Brownfields Toolbox

Community Colleges, Colleges, and Universities

In your community may be willing to conduct portions of the brownfields job training. If a local school offers environmental education and/or training courses, it may be willing to conduct some of the brownfields technical training. For example, The New England Consortium/University of Massachusetts-Lowell (http://www.uml.edu/TNEC/) provided 40-hour HAZWOPER (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response) training free of charge to JFY Networks. Even if there are no environmental education and training programs offered by schools in your community, most community colleges offer some time of life skills and job readiness training.

CCCHST membership consists of community colleges partnered with business and industry, universities, and community-based organizations offering a consistent and quality response to the national training need for hazardous waste workers and emergency response personnel.

The Community College Consortium for Health and Safety Training (CCCHST) 

The Community and College Consortium for Health and Safety Training (CCCHST), administered by the Partnership for Environmental Technology Education (PETE) has training components for the EPA Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program (HWWTP) and the DOE Worker Training Program. The CCCHST HWWTP consists of 120 partners offering hazardous materials instruction (HAZWOPER and related Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)(29 CFR 1910.120) in most states of the nation.  CCCHST uses a curriculum developed by the Hazardous Materials Training and Research Institute (HMTRI) Davenport, Iowa through a train-the-trainer model program. CCCHST instructors, prepared by PETE and HMTRI, annually train 10,000 workers, technicians, and supervisors to protect themselves and their communities from exposure to hazardous materials encountered during waste site clean-up, disaster site cleanup, Brownfields redevelopment, in the transportation of hazardous materials, and in the response to spills and releases of hazardous materials. CCCHST membership consists of community colleges partnered with business and industry, universities, and community-based organizations offering a response to the national training need for hazardous waste workers, disaster site workers and emergency response personnel.

The CCCHST program serves the DOE environmental restoration and waste management sites across the United States. The program provides convenient, consistent, and cost-effective, NIEHS-approved worker training to DOE, contractors, subcontractors, and public officials serving DOE facilities who do not otherwise receive training offered by organized labor. The University of Tennessee is a subawardee. The five-year goal is to train 1500 students and offer 20,000 contact hours of hazardous materials training. See CCCHST/NIEHS for more information. 

State Environmental Agencies

(http://www.epa.gov/epahome/state.htm) can provide expertise and training in brownfields side assessment, cleanup techniques, and environmental regulations. Most brownfields job training advisory boards include representatives of state environmental agencies. For example, Maryland Department of the Environment (http://www.mde.state.md.us/Pages/Home.aspx) serves on the advisory board for Civic Works, providing technical advice on the job training curriculum, as well as conducting training in erosion and sediment control. The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources -- Division of Waste Management (http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/wm) serves on the advisory board for the city of Winston-Salem and conducted job training on environmental regulations.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)

USACE (http://www.usace.army.mil/Pages/Default.aspx) is a partner with the Environmental Protection Agency and over twenty other federal agencies that have committed to helping communities prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields. The Corps is the nation's largest public engineering agency. The Corps engineering capabilities help communities across the United States solve their brownfields challenges. These capabilities fall in the four broad areas of site assessment, site remediation, site redevelopment, and sustainable reuse. According to a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, "USACE may provide technical assistance to communities and organizations that have received Brownfields Grants from the EPA." The USACE Brownfields Assistance List (http://www.brownfieldstsc.org/) includes all the Corps' districts that provide brownfields assistance.

Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are often asked to serve on brownfields job training advisory boards. For example, the advisory board for Civic Works includes a representative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District who provided technical advice on the job training curriculum. Representatives from the Corps Baltimore District also conducted training in wetlands and wetland restoration for Civic Works.

OSHA Training Institute Education Centers

(http://www.osha.gov/) support OSHA's training and education mission through a variety of safety and health programs including community outreach efforts, Spanish-language courses, and youth initiatives. The training provided by the Education Centers serves the public in the recognition, avoidance, and prevention of unsafe and unhealthy working. These Centers offer local training based upon regional industry needs. As a result, the community has greater availability and access to quality safety and health training at a local level. The Education Centers accommodate requests for on-site training courses. There is at least one, and up to nine, Education Center sites in each of the ten OSHA regions. To find an Education Center near you and to search course schedules, go to their Web site and click on your region.

Trainex: The Training Exchange Web site

(http://www.trainex.org/), in partnership with the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), provides a range of training information to EPA and other federal agency, state, tribal, and local staff involved in hazardous waste management and remediation. This site includes training schedules for deliveries of many courses -- both classroom and Internet-based.

Many EPA and other federal offices provide training relevant to hazardous waste remediation, site characterization, risk assessment, emergency response, site/incident management, counter-terrorism, and the community's role in site management and cleanup. Trainex's other EPA partners include:

• The Community Involvement University (CIU) provides opportunities for headquarters and regional staff from EPA programs to build skills needed for successful community involvement, including facilitation, risk communication, and cross-cultural collaboration.
• Environmental Response Training Program (ERTP) courses are designed for personnel who respond to or who investigate and clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites. Training is provided in safety and health as well as in the various technical operations needed to identify, evaluate, and control hazardous substances that have been released.
• The National Enforcement Training Institute (NETI) trains federal, state, local and tribal lawyers, inspectors, civil and criminal investigators, and technical experts in the enforcement of the nation's environmental laws.
• The CERCLA Education Center (CEC) offers EPA and other environmental professionals training courses on the many aspects of Superfund and the latest environmental technologies.

EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) Training Forum

comprises training coordinators in EPA headquarters and regional offices who develop, plan, and schedule training to meet the needs of EPA and other federal, state, and tribal hazardous and solid waste personnel. Trainex provides course descriptions, schedules, and online registration links for all these courses as well as others.

One-Stop Career Centers

(http://www.careeronestop.org/) are designed to provide a full range of integrated services to help businesses find qualified workers and help job-seekers and workers obtain employment and training services to advance their careers. Established under the Workforce Investment Act, the new workforce development system is largely based on a one-stop service delivery structure offering access to a variety of employment and training services all under one roof. The One-Stop Career Center System is coordinated by the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration (ETA) (http://www.doleta.gov/) and overseen by community-based Workforce Investment Boards.

Since the EPA Brownfields Job Training Grant doesn't fund life skills training, grantees often turn to one-stop career centers for such training. For example, the city of Winston-Salem partnered with Northwest Piedmont Council of Governments' JobLink Centers to provide life skills training for students enrolled in their Brownfields Job Training Program. In North Carolina the one-stop career centers are referred to as JobLink Career Centers


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