International Regulatory Compliance

An Interdisciplinary Investigation of a Lake Ecosystem – Addressing Legal And Political Issues #1

Introduction

When I finished my PhD Dissertation a few years ago in July I took my first job as an Assistant Professor at a new interdisciplinary state university with an environmental focus. In particular, I looked forward to a brief respite from research and writing. Teaching would be a pleasure and a contrast from the intense concentration of completing graduate studies and writing a Dissertation. Upon arrival on campus in August I was contacted by another new Assistant Professor who wanted me to join a research team to investigate a problem on a Wisconsin lake in Marinette County near the Michigan border. I attempted to resist saying I wanted to settle into my new faculty position. However, my new colleague was persistent, so I decided to meet with his research team and learn more about their research concern.

As part of its mission, the new interdisciplinary University was committed to working with local communities and counties helping them  address environmental concerns. The issue on its face seemed to be fairly simple, but a closer analysis revealed a far more complex problem that I will discuss in several blogs. There are approximately 9,500 lakes in Wisconsin, most of them natural. The research concern in this case was a lake located in Northeastern Wisconsin. 

Lake Noquebay

The lake is approximately 2 miles by 4 miles with a surface area of 2,410 acres. The Lake Noquebay Dam constructed in 1929 slightly elevates the water level to between 666.2 feet and 664.95 feet. It is the largest Lake in the county and at that time contributed one-fourth of the tourist income to the county. The lake had a diverse fish population, bluegill,crappie,bass, walleye, northern pike, trout, rock bass, perch and muskellunge. In turn, tourism was a major industry for the county. The problem identified initially by the Agricultural Extension Agent and Marinette County leaders was “swimmer’s itch” and the concern was the negative impact it could have on the lake’s attraction as recreational area. 

Swimmer’s itch is a short-term immune reaction that occurs in the skin of humans who have been infected by water-borne parasites that enter the skin and raise red itchy bumps or welts that commonly occur within hours of infection and generally do not last more than a week. Basically, they are harmless but frightening to people who don’t know what they are and concerned about some kind of parasite infection – a potential disaster for the local tourist business.

The cycle of the parasite uses snails and ducks as hosts in their parasitic life cycle. During their life cycle the parasites enter the lake through duck feces and are eaten by water snails. Then the larvae of the parasite leave the snails and swim freely in the freshwater in search of water birds like ducks and accidentally come into contact with skin of swimmers. The larvae penetrate the skin and die immediately. The larvae cannot infect humans, but they cause an inflammatory immune reaction. The reaction causes itchy spots on the skin that will disappear in a week. Swimmer’s itch has been reported in lakes around the world.

The treatment that had been applied to control the snail population was to dump copper sulfate on the lake bottom as a molluscicide to kill the snails in swimming areas where swimmer’s itch was causing a problem. The efficacy of using copper sulfate was not clear, however, because offshore winds roil the water and easily dissipate the copper sulfate and move the snails across the bottom of the lake. An additional concern was the long term effect of copper sulfate on the Lake’s ecosystem.

Why me?

The leader of the research team was an aquatic biologist who earned his PhD at the University of Miami. While a graduate student he worked on a research project in Biscayne Bay that had been opposed by Florida Power & Light and became entangled in the politics of Dade County. He told me he vowed never to enter another research effort without having a lawyer and political scientist on the research team. Since I was both, he asked if I would work with him and his colleagues. I thought his point was interesting and so I agreed to work with the team. 

The team was composed of a PhD Aquatic Biologist, PhD Analytical Chemist, PhD Economist, PhD Leisure Scientist, PhD Vertebrate Ecologist, a Marinette County/University of Wisconsin Resource Development Agent and me – a JD Attorney and PhD Political Scientist. The political entities having jurisdiction over Lake Noquebay were Two Townships – (Middle Inlet and Lake), Marinette County and the State of Wisconsin. Since the Lake is not a navigable stream as defined by the Northwest Ordinance 1787, the federal government was not involved.

Defining The Lake Watershed

The first step was to identify the parameters of the Lake Noquebay watershed so that we could define the scope of our research project. Next we needed to examine the watershed itself. The lake watershed covered 54,000 acres. Approximately 85% of this land was forested. The remainder, interspersed over the watershed was agricultural cropland and pasture (or “open” land) and contained 66 farms. A County Forest and State wildlife area were located on the east side of watershed. The research team examined the flora and fauna of Lake Noquebay, tested the water chemistry and conducted a survey of residents and businesses around the lake.

