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Policy makers, environmentalists like to congratulate themselves on the “victory” over acid rain. As this American success story is usually told, acid rain’s effects were addressed by a 1990 update to the Clean Air Act that created a cap-and-trade system focused on sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Since the system was implemented, sulfur dioxide emissions dropped 70 percent, and threatened forests and wildlife were saved. Hurrah!

There’s only one problem with that version of history: It’s not true. As Scientific American reports, acid rain is a continuing and growing problem; forests and animals all over the world (including the U.S. East Coast) are indeed facing catastrophe. But the No. 1 source of today’s acid rain pollution is no longer sulfur dioxide, as it was 20 years ago. It’s nitrogen oxide emissions from factory farms.

Some of the following will be familiar to those diligent readers of Grist’s Nitrogen series:

Part of the problem dates back to WWI, when two German scientists invented the Haber–Bosch process, which took nonreactive nitrogen from the air (N2) and converted it into reactive, usable ammonia (NH3). Most of the nitrogen harvested via this process has been used in fertilizers, and the runoff from farms has created dead zones in Chesapeake Bay and at the mouths of the Columbia and Mississippi rivers. Some efforts have been made to regulate the agricultural nitrogen runoff, but atmospheric emissions of agricultural ammonia remain virtually unrestricted.

Agri-ammonia vapors also derive from concentrated animal feeding operations in the U.S. South. The gas rises into the air and is deposited dry or in rainfall where in the ground bacteria breaks it into nitrogen and nitric acid, which can kill fish and plants. “Agriculture is increasingly functioning as an intensively managed industrial operation, and that is creating serious water, soil, and air problems,” says Viney Aneja, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

It’s an agricultural double-whammy: emissions produced as a consequence of fertilizer runoff AND livestock emissions both caused by our chemically intensive and highly industrialized food production system. And all the more difficult to control since agricultural sources are the largest, but by no means the only, contributor: power plants and automobiles also emit nitrogen oxides.

It’s perhaps even a triple threat since, as Scientific American explains, the nitric-acid rain that results from all these sources damages the soil on which it falls by leaching out important nutrients. Research has also found that nitrogen deposited through acid rain has the effect of promoting growth of some species while suppressing others, thus reducing biodiversity in the wild. Finally, the nitric acid ultimately “liberates” toxic minerals from the ground, which then in turn poison wildlife.

The only answer is to approach nitrogen pollution, in all its forms and from all its sources, as seriously and as intensively as we did sulfur dioxide pollution back in the 1990s. Indeed, perhaps acid rain will be the thing that brings nitrogen pollution to the front environmental policy burner.

Nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, this is irony: The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable.

But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the world.

Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say. The country simply has more dung than it can handle: Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.

That excess manure gives off air pollutants, and it is the country’s fastest-growing large source of methane, a greenhouse gas.

And it washes down with the rain, helping to cause the 230 oxygen-deprived “dead zones” that have proliferated along the U.S. coast. In the Chesapeake Bay, about one-fourth of the pollution that leads to dead zones can be traced to the back ends of cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys.

Despite its impact, manure has not been as strictly regulated as more familiar pollution problems, like human sewage, acid rain or industrial waste. The Obama administration has made moves to change that but already has found itself facing off with farm interests, entangled in the contentious politics of poop.

In recent months, Oklahoma has battled poultry companies from Arkansas in court, blaming their birds’ waste for slimy and deadened rivers downstream. In Florida, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed first-of-their-kind limits on pollutants found in manure.

In the Senate, Ben Cardin, D-Md., has proposed a bill that would allow farmers in the Chesapeake watershed to cut pollution more than required and sell the extra “credits” to other polluters. The EPA, in the middle of an overhaul for the failed Chesapeake cleanup, also has threatened to tighten rules on large farms.

