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Facility/Site Help

Purpose

The Facility/Site Identification System provides a central repository of key information for each facility/site of interest to Ecology. The system includes data about physical location; the individual(s) and/or organization(s) who own the facility/site or who are key contacts; type(s) of business or activity conducted; reason(s) for Ecology's interest; and feature(s) of interest.

What is a Facility/Site?

Ecology has defined a facility/site as an operation at a fixed location that is of interest to the agency because it has an active or potential impact upon the environment.

Ecology recognizes that this definition is broad and generic; but the agency has found that such a definition is required in order to encompass all the facilities and sites in Washington that are within the purview of its programs. These programs cover a wide variety of environmental aspects and conditions including air quality, water quality, shorelands, water resources, toxics cleanup, hazardous waste, toxics reduction, and nuclear waste. The definitions of a facility and/or a site vary significantly across these programs, both in practice and law.

Examples of facilities/sites include:

The Facility/Site Identification System was the first of a series of integrated systems implemented by Ecology. These systems were developed and incrementally implemented based on an Information Strategy Plan Ecology developed in 1995, in conjunction with consultants from Claremont Technology Group and Ross & Associates. The process was initiated to streamline and integrate Ecology's information management.

One of the original streamlining goals was to reduce the agency's burden on the individuals and organizations it regulates by reducing the number of identification numbers assigned to a single facility/site. Prior to the implementation of the Facility/Site Identification System, each of the agency's programs established and issued its own identifier for a particular facility/site. With the implementation of the new system, each facility/site has a single identifier and a minimum data set.

The integrated systems support the agency's long-term information technology goal to provide agency management, agency staff, and interested stakeholders with timely and direct access to the information they need to answer the questions they face daily. The systems assist Ecology in managing its information with an agency wide perspective rather than its historical program by program perspective; and, they support geographic-based work, environmental multi-media (air, soil, water) targeting, and pollution prevention.

With the development and implementation of the Facility/Site Identification System and other information management efforts the agency had already taken, Ecology established much of the infrastructure needed to implement other systems in the future. This includes establishing common platforms, agency standards for certain tabular and spatial data, and a framework for a standardized GIS approach within the agency.

System Description

The Facility/Site Identification System is a central repository for key identification and location information about facilities/sites in Washington of interest to Ecology because of their effects upon the environment. There are six facility/site components:

Facility/Site:
Provides the name, physical, and geographic location of the facility/site.
Affiliation:
Identifies each individual and/or organization that owns or is a key contact for the facility/site (e.g. attorney, manager, permittee, etc.).
Interaction:
Identifies each reason Ecology has an interest in the facility/site (e.g. hazardous waste generator, state cleanup site, major air source, etc.), each Ecology program that has an interest, and each Ecology system that contains more detailed data about the facility/site.
Industry Codes:
SIC provides the Standard Industrial Classification for the type(s) of business or activity conducted at the
Facility/site. NAICS provides the North American Industry Classification System codes for the type(s) of business
or activity conducted at the Facility/Site.
Association:
Identifies each subsite of a facility/site (i.e. a specific location within a facility/site) that is of interest to Ecology. Subsites may include different phases of the facility/site's operation that Ecology tracks separately. The system identifies which facility/site is the "parent" and which is the "child" or subsite. A subsite may also have "children". Initially, Ecology has limited the hierarchy to these three levels.
Feature:
Identifies a physical structure contained within or associated with the facility/site (e.g. a smokestack, tank, discharge pipe, etc.) and that structure's location. Feature may also be construed to include a nonstructure such as a ditch or a spill.

Through a menuing system and command pushbuttons, the user may readily access each of these components. The user may view a selected component's DETAILs, UPDATE or DELETE it, or INSERT (create) a new one. The user may enter search criteria for a component. The system performs a SEARCH on those criteria and presents a list of "matches" from which the user may make a selection. The user may preview and/or print a report for one or more selected facility/sites.

An integral part of the Facility/Site Identification System is a program named Facility/Site Maintenance, more commonly known as "Skipper". Because it is critical to agency staff to be able to physically locate a facility/site, it is imperative that the system's location information be accurate. "Skipper" helps to ensure this accuracy. Early each morning following a workday, "Skipper" accesses the GIS to perform a verification function on the geographic location information entered the previous day. For each entry, "Skipper" determines whether the entered coordinates can or cannot be GIS-verified.

A knowledgeable program staff person is expected to review the location details of each GIS-verified facility/site and provide a final Quality Assurance determination of the location's accuracy. If revision is appropriate, the staff person may change entries made either by the user or by "Skipper".