The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Inc. Hazardous Waste Worker Training Center provides training to hazardous materials and wastes workers who may perform jobs covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) standards and assist employers in complying with OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.120. The Consortium's goal is unique as its emphasis is on underserved populations in its Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program (HWWTP) and Environmental Careers Worker Training Program (ECWTP); and populations critical to post-disaster recovery in its Hazmat Disaster Preparedness Training Program (HDPTP). The proposed HWWTP is designed to provide model occupational safety and health training for workers who are or may be engaged in activities related to hazardous waste removal, containment or chemical response. The emphasis is on servicing workers of entities where health and safety training are critical to the worker?s wellbeing. These workers include emergency responders and small municipality city workers and or cities where budgeting restraints or working conditions, greatly reduces or eliminates the possibility of training. Volunteer fire departments and small county police forces, city health department employees, port authority workers, mosquito control employees, HBCUs, small minority and disadvantaged businesses are workers the Consortium has trained. The proposed ECWTP component is designed to deliver comprehensive worker training to increase the number of underrepresented and disadvantaged minority adults employed in the fields of environmental restoration, hazardous materials and construction. The p r o g r a m goals are: (1) to serve underrepresented and disadvantaged adults living near hazardous waste and or contaminated property at risk of exposure to ambient hazards; (2) to provide additional pre-employment services inclusive of study skills, math, reading, life skills to increase program retention and completion; and (3) to successfully place trainers in jobs in the environmental restoration and construction fields. The proposed HDPTP, as an extension of the HWWTP, is designed to deliver safety and health training to hazardous materials and chemical workers responding to a disaster. The emphasis is on pre-incident preparedness and response training critical for workers still in need of training after responding to past disasters (i.e. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Sandy and Harvey). In addition, the program delivers training to a population identified as crucial to the continued recovery of communities including homeowners, volunteers, small businesses, and church-based organization members and leaders in disaster-affected areas such as New Orleans, LA (post-Katrina), Houston, TX (post-Harvey) and New York (post-Sandy).
The HBCU and Communities Consortium Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program is uniquely designed to reach populations for training that, due to poverty and or racism, have been disenfranchised and excluded from opportunities existing within a society that has a unique history especially in the South that is teeming with the vestiges of racial inequality and social injustice in ways that continue to manifest in social and environmental determinants of health and well-being. The training program is informed by research and history on the intersection of race and place and the program also addresses basic inequities in resources for different communities across the country (rural vs urban) as well as differences in priorities for municipalities and city agencies, with training being first to be cut. Additionally, the Consortium is unique in its make-up in that it includes Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs), that by design, serve the selected target populations.