“We now know that we have more nutrient pollution from animals in the Chesapeake Bay watershed” than from human sewage, said Charles Fox, the EPA’s new Chesapeake czar. “Nutrients” is the scientific word for the main pollutants found in manure, treated sewage, and runoff from fertilized lawns. They are the bay’s chief evil, feeding unnatural algae blooms that cause dead zones.

Around the country, agricultural interests have fought back against moves like these, saying that new rules on manure could mean crushing new costs for farmers.

“It’s clearly going to put a squeeze on people that they’ve always said they didn’t want to squeeze,” including family-run farms, said Don Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The story of manure is already a gloomy counterpoint to the triumphs in fighting pollution since the first Earth Day April 22, 1970. An air pollutant that causes acid rain has been cut by 56 percent. By one measure, the output from sewage plants got 45 percent cleaner.

But, according to Cornell University researchers, the amount of one key pollutant nitrogen entering the environment in manure has increased by at least 60 percent since the 1970s.

“We’ve dealt with the kind of conventional pollutants,” that helped spark the first Earth Day, said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “Now, we see the things that are eating our lunch, if you will, are natural products … that are just overloading the system.”

The reasons for manure’s rise as a pollutant have to do, environmentalists say, with a shift in agriculture and a soft spot in the law.

In recent decades, livestock raising has shifted to a smaller number of large farms. At these places, with thousands of hogs or hundreds of thousands of chickens, the old self-contained cycle of farming manure feeds the crops, then the crops feed the animals is overwhelmed by the large amount of waste.

The result in farming-heavy places has been too much manure and too little to do with it. In the air, that extra manure can dry into dust, forming a “brown fog.” It can emit substances that contribute to climate change.

And it can give off a smell like a punch to the stomach.

“You have to cover your face just to go from the house to the car,” said Lynn Henning, 52, a farmer in rural Clayton, Mich., who said she became an environmental activist after fumes from huge new dairies gave her family headaches and burning sinuses. The way that modern megafarms produce it, Henning said, “Manure is no longer manure. Manure is a toxic waste now.”

In the water, the chemicals in manure don’t poison life, like pesticides or spilled oil. Instead, they create too much life, and the wrong kinds.

“You get Miracle-Gro for your water,” said David Guest, a lawyer for the group Earthjustice who has fought for tougher limits on pollution in Florida.

The chemicals in manure serve as fertilizer for unnatural algae blooms. They drain away oxygen as they decompose. Scientists say the number of suffocating dead zones oxygen-depleted areas where even worms and clams climb out of the mud, desperate to respire has grown from 16 in the 1950s to at least 230 today. The Chesapeake’s is usually the country’s third largest, after the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Erie.

The law, however, has treated manure and other agricultural pollutants differently than pollutants from smokestacks and sewer pipes.

The EPA does not set a hard cap on how much manure can wash off farms, instead issuing guidelines that apply only to the largest operations. There, the rules might limit how much manure farmers can spread on individual fields, for instance, or order them to plant grassy strips along riverbanks to filter manure-laden runoff. Even that level of regulation has only been in place since the 1990s.

But now, the EPA has signaled an intent to tighten its grip.

Last week, the agency announced that reducing manure-laden runoff was one of its six “national enforcement initiatives.” New rules went into effect in December that will impose even tighter restrictions on large farms.

Poultry giant Perdue has come up with one way to dispose of excess manure. At a $13 million plant outside Seaford, Del., tons of poultry manure are dried, heated to kill off bacteria and compressed into pellets of organic fertilizer that is sold to golf courses or homeowners.

“This is sort of a reverse chicken,” said Perdue spokesman Luis Luna, as bulldozers moved manure below. “In a chicken, the food goes in and the poop goes out. Here, the poop comes in and the plant food goes out.”

That helps Chesapeake’s manure problem, but it isn’t the whole solution. Luna said there is enough manure on the Shore to keep more plants like this running_ but Perdue isn’t planning to build more yet. So far, the fertilizer doesn’t sell well enough to make that cost-effective.

