environmental Strategist™ (eS), between the lines: Caught the fox in the hen house!
I had an accountant many years ago and the first time I went into pick up my paper work for filing my taxes we spent some time getting to know each other. During the conversation he told he never balanced his own check book. I thought to myself do I want to depend upon someone with my finances who did not even perform the most basic of accounting functions, balancing your own check book? Needless to say I switched accounts.
When it comes to managing the environmental exposures impacting businesses, we need to be on the same page that in today’s business environment, government environmental regulation is just a bump in the road. Private business understands to compete in today’s business environment, managing the environmental exposures impacting your operations has become part of “Best Practices”.
Besides do you want to put your company’s future in the hands of someone that can’t follow the most basic of environmental principals, or what government regulation calls environmental due diligence. Environmental site assessments (Phase I, Phase II…) are performed so you can determine if you are buying an asset or a liability. Try getting a commercial property loan from a bank without evidence of environmental due diligence. Not everyone is as fortunate as the Montana DEQ with access to the tax payers pocket book to take care of their lack of following their own environmental regulations.
For more on managing your environmental exposures to drive growth and profits go to www.estrategist.com.
eS Risk Management Strategy: As this article points out the cost to investigate and test for environmental liabilities can get to be very expensive. Just a few of the benefits of environmental insurance versus self insuring is environmental insurance can pay for claims investigations such a lead testing, medical screenings, along with third party bodily injury, first and third party business income, remediation costs, legal fees…. When it comes to managing and transferring a business’s environmental exposures there is just one question a business needs to answer. Question: Based upon our business model, are we better off transferring our environmental exposures for fractions of a cent on the dollar or self insure and wait until an environmental loss occurs and pay 100 cents on the dollar out of our pocket for claims management, legal fees, investigation costs, third party bodily injury, third party property damage, first party clean up….
October 28, 2013 3:30 pm • By MATT VOLZ Associated Press
HELENA – The state Department of Environmental Quality closed its downtown Helena building on Monday after finding lead levels up to 40 times higher than federal standards in ceilings throughout the former National Guard armory.
The results have prompted testing of the air and surfaces in the building’s work areas to find out whether employees have been exposed to lead, DEQ director Tracy Stone-Manning said. The results are due Wednesday.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we chose to close the building,” Stone-Manning said.
The employees are on paid leave through Wednesday. They and former employees who worked at the location are being asked to take free blood tests to determine whether they have been exposed, Department of Administration Director Sheila Hogan said.
Exposure to high levels of the toxic metal can result in lead poisoning, which can eventually lead to brain and kidney damage and anemia, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even low levels of exposure can damage an unborn child’s nervous system and affect behavior and intelligence, according to the CDC.
DEQ officials are asking employees who were pregnant or nursing when they worked in the building to test their children.
The state took over the building at the intersection of Last Chance Gulch and Euclid Avenue in 2002, and it now houses nearly 100 workers of the DEQ’s remediation division.
The remediation division, which oversees investigations and cleanup of contaminated sites across the state, now finds itself looking for a temporary home while its own offices are tested for contamination.
“The irony is not lost on us,” Stone-Manning said. “But the reason we are asking these detailed questions is because we are the DEQ and the remediation division.”
It is unclear if or when the workers will return to the building. Even if the additional tests turn up acceptable airborne lead levels, the lead found in the initial tests above the ceiling tiles must be cleaned and abated, DEQ officials said in a memo to staff.
The building was constructed in 1942 and housed a firing range for the Montana National Guard. The range was closed in 1994 and remediated for lead, Hogan said.
But only the range was tested and cleaned, not the rest of the building.
Medical screenings of field employees in August 2012 showed higher than average levels of zinc protoporphyrin, an indicator of possible elevated lead levels in the blood, in six to eight workers, DEQ spokeswoman Lisa Peterson said.
Previous tests had been conducted from 1994 to 2009 in individual rooms after employees there reported health complaints, she said.
“We have had employees inform us of symptoms, however, we have no evidence at this time that they were related to lead exposure,” Peterson said.
Rather, DEQ officials identified lead testing as a “data gap” in their information, and this month’s initial tests were conducted as part of a plan to identify any and all environmental hazards in the building.
The plenum, or the area above the ceiling tiles, was tested in 22 areas of the building on Oct. 16 and 18. On Friday, the results found lead dust levels higher than the federal standard for commercial properties of 40 micrograms per square foot in 14 of those 22 areas, according to a copy of the laboratory results.
One area above the second-floor men’s bathroom tested for 1,600 micrograms per square foot, which is 40 times the federal standard.
Stone-Manning said there are many questions still to answer, including why it took more than 10 years to find out about the potential lead hazards. She said officials will put together a scientific and historical analysis to answer those questions.