The economy of the Lake Noquebay watershed was supported by agriculture, forestry, tourist and resort oriented business, with a recreation industry being predominant. There were nine resorts surrounding the lake with a total of 108 units. Including the resort units there were 301 living quarters on the lake of which 41 were year-round residences and 136 summer homes and cottages.

Potential Problems

The quality of the water was showing symptoms of accelerated eutrophication. The most serious symptom of management problems in the watershed was the proliferation of benthic weeds, particularly watermilfoil (Myriophyllum heterophyllum). The presence of the plant appeared to be associated with deep – one to ten feet – sedimentary deposits which were believed to consist primarily of partially decomposed organic matter, some of which indicated poorly conceived dredging and filling operations in the drainage basin. About 300 acres of the lake were affected with the excessive growth, amounting to an estimated biomass about 5000 tons (net weight).

To the best of the research team’s knowledge, this weed had not been previously reported as a problem in the Upper Great Lakes Region. The best information available about problem quantities of this type of vegetation was in the Tennessee Valley Authority reservoirs as well as in mucky areas of the southeastern United States. What started out as an effort to deal with swimmer’s itch evolved into a more pervasive problem affecting the lake that would become a major focus of the research team. 

Eutrophication already was a problem in a number of lakes in North Central and Northeastern Wisconsin, ranging from untreated sewage effluent and agricultural runoff to decomposed organic matter from forestry operations. In addition, there were new efforts to carve channels in marshy areas to build new homes with direct water access to the lake. Since the most severe form eutrophication can turn a lake into a bog killing the fish population, it destroys the lake as human recreational area. 

Legal-Political Problems

Legal and political analyses were undertaken to determine which governmental units were capable of influencing the management of body of water such as Lake Noquebay, and to indicate potential problems existing in the realm of overlapping or dual legal jurisdiction. During Phase I of the research program, a preliminary study of Marinette County zoning laws and the legal actions related to these laws was carried out. It was determined that the control of activities on the lake – such as boating – fell under the jurisdiction of the township governments. In the case of Lake Noquebay, this involved two townships (Middle Inlet Township and Lake Township). 

The control of water levels and the use of pesticides was under the jurisdiction of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Lakeshore zoning is a Countey responsibility. Since the legislation of 1965 and 1967 which created the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, considerable power over the management of waters in the State was concentrated in the DNR, necessitating a study of the lines of communication and administration and its regulatory and enforcement powers. 

Summary

Since my father chaired the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and taught Geomorphology, Geography of Wisconsin, Conservation, Environmental Management and also chaired the Scientific Areas Preservation Council for Wisconsin, much of what I learned about Lake Noquebay, was familiar to me. In turn, I was teaching courses on Environmental Policy and Environmental Law at my University. This provided a useful convergence of our backgrounds. Ironically, during the first summer of our research, “swimmer’s itch” was absent from the Lake, however, the proliferation of Myriophyllum Heterophyllum presented a significant problem to the future of the lake as a recreational area. 

I will return to the Lake Noquebay research project in several future blogs. It was an interesting case that illustrated the difficulties of addressing an environmental issue of interest to a population with diverse social and economic interests and concerns. It also highlighted the political and legal difficulties of trying to address these interests and concerns. 

My primary focus today is on International Regulatory Compliance, which includes both the requirements of regulatory authorities and the legal implications of compliance, non-compliance, documentation and sloppy attention to detail that could result in a lawsuit in a US Federal Court. I also focus on product safety and the steps necessary to create a safe product. If you have questions regarding ISO 9001 or CE Marking lawsuits you can contact me for a free preliminary consultation at my e-mail address jameskolka@gmail.com.  

ISO 9001& ISO 9004: A Framework for Disaster Preparedness Revisited – Risk, What Risk? Catastrophe in the Gulf #5

Introduction

This is the fifth and last in this series of blogs on ISO 9001 & ISO 9004: A Framework for Disaster Preparedness Revisited. (The preceding blogs were posted on December 29, 2009, & January 4, January 14 & February 12, 2010.) For those familiar with the first two blogs, you will recall that they briefly recapped a two-part article that appeared in the February 2002 issue of Quality Progress in response to a request from the editors for an article that applied ISO 9001 & ISO 9004 to the events of September 11, 2001.

