Coast Guard and OR&R Sign Interagency Agreement on the Use of ERMA
SEPTEMBER 14, 2018 — OR&R is happy to announce the signing of a multi-year Interagency Agreement between the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and OR&R to “standardize the use of NOAA’s Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) as the Common Operating Picture (COP) for USCG-led training, exercises, oil spill responses and releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, and contaminants”.
This agreement provides a formal framework for policy decisions and use of ERMA to support USCG activities. It was born out of needs identified during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and has most recently received support from across all OR&R divisions, emergency response, assessment and restoration, and marine debris for issues such as abandoned and derelict vessels and geographic response strategy development. We expect that this will help further the use of ERMA across a wide variety of environmental response and assessment activities in NOAA and with many of our partner agencies. This Interagency Agreement supplements the existing Memorandum of Understanding between NOAA and the USCG that allows the Federal On-Scene Coordinator to fund the NOAA Scientific Support Coordinator and ERMA as part of any emergency response incident.
For more information, please contact George.Graettinger@noaa.gov.