Our Goal
Attain, sustain and monitor compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations.

The Environmental Performance Assessment System (EPAS) was developed to assist commanders maintain environmental program excellence through continual improvement by minimizing their environmental impact while allowing soldiers to focus on their mission. The purpose of the EPAS program is to assist the Army in achieving, maintaining and monitoring compliance with Federal, state and local environmental regulations while building effective and cost efficient environmental management systems (eMS). The EPAS assessments identify environmental compliance deficiencies and develop corrective actions to address these deficiencies. EPAS assessments also verify conformance with the installation’s eMS and provides environmental managers with the tools to implement and track preventive and corrective actions. Finally, EPAS has the added benefit of increasing environmental awareness throughout the installation.

The ARNG EPAS program is a proven success story. Established in FY92, the first cycle defined a baseline by assessing all ARNG facilities within the 54 installations. During the second cycle (FY96-00), the ARNG introduced the root cause analysis and initiated Pollution Prevention corrective actions.

Beginning in FY01, the ARNG began conducting assessments of installations based on environmental risk analysis and revised the root cause analysis based on ISO Standards of eMS. This new ARNG root cause analysis was adopted by the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (ACSIM) as the standard for the entire Army. According to a report released in March 2001 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, the ARNG EPAS program was ranked highest quality of the major Army components as a result of “a superior quality assurance program to ensure that the findings generated are accurate.”

The ARNG is the most successful of all Army components in EPAS software development. The ARNG has fielded the following software applications to facilitate field data collection: ARNGCAS (FY93-95), ARNG TEAMCAS (FY95-97), ARNG WINCASS I (FY97), and ARNG WINCASS II (FY97-FY01). The ARNG implemented and fielded the initial release of ARNG Windows Compliance Assessment and Sustainment Software (ARNG WINCASS III) and ARNG Web Compliance Assessment and Sustainment System (ARNG WEBCASS) in January and March 2002, respectively. ARNG WEBCASS was the first fully interactive web-based compliance assessment system application in the Department of Defense (DoD). The system enables multi-level and simultaneous quality assurance reviews, improves monitoring, management and real-time tracking of the Installation Corrective Action Plan (ICAP) and increases trend analysis capability at HQ level.

In 1998, the ARNG implemented the annual Internal Assessment program. As a result, it was a mature, fully functioning program when the Army made it a mandatory requirement in 2003. All ARNG installations are required to conduct internal assessments every year, except the year when external assessments are scheduled.

The Army National Guard EPAS program has been recognized by top leaders in the Federal government and the Army as being the best program in its class. According to Mr. Edwin Pinero, Federal Environmental Executive, the "ARNG EPAS program is best in class within the DoD and federal government." In addition, the Army Environmental and Environmental Health Assessment Analysis Study for Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, Environment, Safety & Occupational Health (DASA-ESOH) Report (January 2005) states, "the Army National Guard has the best environmental compliance program. The ARNG EPAS program was reviewed and found to have good quality control of all elements. The ARNG is the only agency in the Army which can provide real-time information on all aspects of its environmental compliance program, including significant trends, cause analysis, systems issues and tracking of ICAPs."