The 3^rd blog described in brief outline a comprehensive Disaster Recovery and Service Continuity Plan for a major metropolitan area in the Northeast to identify the potential risks that could affect the provision of health care facilities. It involved the identification and analysis of risks and the preparation of a plan to respond to emergencies and the preservation of health care resources. The 4^th blog focused on the Political, Ideological and Geographic Problems with Disaster Planning. Since these four blogs were published, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurred. It is not my purpose to rehash the spill, but instead concentrate on the risk management decisions/non-decisions and regulatory weakness in response to the spill. 

Regulatory Oversight

At the time of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill US regulatory oversight was the responsibility of Minerals Management Service an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior. In addition to leasing federal lands to oil and natural gas, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) collected leasing revenue, one of the largest revenue sources for the federal government after the IRS. Unfortunately, rigorous regulatory oversight was not the mission given to MMS in the first decade of the 21^st Century, nor for that matter, was rigorous collection of revenues owed to the federal government.

Consequently, MMS never appeared to receive a petition to drill that it didn’t like and it certainly didn’t request anything resembling a Disaster Preparedness Plan (if it ever conceived of such an eventuality) if anything went wrong while drilling. Questions were never asked about the potential risks of deep water drilling at different depths and what contingency plans a company and its contractors might have created to contain a deep water disaster should one occur. Questions were never asked about potential environmental risks and company financial liabilities for such a disaster. Questions appeared to never have been raised about the responsibility of MMS to the federal government, the American public and more specifically to the agency’s role to safeguard the environmental integrity of the delicate ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico for the people who lived on the Gulf.

To say that MMS planning was sloppy is much too kind, it appears that no meaningful planning existed that even contemplated a disaster, since only minor disasters had occurred in the American portion of the Gulf. An earlier disaster had occurred in the Mexican portion of the Gulf, but that was never factored into agency thinking. Also, bigger disasters had occurred in Nigeria that still soak marshes in oil today, as well as drill site oil leaks in other parts of the world. A genuine “What me worry?” still attitude prevailed.

The concept of requiring a Hazards Analysis and Risk Analysis before drilling, (requirements for manufacturing medical devices and machinery for CE Marking), appears never to have entered the consciousness of the agency. Their managerial prowess was more akin to an adult Lemonade Stand instead of an agency responsible for serious oversight of drilling for oil in the Gulf and collecting revenue for the United States (which they did badly falling billions of dollars short).

Company Oversight

Company oversight was terrible as well. Four approaches to risk management should have been taken:

Disaster Preparedness – Given the depth at which BP was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the potential ecological and human consequences that could occur, this should have been a first step. In particular questions should have been asked, if an accident occurred (e.g., explosion, leak, break in the pipe, etc.) what could be the potential extent of the disaster (e.g., the well, the workers, the ecosystem and the affected population)? What must we (the company) do to control and limit the damage to the affected populations? How would the damage be limited? Do we have a strategy and the technological know how to accomplish this? What will be the cost? If we don’t have the technological know how, should we wait until we are able to drill a well at this depth? None of these questions were systematically asked by MMS or BP.

Enterprise Risk Management – Given the Global risks undertaken by BP, it should have employed the strategy taken by several other European Corporations and hired an outside firm to help conduct an assessment of corporate risks (e.g., physical, financial, geographic, political, ecological) faced by the corporation in its various global operations. Eventually, the risks would be refined and passed on to BP management, the CEO and members of the Board to consider. Such a list should be bold in concept to assure that risks aren’t ignored because they might disturb the sensibilities of key managers and Board members. Eventually, the list is prioritized and becomes the basis for future planning. Unfortunately, the only risks that seemed to occupy the company at the time were financial risks, i.e., how to reduce the cost of drilling and cut corners, which some commentators suggested helped precipitate the disaster. The objective is protect the future of the company

Hazards Analysis/Risk Analysis – This should have been a first step with any project that presented a degree of risk and it should have been revisited at key stages to make certain that all hazards and risks were visited and revisited to assess all of the possible risks presented by deep water drilling. It is an essential FDA & EU requirement for manufacturing any medical device and an essential requirement for manufacturing any product that is going to be CE Marked. It also is an essential requirement for equipment for NASA, but does not appear to been given a concern by BP. A program entitled Drill was aired by Frontline on PBS on October 26, 2010 reviewing the history of BP in the Texas City Refinery explosion, the largest pipeline spill on the North Slope of Alaska, the sinking of BP’s Thunder Horse oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and finally the Deep Water Horizon explosion and leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of assessing risk and taking steps to reduce the risks, the program, commentators safety specialists, investigators and other oil company CEO’s testifying before congress suggested that BP took unnecessary risks.