By Steven J. Smith, AVP Underwriting

Given the wide variety of meats, processed foods and produce distributed across the United States, cooling and preserving these consumables at the point of origin and shipping is paramount for businesses. While cold storage facilities are becoming more common, the environmental exposures related to these facilities are not. Cold storage facilities can use large amounts of regulated hazardous substances, petroleum products and various chemical agents in the day to day operation and maintenance of equipment. This risk is further compounded by the development of residential and other sensitive use receptors near facilities and the toxicity of certain chemicals used on a large scale. While these facilities are crucial to many business interests for the distribution of temperature sensitive products, there are risks involved to both human health and the environment.

The most common compound utilized by cold storage warehousing is anhydrous ammonia (NH3). Anhydrous ammonia is listed by OSHA as a “Colorless gas/liquid with a pungent odor that is an irritant and corrosive to skin, eye, respiratory tract and mucous membrane and may also cause severe burns, eye and lung injuries.” Cold storage facilities use anhydrous ammonia in self contained cooling systems ranging from less than 250 pounds of NH3 to systems that contain well over 10,000 pounds. NH3 used in cold storage also presents additional issues during a release or fire. Breathing apparatus and additional protective gear are required at low exposures due to toxicity and water cannot be directly applied to the spill without further risking chemical reaction. In addition, anhydrous ammonia is of similar weight to air and therefore does not rise or sink rapidly, but tends to follow the wind patterns which may increase the exposure to adjacent and nearby properties. Should a release occur from one of these facilities, the largest and most likely liabilities would be bodily injury and potential business interruption expenses experienced by neighboring properties up to and including necessary evacuations.

Cold storage facilities may also store bulk quantities of petroleum based fuels and lubes along with cleaning solvents. These materials may be stored in aboveground storage tanks (ASTs), underground storage tanks (USTs) or in smaller drums/totes. Proper segregation and storage of these materials is essential for safety. Improper handling may result in a release along with associated fines and penalties levied by the local regulatory agency.

Additional exposures at cold storage warehousing locations may not just be limited to the storage and use of hazardous materials. HVAC, plumbing and other trade contractors routinely work at these facilities and may inadvertently disturb asbestos, release fumes from glues, paints, etc. or impact a 3rd party via a pollution event from other operations.

environmental Strategist, between the lines: While the crime listed below is a common everyday occurrence, it is the un-suspecting that need to understand the horizontal and vertical environmental liabilities created by shady / reactive storage tank owners.

In the state of Michigan alone we have 9,000 known leaking underground Storage Tanks (UST’s) where there is no money to perform remediation. This means at a minimum, in Michigan, there are 9,000 locations that can cause third party property damage and bodily injury through stormwater runoff, vapor intrusion….

Included in a Phase I Site Assessment is a 2 mile radius search to see if any property within that range has been identified as having existing environmental contamination that could impact the property being investigated.

What if a third party contaminants property you own and they do not have the money to remediate the problem, cover third party bodily injury, property damage, business interruption…. Environmental Liability insurance can protect an insured if a third party contaminates their property.

Poulsbo, Wash. gas station agrees to pay over $11,000 for failure to monitor underground fuel tanks

Release date: 05/05/2011
Contact Information: Anne Christopher, EPA UST Program, (206) 553-8293,
christopher.anne@epa.gov; Tony Brown, EPA Public Affairs, (206) 553-1203, brown.anthony@epa.gov

(Seattle – May 5, 2011) – Central Valley Grocery gas station in Poulsbo, Washington, has agreed to pay $11,356 for failing to properly monitor three underground storage tanks (USTs) for leaks for over a year.

Owners and operators of USTs are required to test their tanks for leaks on a monthly basis. Failure to do so puts ground water at risk and is a violation of both state and federal law.

