An Environmental Management System or EMS is a set of processes and practices that enable an organization to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency. An EMS is a continual cycle of planning, implementing, reviewing and improving the processes and actions that an organization undertakes to meet its business and environmental goals. The Town’s EMS is built on the "Plan, Do, Check, Act" model. This model leads to continual improvement based upon:
- Planning: identifying the environmental impacts (“footprint”) of your organization’s operations and services, tracking and following legal requirements, setting environmental goals, and establishing programs (i.e., action plans) to achieve your goals.
- Implementing or “Do”: defining and communicating EMS roles and responsibilities, developing operating procedures and written programs to manage significant environmental aspects, training contractors and staff, developing methods to manage documents and records, and establishing emergency response procedures to prevent and respond to environmental incidents.
- Checking and Corrective Action: monitoring and measuring key environmental parameters and your EMS objectives to assess environmental performance, conducting internal reviews of your EMS, and ensuring that specified practices are followed.
- Management Review and Act: review by top management to ensure that your EMS is working as intended and is effective in meeting your environmental goals. Making critical course corrections, resource allocation, and strategic planning to ensure that your organization remains on the path to continual improvement.
EMSs allow organizations to systematically manage their environmental and health safety matters. EMSs can result in both business and environmental benefits, including:
- Improved environmental performance;
- Enhanced compliance;
- Pollution prevention and conservation of resources;
- Reduced/mitigated risks;
- Correction of conditions that hinder sustainable environments;
- Increased efficiency/reduced costs;
- Improved employee awareness of environmental issues and responsibilities.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF AN EMS?
An EMS provides the tools to help manage your organization’s environmental impacts efficiently and effectively and to improve environmental stewardship across the entire organization. Organizations who have implemented an EMS have realized the following benefits:
- Cost Savings
- Reduced Risk
- Increased Operational Efficiency
- Positive External Relations and Public Image
- Improved Communication
- Greater Employee Stewardship
- Shared Environmental Solutions
- Improved Public Relations
ELEMENTS OF AN EMS
- Environmental Policy
- Environmental Aspects
- Legal & Regulatory
- Objectives & Targets
- Management Programs
- Structure & Responsibility
- Training & Awareness
- Communication
- EMS Documentation
- Document Control
- Operational Control
- Emergency Preparedness
- Monitor & Measure
- Corrective Action Plan
- Records
- EMS Audit
- Management Review
The Town is committed to continually improve our environmental management practices and has adopted an EMS policy statement. Click here for the Town’s current adopted EMS policy statement.
The Town of Leesburg’s EMS strives to challenge and empower each individual Town employee to proactively promote environmental leadership. We are committed to continuously improve our environmental management practices through the promotion of the environmental stewardship principles of conservation, co-operation, environmental compliance and risk reduction, and restoration.
Current Status of the Town's EMS Program
The Town is pursuing the development and implementation of its EMS in a phased approach, with the thought that it may become a Town-wide program. The Water Pollution Control Division kicked off the first EMS program for the Town in February 2005. The Division’s effort is part of a two year program in conjunction with Virginia Tech’s Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement (COTA). The second EMS initiative will include the other three divisions within the Utilities Department. The third EMS Initiative would include other Town departments.
The Water Pollution Control Division was designed according to ISO 14001 Standard and was implemented in July 2006.
Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP)
The Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP) is administered by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VDEQ) and encourages the development of pollution prevention (P2) programs and EMSs.
Facilities that produce a sound program are subject to certification of the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP) from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The Town will continue EMS for the various departments and divisions while pursing acceptance into the VEEP program as the EMS progresses. The Water Pollution Control Division Received E2 (Environmental Excellence) status in February 2006.
EMS Elements
An EMS is made up of 17 elements:
- Environmental policy — Develop a statement of your organization’s commitment to the environment. Use this policy as a framework for planning and action. The policy is a direct reflection of the fundamental values of your organization.
- Environmental aspects — Identify environmental attributes of your products, activities and services. Determine those that could have significant impact on the environment.
- Legal and other requirements — Identify and ensure access to relevant laws and regulations, as well as other requirements (trade association, local government initiatives, etc.) that your organization must meet and follow.
- Objectives and targets — Establish environmental goals for your facility, consistent with your policy, environmental impacts, and the views of interested parties.
- Environmental management program — Create plans of action necessary to achieve your objectives and targets.
- Structure and responsibility — Establish roles and responsibilities for environmental management and provide appropriate resources.
- Training, awareness and competence — Ensure that employees are trained and capable of carrying out their environmental responsibilities under the EMS.
- Communication — Establish processes for internal and external communications on environmental management issues.
- EMS documentation — Maintain information on your organization’s EMS. Define, be consistent, and provide an overview of your EMS’s key policies, procedures, and related documents.
- Document control — Ensure effective management of procedures and other system documents.
- Operational control — Identify, plan and manage your operations and services in line with your policy, priority environmental issues, and objectives and targets.
- Emergency preparedness and response — Identify potential emergencies and develop procedures for preventing and responding to them.
- Monitoring and measurement — Monitor your key activities and track performance.
- Nonconformance and corrective and preventive action — Identify and correct problems and prevent their recurrence.
- Records — Maintain and manage (access, retention, disposition) EMS records (training, audits, performance, etc.). that your EMS is operating as intended.
- Management review — Assess your organization’s EMS with an eye toward continual improvement.
- EMS audit — Periodically verify, internally and/or through a third-party, toward continual improvement.
EMS Definitions
Common terms and definitions for an Environmental Management System:
- Baseline – The starting point from which to track the achievement of an objective. Establish “normalized” baselines to accurately measure how your facility’s environmental performance could change over time. Normalized baselines will measure your actual environmental performance changes rather than changes in production, customer demand, or other non-environmental related factors.