 Crisis Management – Crisis management appears to be the one area that received attention. It is the plan of action to limit the damage from adverse publicity when an event happens that could adversely affect the company. For example, in the case of Pepsi-Cola several years ago when syringes were reported to be in cans of Pepsi, it was necessary to dispel the rumors and control the damage. In the case of BP in the Deep Water Horizon the desire to deal with adverse publicity or “control the spin” was true.

Risk Management and Disaster Preparedness

The zeal to pursue offshore drilling of oil and natural gas on federal land in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere else whatever the risks (“drill baby drill”) and the contempt of politicians for federal regulation in the first decade of the 21^st Century foredoomed the creation of a federal agency with any meaningful responsibility or clout. Following the Deep Water Horizon Disaster, MMS has been reformed into two major programs, Offshore Energy and Minerals Management and Minerals Revenue Management. Both are under the US Department of Interior. Deep water drilling and revenue are now tightly regulated. It remains to be seen how effective the new regulatory powers are exercised.

It will take years to learn the extent of damage to the Gulf’s sensitive ecosystem. It is not as horrible as Chernobyl, but it isn’t slight. Hopefully, future drilling will be more responsible. Only time will tell.

The cove pictured above in the photograph is virtually identical to the same cove captured by Salvador Dali in two of early his paintings in 1920 and 1921. The cove is on Cap de Creus near the resort town of Cadequés on Spain’s Costa Brava. Dali’s home and studio are located nearby and can be visited today. Fortunately, no mineral deposits or oil are found nearby to lure companies and destroy the beauty of the area.

If you would like to talk about comprehensive strategies concerning Disaster Preparedness, Enterprise Risk Management, Hazards Analysis/Risk Analysis or Crisis Management for a free preliminary consultation at my new e-mail address jameskolka@gmail.com.  

Brussels You Have a Problem! – Out Of Date CE Marked Components & EC Declarations Of Conformity – Machinery #2

Introduction  

The first blog of this title identified the problem of out of date CE Marked Components and EC Declarations of Conformity, EC Declarations of Incorporation and EN Standards. Presumably, 1 January 2010 marked the date when CE Marked products must contain the latest revised EU Directives and latest EN harmonized standards. It is now six months later. As noted in my first blog on this topic, I discovered that component suppliers to my customers have been lax on this account. Not only have they not updated their EC Declarations of Conformity, EC Declarations of Incorporation and EN harmonized standards, in far too many cases they are out of synch by several years. This is a technical problem and potentially serious legal problem for component suppliers and their customers in both the EU and US. It also is extremely lazy and sloppy.  

Machinery Directive Market Surveillance  

I concluded the first blog in this set with a brief reference to provisions that were inserted into the Machinery Directive to improve market surveillance when the Directive was adopted in 2006. Below you will find those three provisions from the prior blog followed by several other provisions set forth in the revised Machinery Directive which are now supposed to be in force:  

·      Monitor conformity of machines with the relevant Directives  

·      Empower authorities to take action with necessary speed to remove machines from the EU market  

·      Fix rules concerning legal sanctions for non-compliance  

·      Organize surveillance activities to cover all stages of a machine lifecycle (placing on the market, use, withdrawal including recovery, recycling and destruction)  

·      Record and ensure the follow-up of complaints or reports concerning non-compliant machines  

·      Monitor accidents and damage to health concerning machines on the market  

·      Implement market surveillance programs for categories of machines and categories of risk  

·      Carry out checks of conformity of machines on the market  

·      Require the necessary documents and information for machines on the market

·      Where relevant, sample machines and subject them to the necessary inspections and tests  

·      Initiate the relevant infringement procedures for non-compliant machines  

·      Ensure that machines comply with the essential requirements of the relevant Directives  

·      Exchange market surveillance information with member states  

·      Develop joint member state projects for market surveillance  

·      Survey machines on the market to assure that CE marking and documentation requirements have been met and that machines have been designed and manufactured in accordance with the essential requirements of the relevant directives and don’t present any danger to personnel  

·      Create rapid and confidential exchange of information where machines could present a serious and immediate risk to the public interest  

·      Increase involvement of the machine manufacturer in the procedure  

·      Check for documents (essential requirements checklists, technical data, EN harmonized standards, risk analyses, notes, certificates of conformity, etc.)  