According to Edward Kowalski, EPA’s Director of the Office of Compliance and Enforcement in Seattle, leaking USTs are a major cause of groundwater contamination in the United States. Congress enacted laws requiring UST owners and operators to prevent tanks from leaking, detect leaks quickly if they do occur, and clean up leaking tanks. “Leaking tanks have the potential to endanger drinking water sources, so tank leak

prevention and detection are crucial,” said EPA’s Kowalski. “Conducting regular checks is a small investment that can prevent costly, complex soil and groundwater cleanups.”

EPA inspected the Central Valley Grocery station in December 2008 and found that the release detection equipment was not operating and that the owners failed to use other methods to properly check the integrity of the tanks. According to owner/operators Julius Templeton and T & A, LLC, attempts to correct the problem were made in 2009, but were unsuccessful.

EPA alleges that Central Valley Grocery remained in violation from at least December 2007 through June 2010. The owners installed new equipment in November 2010 and the three tanks are now in compliance.

For more information on the UST Program, visit the following EPA websites:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/R10/water.nsf/ust/ust+lust+home

http://www.epa.gov/swerust1/index.htm

environmental Strategist, between the lines: In case you missed this article in the recent issue of Risk and Insurance I wanted to make sure you had a chance to review this. Any businesses that can impact water are going to be under more scrutiny, especially agricultural accounts.

Toxic Water: Pollution and Scarcity Flow Together

Fracking, pharma, cow dung–whatever the pollution source, there’s so little fresh water around, sullying it makes even less sense.

By MATTHEW BRODSKY, senior editor/Web editor of Risk & Insurance®

Scenario: Hurricane Lucy was a wet one. When the Category-2 storm feinted toward South Florida but then raced northward toward North Carolina’s coast, residents braced for the high winds and storm surge. But it was the rainfall that wreaked havoc. Local tributaries burst their banks. Manure lagoons burst too.

Yes, sir, massive manure lagoons, some as large as multiple football fields, all full of liquid excrement from nearby animal farms, couldn’t withstand inch after inch of rainfall. Their walls burst, spilling the dung and all of its nasty compounds and pathogens with it. Nitrates, E. coli, Cryptosporidium, fecal coliform all escape, poison the streams and lakes, disperse into the water table.

The scale of the release is sickening in size, the stench needless to say overpowering. Some of the livestock farms in the area contain hundreds of thousands of animals, producing the equivalent of a small city’s worth of sludge, millions of gallons.

The dairy and hog farms in the area with these manure lagoons are similar to farms across the country. In the summer, the manure is a valuable fertilizer for them. In the winter, however, the manure needs to be stored. The lagoons provide a convenient and, it’s hoped, secure place to save the manure for future use.

The hurricane proved the lagoons not secure enough, however.

The effects of the massive spills became apparent in the streams and in the homes of nearby residents. Huge fish kills floated to the surface of local waterways. It was estimated that more than 10 million fish died. Hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands and waterways were closed to commercial fishing.

Then people began showing up at the emergency rooms. Cryptosporidium found its way into drinking water. It’s estimated that 142 people died from infection, untold tens of thousands got sick.

Employers in the area, already overcoming business interruption and property losses from the hurricane, now found themselves short-staffed and in the hole for millions of dollars in lost productivity, absences and short-term disability.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency swooped in to investigate and issue fines. State and local authorities were not to be outdone. A mass tort suit was filed by victims and their families against the agribusinesses that operated the farms, just another in a long string of suits in courts across the country against livestock farms.

Analysis: The above scenario is fictional, yet it does not stray too far from historical events. There are plenty of examples from the past of these lagoons blowing up. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina and caused several to burst. In another instance in the state in 1995–unrelated to a hurricane, because these sewage holding tanks can leak or collapse without a major precipitating event–an eight-acre hog-waste lagoon spilled 25 million gallons of sewage into a nearby river, killing an estimated 10 million fish and shutting down 364,000 acres of wetlands to shell fishing.

