U.S. Navy goes purple in hazardous materials management—DoD installations have common operations and goals

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, March-April, 2003

The Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) has instituted an online hazardous materials ordering operation to help all services comply with the "Greening the Government" executive order.

"Greening the Government through Leadership in Environmental Management," as articulated in Executive Order (E.O.) 13148, impacts all Department of Defense (DoD) activities. E.O. 13148 requires that environmental management must be fundamental and integral to federal policies, operations, planning and management.

In particular, the executive order calls for the control and management of hazardous material or HAZMAT. A daunting task in this executive order is the requirement to comply with the submission of Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) requirements to report installation chemical inventories.

There is also the issue of maintaining a Hazardous Materials Authorized Use List (AUL) as required by the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Since 1990 the Navy has been conducting Consolidated Hazardous Material Reutilization and Inventory Management Program (CHRIMP) operations and has a wealth of documented successful experience to call upon.

In an effort to address the HAZMAT management requirements outlined in E.O. 13148, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) searched for an organization to conduct their joint service operation. They selected the NAVSUP Pollution Prevention Division.

Essential to DLA's decision to use NAVSUP to implement this initiative was the modernization of Hazardous Inventory Control System (HICS) to Regional Hazardous Inventory Control System (RHICS). RHICS allows for local operations and regional and global hazardous materials visibility. It features an inventory replenishment module and has been approved for Navy financial accounting. This web-based system requires no additional hardware to implement. While retaining legacy systems functionality, RHICS also provides data required for EPCRA reporting. RHICS has been implemented at five Mediterranean sites. The Pacific Northwest; Western Pacific; Norfolk, Va.; and San Diego, Calif., regions are scheduled to follow.

The result is a "gem." DLA's Joint Environmental Material Management Service (JEMMS) is an effort to work across the joint services to guarantee the successful management of DoD's HAZMAT inventory. Though JEMMS is similar to the Navy's CHRIMP, its customer base extends beyond the Navy to include the Marine Corps, Air Force and Army. In their effort to comply with E.O. 13148, DLA was seeking to include "end use" HAZMAT as well as inventory that is in base warehouses waiting to be sold. Furthermore, DLA was interested in "privatizing" the inventory; that is, the private sector would own the HAZMAT and ensure that the government paid for only what it used.

In terms of day-to-day operations, JEMMS is an online ordering operation. A customer at his/her computer terminal with access to the Internet, orders HAZMAT from the JEMMS Center based on the work center's AUL. The ordered HAZMAT is then delivered to the work site, and any excess is picked-up and returned (including hazardous waste), to the JEMMS Center, There, it is segregated for proper disposition. RHICS, with its capability to interface with other systems, performs the customer billing.

Some operations and maintenance actions can vary at different military installations--but the receipt, store and issue functions of HAZMAT management programs do not, even if remote operations and pack-up kits are required.

Traditional supply systems do not manage hazardous materials to the degree required by current laws and regulations. Traditional supply operations do not account for products by their chemical constituents and do not readily break standard units of issue.

Crucial to conducting JEMMS operations is an understanding that military units must deploy, aircraft must fly, and ships must sail. Hazardous materials are necessary ingredients to these operations, and non-availability of any product is wholly unacceptable.

NAVSUP recently assumed the JEMMS operations, using RHICS, at 14 multiservice sites in Okinawa, Japan. Knowing the distance from HAZMAT suppliers and the mobility of the military operations, both intra-island and of distant deployments are essential to executing JEMMS. After an in-depth study, and with the customers' approval, the Navy implementation team won the confidence of activity commanding officers. The operating plan includes Navy transition to a private sector inventory provider in FY `04 to assure inventory reliability and to make inventory procurement a much easier process.

Since services share the primary operating objectives, RHICS holds promise to finally bring HAZMAT management operations into a manageable program under one software system regardless of service.

Working through the barriers in Okinawa, real and imagined, required a great deal of effort and commitment. Supply, tradition, and communication obstacles were abundant. After each command performed their due diligence analysis, obstacles were overcome. JEMMS, with RHICS, works in a forward-operating base for multiple services like those in Okinawa. Therefore, it should work anywhere.