Environmental Systems, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 223-235.
Inyang, H.I. 1991. Hazardous Waste facilities in seismic zones. AAAS/U.S.EPA
Environmental Science and Engineering Fellowship Report. American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, 81 pages.
Keck, P. 1996. Public/private partnerships play increasing role in disaster
response. Public Works, December, pp. 24-25.
NRC. 1989. Reducing disaster's toll: the United States Decade for Natural
Disaster Reduction. Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems,
National Research Council, Washington, DC, 39 pp.
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NSTC 1996. Natural disaster reduction: a plan for the nation. National Science
and Technology Council, Committee on Environment and Natural
Resources, Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction, Washington,
DC, 44 pp.
Parfit, M. and Richardson, J. 1998. Living with natural hazards. National
Geographic, Vol. 194, No. 1, July, pp. 2-38.
SAB 1995. Future Issues in Environmental Engineering (EPA-SAB-EEC-95-
004), Science Advisory Board, USEPA Washington DC
SAB 1998. Review of the Office of Solid Waste's Proposed Surface
Impoundment Study (EPA-SAB-EEC-98-009) Science Advisory Board,
USEPA Washington DC
SAB 1998 Consultation on Alternative Approaches for Disposal of Federal
Low-Activity Radioactive Wastes ( EPA-SAB-RAC-CON-98-001), Science
Advisory Board, USEPA Washington DC
Showstack, R. 1998. Planning cuts risk from many natural hazards, experts
say, EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Vol. 79, No. 17,
April 28, pp. 205-206.
Wright, F. G., inyang, H.I. and Myers, V. B., 1993. Risk reduction through
regulatory control of waste disposal facility siting. Journal of
Environmental Systems, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 27-35.
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NOTICE
This report has been written as part of the activities of the Science Advisory
Board, a public advisory group providing extramural scientific information and advice to
the Administrator and other officials of the Environmental Protection Agency. The
Board is structured to provide balanced, expert assessment of scientific matters related
to problems facing the Agency. This report has not been reviewed for approval by the
Agency and, hence, the contents of this report do not necessarily represent the views
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commercial products constitute a recommendation for use.
Distribution and Availability: This Science Advisory Board report is provided to the
EPA Administrator, senior Agency management, appropriate program staff, interested
members of the public, and is posted on the SAB website (www.epa.gov/sab).
Information on its availability is also provided in the SAB's monthly newsletter
(Happenings at the Science Advisory Board). Additional copies and further information
are available from the SAB Staff.
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