Perhaps the worst case from a human health standpoint occurred in 1993 in Milwaukee. The event didn’t necessarily stem from a lagoon spill, but from dairy-cow manure nonetheless. Cryptosporidium from the manure got into the city’s drinking water. More than 100 people died and 400,000 citizens were sickened.

We can fill these pages with stories about livestock farms. The problem is serious enough that a search on the topic brings up 3,520 results on the EPA website, that the Natural Resources Defense Council devotes a page on its site to it (where these aforementioned examples can be found). The issue has insurance underwriters’ attention too.

“I think livestock is the biggest problem … forget fracking,” said Joe Boren, CEO of Ironshore’s environmental operation and director of strategic relationships.

About fracking, the nickname for hydraulic fracturing, the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations, Boren said it is a “controllable situation.” You know where the energy companies are drilling, can find out what chemicals are in their “fracking fluids,” and can test. On the other hand, how do you control where thousands of cows or pigs go No. 1 and No. 2? Even if you’re collecting it into lagoons, how do you stop much of it from seeping into the ground and meandering into water supplies? The scale of the problem, again, is sickening. In California, for instance, the NRDC estimates that more than 100,000 square miles of groundwater is polluted by nitrates from livestock agribusinesses.

“I think that’s the next area,” Boren warned.

It’s not to downplay fracking. When it comes to water pollution, fracking is probably top of mind for most people, many of whom have seen the images of flaming tap water from the documentary on the topic called “Gasland.”

Boren said that Ironshore currently insures one operator and is talking to several others. Others in the insurance industry might not be as comfortable yet with fracking.

“The challenge for underwriters regarding hydraulic fracking is how to properly analyze the risk presented, when results and data regarding chemicals used in these operations won’t be readily available until as late as 2014,” said William Hazelton, executive vice president of ACE Environmental Risk.

Or let’s not downplay the issue of pharmaceuticals seeping into urban drinking supplies, made famous by the 2008 Associated Press investigation into the issue.

Whatever the cause, water pollution is everywhere. About 40 percent of rivers, perhaps 45 percent of lakes, are polluted and unusable, Boren said.

The fallout from a spill should be a major concern for businesses. A de facto industry of environmental nonprofits and citizens’ groups hound polluters with lawsuits (which Boren, who started his professional career as a state environmental regulator, credits for cleaning up waterways).

What’s more, the EPA has made clean, safe drinking water it’s No. 1 goal in 2011 and is allocating nearly 50 percent of its budget to it, said Steve Piatkowski, vice president of engineering at ACE Environmental Risk. It has plans to add 30 new compounds to its list of 90 already regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“At the end of the day, we’re just telling our clients that the U.S. EPA budget is the biggest it’s ever been … and there’s definitely an increased eye on enforcement,” Hazelton said.

Of course, corporations have their own self-interests to consider, besides fines and lawsuits. Particularly if they operate in the U.S. Southwest or Southeast, the Middle East or northern China, there’s little good water to go around to begin with, so why pollute that? Texas might have its share of mammoth cattle ranches with millions of unconstipated animals, but 94 percent of the state is also currently in a drought. In other words, water pollution and water scarcity go hand in hand.

Proper water management must address both problems. To prevent pollution, the key is “impeccable” monitoring, Boren said. U.S. industry is used to the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, whereby firms must delineate ways they’ll clean discharges to get government permits to do so.

U.S. companies are also becoming more adept at managing scarcity, said Linda Hwang, manager of environmental research and development at Business for Social Responsibility, a San Francisco-based organization that works with businesses on sustainability issues. Firms are focusing on tracking water use, prioritizing where to make a difference, and finding ways to reduce or reuse water in their operations.

“What has changed, more and more companies realize they need to build this into their overall risk strategy,” she said.

Of course, to transfer the risk of water pollution-related liabilities, organizations can purchase standard environmental insurance policies. Contractors involved in fracking, for instance, are shopping for contractors’ environmental liability policies, Hazelton said.