- Continual Improvement – One of the three main commitments of the EMS. After checking their EMS through monitoring and measuring, and find, fix, and prevent audits, organizations apply the lessons they have learned to improve their environmental management.
- Competency Training – Employees whose work may create a significant environmental impact must get appropriate training and be deemed competent based on education, training or experience. For example, most wastewater facilities need to have state licensed operators. The license is a way to demonstrate competency.
- Controlled Documents – Policies, procedures, manuals, and other documents part of your EMS that require control and are maintained. A controlled document is one that is reviewed for relevance to your activities on a regular schedule (typically annually) to ensure that the most current version is being used "in the field."
- Corrective Actions – As a result of the audit findings, corrective action reports (CARs) are assigned to all nonconformances to correct EMS deficiencies as they occur. CARs track an audit finding, assigning tasks to be completed, responsibilities, and timeframes.
- ISO 14001 – One of the Environmental Management Standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, Switzerland. It is the requirements document that specifies the 17 elements of an EMS.
- EMS Core Team – A cross-functional team made up of individuals within the organization that helps facilitate EMS implementation across the organization. They are the EMS experts and cheerleaders.
- Environment – Surroundings in which an organization or facility operates, including air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans and their interrelation.
- Environmental Aspect – Element of an organization’s activities, products or services that can interact with the environment. Aspects = Causes
- Environmental Impact – Any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, that results from an organization’s activities, products or services. Impacts = Effects
- Environmental Objective – An overall environmental goal based on an established environmental policy, that an organization sets itself to achieve. Wherever possible, environmental objectives should be quantified, to facilitate the evaluation of environmental performance and the measurement of progress towards specific environmental targets.
- Environmental Target – A detailed performance requirement, quantified where practicable, that arises from the environmental objectives and that needs to be set and met for the objective to be achieved.
- Environmental Management System ( EMS) – A system for identifying environmental and organizational issues and implementing improvements based on Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act model. The EMS has 17 elements that help organizations achieve environmental policy commitments and environmental performance improvements.
- EMS Audit – A planned and documented review performed in accordance with a documented audit procedure for the purpose of verifying, through interview and an evaluation of EMS documents and records, conformance with the applicable elements of your EMS.
- EMS Awareness Training – Training involving an overview of the basics of your EMS, including your environmental policy, significant aspects, objectives and targets, and the importance of operating under specific procedures and work instructions (operational controls) required under the EMS.
- EMS Fenceline – Operational area or areas within an organization where the EMS is implemented.
- EMS Manual – An EMS document that describes your core system elements and how the different elements are interrelated—a "roadmap" for your EMS. Auditors find a manual very useful when verifying your EMS.
- EMS Records – Reports, checklists, training, and other data generated that provides verification that your organization is following the EMS as intended.
- EMS Implementation Team – Individuals within the organization who are closest to the actual workflow and who assist the Core Team and the EMR in better understanding operational activities. Implementation Teams are generally very involved in designing operational controls, testing emergency preparedness and response plans, and identifying the environmental aspects of their daily activities.
- Environmental Management Representative (EMR) – The clearly-identified EMS team leader who has the responsibility and management authority for implementing the EMS from start to finish.
- Environmental Management Program (EMP) – A structured program with a set of specific identifiable actions (an “action plan”) providing the direction for EMS objectives and targets to be obtained and tracked. Your EMP should assign tasks, resources, responsibilities, and timeframes for achieving your objectives and targets.
- Environmental Performance – Measurable results of the EMS related to an organization's control of its environmental aspects, based on its environmental policy, objectives and targets.
- Environmental Policy – An organization's formal statement defining its intentions and principles in relation to its overall environmental performance. It provides a framework for action and setting environmental objectives and targets.
- External Communication – Providing information and soliciting input, receiving inquiries and complaints, responding, and documenting exchanges with interested parties outside the fenceline of your facility.
- Gap Analysis – Preliminary assessment of an organization’s environmental programs and management practices to see where they match up with EMS requirements.
- Internal Communication – Flow of information top-down, bottom-up, and across your entire EMS fenceline.
- Legal Requirements – The set of rules and legal regulations that apply to the operations and services of an organization, including local, state, and federal laws.
- Performance Indicators – Measurement tools, selected by management that can be used to support the evaluation of environmental performance in relation to a specific target. Performance indicators may be adjusted to meet specific management needs or as necessary to ensure progress towards specific environmental targets.
- Pollution Prevention – The development, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to avoid, eliminate, or reduce pollution at the source. Any activity that reduces or eliminates pollutants prior to recycling, treatment, control or disposal.
- Operational Controls – Documents that specify the way to execute a certain activity or operation. Operational controls are assigned to operations and services involving significant aspects and are documented through the use of work instructions, procedures, manuals, programs, etc. Examples include maintenance work, pretreatment operations, chemical ordering, etc.
- Stakeholders – Groups and organizations having an interest or stake in an organization’s EMS (e.g., regulators, shareholders, customers, suppliers, special interest groups, residents, etc.).
- System Procedure – An EMS required document that establishes an element’s purpose, scope, roles & responsibilities, the tasks to be completed, and where and how the associated records and documents are maintained.
- Top Management – Person or group with executive responsibility for the organization and the EMS.
For additional information and resources on EMSs in the public sector please visit the Public Entity EMS Resource (PEER) Center website.
For more information or questions regarding Town of Leesburg's EMS program, please contact Kathy Leidich, Assistant to Town Manager via e-mail at kleidich@leesburgva.gov