·      Physically examine machines, check on the presence of CE marking, other markings and possible regulatory labels  

·      Physically check on the name and address of the manufacturer and/or the person responsible for placing the machine on the market (authorized representative)  

·      Physically check for undue or incorrect CE marking or other regulatory marking

·      Where necessary, conduct laboratory tests to determine the conformity of the machine with the essential requirements of the relevant Directives  

·      Use robust practices to detect serious cases of non-conformity and the probability of risk  

·      Ensure effective communication and coordination between market surveillance activities and other organizations that intervene in the field of safety of machines (health and safety at work authorities and customs authorities)  

·      Provide for the rapid exchange of consumer machine information   ·      Implement EU Regulation 339/93 on the conformity of machines imported from third countries (now replaced by Regulation 765/2008)  

·      Take account of data concerning industrial accidents involving machines  

·      Link with the EU General Product Safety Directive  

·      Develop member state legal sanctions for non-compliant machines  

·      Improve administrative cooperation between EU member states for non-compliant machines  

·      Strengthen rules for worker safety and worker reporting on machines improperly CE marked  

Summary  

These are excellent steps and can’t be put in place soon enough. For those of us who take machinery safety seriously, enforcement of the rules would help us convince our clients in the US and other third countries that the EU is serious about machinery safety. Given the number of fly-by-night & bait-and-switch consultants filling the web pages with easy CE assurances and simple templates telling manufacturers that it won’t cost anything to CE Mark their products, serious enforcement can’t come fast enough.

The EU is unique in their systematic approach to product safety, and machinery safety in particular. Except for those products and machines covered by FDA, we have no comparable regulatory approach in the US. I would like to believe that US manufacturers share the EU belief in machinery safety (and some do share that belief), but I know better from personal experience.

Many clients have complained that safety increases the price of machines and makes them less competitive in the US market. I remind them of the 2002 Minnesota lawsuit where a US machinery manufacturer made a safe machine for the EU to satisfy CE Marking standards and a less safe machine for the US and paid the price in a $35 million punitive damages award to the plaintiff in a product liability lawsuit. Unfortunately, this fact doesn’t impress companies willing to take a risk, even if it harms people. Their question is, can I come up with an alternative?

I would love to work with the EU in improving their market surveillance and the hope for residual carryover to the US. As the world no doubt knows by now, antipathy to regulation runs high in the US (witness the US Materials Management Service paper mâché regulation of offshore drilling). Apparently, only catastrophe changes minds. If you have any questions concerning compliance and product liability vis-à-vis the revised Machinery Directive, you can contact me for a free preliminary consultation at theguide1@comcast.net.

ISO 9001& ISO 9004: A Framework for Disaster Preparedness Revisited #4

Before Disaster Planning – Vesuvius, Pompeii & Herculaneum 79 AD  

On August 24, 79 AD, the Roman Historian, Pliny the Younger was awakened by his mother to look at a huge cloud in the sky. “A cloud was forming over Vesuvius which looked very-much like a pine-tree. In fact it stretched upward like the trunk of a tall tree and then branched out wide.”(The picture above is such a pine-tree on the Amalfi Coast overlooking the Mediterranean, 40 miles South of Vesuvius.)   

Political and Cultural Problems with Disaster Planning  

I was raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin where the Eau Claire River flows into the Chippewa, River. It is a former lumber town founded in 1856. By1885 the town contained 32 lumber mills and sawed 800 million board feet of lumber, the largest lumber town in the world at that time. The mills were fed by logs brought by train from as far away as Lake Superior, 250 miles distant. By 1917 the last log was sawed and the last lumber mill was shut down. The lumber industry moved West.