Old-fashioned insurance, however, might not be available to lessen the impact of water scarcity. Weather derivatives are. Brian O’Hearne, CEO of eWeatherRisk, related how energy firms and agribusinesses are considering financial hedges to protect against water levels in nearby streams and lakes.

For instance, energy plants need water for cooling. Without enough, they cannot operate at peak capacity and have to purchase power at higher prices elsewhere. A solution could entail understanding the correlation between rainfall and nearby water levels and then building a financial product based on that relationship that would pay out when levels get too low.

May 1, 2011
Copyright 2011© LRP Publications

Courtesy of Intelex Technologies Inc.

Thinking of bringing your business to a more sustainable place?

The best starting place for any business leader to embrace sustainability is to shift away from looking at sustainability in terms of how much it will cost, and towards assessing the returns it will generate.

Consider the phenomenon known as the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) which emerged in the field of quality management in the late 1980s. COPQ can be thought of as follows: by neglecting the importance of quality, an organization literally pays to generate waste and other problems, often in the form of scraps, reworks, recalls, rejects, reworks, service calls, warranty claims and more. Similarly, in the realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability of environmental, social and economic responsibility, organizations essentially commit capital to generate waste. Not a great investment, especially when sustainability actually presents a ton of revenue-generating opportunities.

Since the purview of sustainable development is so vast and comprehensive, the ROI of sustainability initiatives manifests in myriad ways, some direct (basic cost savings through curbing resource consumption and waste) and some indirect (risk mitigation and avoidance).

Some examples of direct and indirect impacts of sustainability on financial performance include:

• Resource Conservation and Waste Reduction: Minimizing your consumption of water, energy and resources (anything from essential office supplies like paper to raw materials for manufacturing) by implementing conservation policies and tracking sustainability key performance indicators generates the obvious, direct effect of cost savings: by consuming fewer materials either in operations or production, you’ll save money associated with the acquisition of materials. However, you must remember the old management adage about measuring what you want to manage.
• Penalty Aversion and Regulatory Compliance: Any organization committed to sustainable development and reporting on its progress in achieving its sustainability goals will be required to track essential environmental, social and economic metrics including, for example, air emissions and wastewater discharge. If you’re committed to tracking, analyzing and reporting on air emissions data, you’ll be better prepared to avoid the costly fines of notices of violations associated with exceeding permitted air emissions and wastewater tolerances.
• Brand Image: Though boosting environmental, social and economic performance should be the crux of any sustainability strategy, the marketing and publicity aspects and opportunities are not to be diminished as ROI-generating facets of sustainable development. By leveraging a proven commitment to social responsibility and environmental responsibility, an organization stands to place in high-profile rankings on CSR performance, attract and retain top-tier talent, gain media attention and public respect, and improve sales by enticing more high-level, global clients.
• Customer and Consumer Relations: Wal-Mart’s recent initiative to green its supply chain represents a great example of how one company’s sustainability initiatives can affect thousands of other businesses. America’s largest retailer has been on a mission to green it massive supply chain, recently announcing it plans to cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas from its supply chain by 2015. Wal-Mart’s initiatives affect thousands of other companies around the globe and represent an emerging cause-effect relationship between suppliers and big corporations. As one organization seeks to achieve and report on a certain level of social and environmental performance, it demands the same standard of performance and transparency across its vendor base and supply chain. Also, from a consumer standpoint, end users will increasingly demand sustainable products. Businesses will simply have to meet certain standards of sustainable development in order to retain clients and grow their business.

Though the essential financial benefits of conserving resources, for example, can be easily quantified and tracked, it is more difficult to pull tangible ROI statistics from the cost- and risk-aversion factors, as well as customer retention factors, associated with some of the above points, except on a case-by-case basis. However, proactive corporate strategies beat trial-and-error approaches as the best recipe for optimizing returns on sustainability investments.

environmental Strategist, between the lines: For several years we have been sharing with you information on vapor intrusion (ASTM 2600) and what a serious issue it can be for any property owner. As the article below points out, the EPA also feels vapor intrusion is a serious enough liability that it deserves to get Superfund designation financing.

