The California-Arizona Consortium, consisting of five public universities, including two labor education centers, will provide hazardous waste health and safety training for at least 6,817 workers in EPA Region IX (California, Arizona, Nevada and the Pacific Islands) within a three year period. On-line hazardous waste workers and their immediate supervisors to be targeted are: hazardous waste site assessment and cleanup workers; treatment, storage and disposal facility workers; first responders at hazardous chemical incidents; and medical personnel at such incidents. Spanish-speaking workers and those with limited literacy skills will be trained with special materials developed by the Consortium. In addition the Consortium will conduct two national, two regional and six local (Northern/Southern California) Train the Trainer courses for current and future trainers of hazardous waste workers. The Consortium will collaborate with unions that represent hazardous waste workers by providing instructor courses and technical assistance. Access to populations in all the targeted groups has been firmly established over the past five years. All curricula and evaluation methods have been developed and will continue to be used by the Consortium. A Special Training Assessment Project will study the extent of unmet need for hazardous waste worker training that will remain to be addressed by grantees in their plans for continuing this program beyond this three year period. Locations for training and training equipment have all been secured during the past five year grant. An effective, efficient administrative structure for the Consortium is already in place, and members will work to further refine, improve on, it as the need arises. Four former members of the Consortium will continue offering the same hazardous waste courses they have in the past, but during this new grant period they will become self-sufficient. The remaining continuing education programs will receive less funding than in the past as they move towards self-sufficiency (one will receive no funds - UCSD Extension - but will remain in the Consortium).