A by product of the two rivers merging and low lying areas of the town around the original mill sites was frequent flooding that occurred in the Spring when the snow melt swelled the rivers beyond their banks.   My father, Henry W. Kolka, who was a Professor of Geography and Chair of the Geography Department at the State University in Eau Claire, recommended that the city consider relocating houses from low lying areas to higher ground and clearing the flood prone areas to create City Parkland which would be relatively unaffected by periodic flooding. The city fathers were appalled at such a suggestion. In their minds it bordered on socialism. My father countered that spending money to constantly clean up flooded homes was a wasteful use of public funds. Many years later, however, the recommendation was adopted.  

Several years later, when I was a new faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and a member of an interdisciplinary research team studying a lake watershed in Northeastern Wisconsin, we made a similar recommendation about the County swapping high land for marshland and met with a similar response. (This example will be addressed at length in future environmental blogs.)

Both of these incidents are minor disasters and both underscore a critical problem in disaster planning – political structures and cultural perceptions. The political entity (City, County, State, Federal Government) has to be large enough to effectively address a problem and cultural perceptions have to be able to grasp potential solutions to a problem. The shopworn phrase, “Think Outside the Box.” runs up against another shopworn phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Neither phrase is useful when confronting a potential disaster.

Political, Ideological and Geographic Problems with Disaster Planning

While political boundaries are artificial human constructs, they are real boundaries when it comes to disaster planning. In addition to political systems planning for a potential disaster, these artificial human constructs are not well prepared to handle diverse geographic issues such as a River like the Mississippi which flows through several Cities and States to the Gulf of Mexico. As a navigable river it also is subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government. The Mississippi River has flooded several times throughout its history of human habitation.  

Therefore, a disaster preparedness solution must include these different political entities in the planning process. Add to the mix, the Army Corps of Engineers that regulates the flow of the river for barge navigation via a complex system of locks and you have a diverse political stew attempting to solve a common problem from very different political and geographic perspectives. 

The most recent Great Flood on the Mississippi occurred in 1993 causing $15+ billion dollars of damage in 10 States. Prior great Floods occurred in 1844, 1927, 1951 and 1973. As in the example of Eau Claire, cities along the Mississippi were settled when transportation was by water. Consequently, low-lying cities on the waters edge have flooded numerous times. Finally, after the 1993 flood several cities opted to move to higher ground in Illinois and avoid another flood in the future.

Hurricane Katrina  

The most striking example of a failure in disaster planning and disaster preparedness in the United States was Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. No political entity – the City of New Orleans, the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and the Cities, Parishes and Counties along the Gulf Coast were prepared for the catastrophe, least of all the US Government which kept calling it a State or City problem.

It was a pathetic breakdown in any kind of planning and an absence of a useful emergency response plan. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Authority) proved to be inept and slow, preferring to blame the States and City of New Orleans. Once the President focused he did not intervene to address the situation in a timely fashion. There were 1,836 persons confirmed dead and 705 missing. The damage has been calculated at $90.9 billion (2009) dollars, the worst natural catastrophe in US history.  

On November 18, 2009, US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers failure to properly maintain the Mississippi River Canal Outlet (MRGO), linking New Orleans, Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico led to catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina.

“   It is the court’s opinion that the negligence of the Corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MRGO property, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and short-sightedness.” “For over 40 years the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be comprised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO…The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate the deterioration and failed to do so. Clearly, the expression ‘talk is cheap’ applies here.”   

Who Is Responsible For Disaster Preparedness?  

Unfortunately, this is the key question, amplified by the inept political response to Hurricane Katrina – no one appeared to be in charge and fingers pointed in all directions while a city and its people were in desperate condition. The world looked on and couldn’t believe that such a calamity could happen in America. It looked more like a developing country that lacked the political structure and resources to address such a crisis. There were even debates about the proper role of government.  

Since the Federal Government is the only political entity that governs the entire region and is responsible (via the Army Corps of Engineers) for maintaining the Mississippi River Canal Outlet, it should take the lead in working with the states and cities in addressing the crisis so that it isn’t repeated in the future, but isn’t clear if disaster preparedness planning is happening now in any coherent way. I am quite certain that the EU would be far more aggressive in disaster preparedness planning if faced with a similar crisis. Infrastructure development is far more advanced in he EU and its member states than in the US.  

Blog number #5 will address other types of disasters and what is being done to address disaster preparedness in those areas. It also will draw upon ISO 9001 & ISO 9004 to provide an enhanced framework for disaster preparedness. If you have disaster preparedness concerns, you can contact me for a free preliminary discussion at theguide1@comcast.net.