Vapor intrusion can impact any property owner. What if the party at fault causing the vapor intrusion can’t pay to clean up the contamination? Then the impacted property owner becomes the owner of a piece of contaminated property. Pollution liability insurance can protect property owners from vapor intrusion.

In Michigan we have 9,000 known leaking underground storage tanks that there is no money to pay for the cleanup. That means in Michigan we have a minimum of 9,000 locations causing vapor intrusion.

ERMI Environmental Risk Management Tip: Buyers of commercial real estate should confirm that vapor intrusion testing was included as part of their environmental due diligence.

Fed Reg Watch: Should Vapor Intrusion Count for Superfund-ing?

by Seth Fisher
February 3, 2011

EPA looking into addition of vapor intrusion component to the hazard ranking system

The EPA is collecting public input on whether vapor intrusion should be added to the hazard ranking system, effectively allowing sites where contamination has gone airborne to be eligible for Superfund financing.

The potential revisions to the Hazard Ranking System (HRS), which is the EPA’s principle mechanism for determining whether a site can be added to the National Priorities List (NPL) under CERCLA.

This potential addition would allow the HRS to directly consider the human exposure to contaminants that enter building structures through the subsurface environment, and thus enable sites with vapor intrusion contamination to be evaluated for placement on the NPL.

Comments are due by April 16, 2011.

The agency in 2007 issued regulations to require vapor intrusion to be included in Phase I site assessments Before and since, many sites have been identified where pollutants are migrating to the air from contamination in the soil or groundwater, and this has led to a widespread reevaluation of the level of danger posed by such sites. It follows that evaluation for federal cleanup dollars – prioritized by respective level of hazard to the health of U.S. citizens – might change as well. However this could also be a game- changer for other sites waiting for federal help, on a list that the Government Accountability Office (in 2009) said is filled with unaddressed sites that would be a “priority” under any reasonable definition of the word. Adding a consideration for vapor intrusion, then, ostensibly makes sense, but the practical results could mean the indefinite delay of sites that previously had a reasonable expectation of being addressed soon, or else a substantial rise in the amount of federal dollars committed to the program in order to keep things on schedule.

SOURCE: Federal Register

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Do you have Agricultural client’s impacted by Risk Management Program Regulations (RMPR)? Are they aware they have to update their RMPR every five years to stay in compliance.

If you have agricultural clients that use, store, manufacture or handle the on-site movement of 10,000 pounds or more of anhydrous ammonia they may be impacted by RMPR.

It does not send a positive message to customers when they read about a business in the paper for receiving an environmental fine.

ERMI Risk Management Strategy: Attached you will find an ERMI Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) you can share with your agricultural insured’s. The ERA is designed to get you and your insured on the same page about the environmental exposures impacting their operations. Through this process your insured can make an informed decision if environmental liability insurance can add value to their business
model.

Risk Management Rules and Farms

From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published February 28, 2011 08:00 AM

ADI Agronomy, Inc., which owns a group of farm supply facilities in southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas, has agreed to pay a $54,922 civil penalty to the United States for chemical Risk Management Program violations at its Ag Distributors retail facility at Kennett, Mo., which sells liquid fertilizer made with anhydrous ammonia. Specifically, Ag Distributors failed to establish and implement maintenance procedures to ensure the ongoing integrity of its anhydrous ammonia process equipment, and failed to document that the equipment complied with recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices, among other violations.

Anhydrous ammonia is one of the most efficient and widely used sources of nitrogen for plant growth. Anhydrous ammonia is corrosive, and exposure to it may result in chemical-type burns to skin, eyes and lungs.

The Ag Distributors facility in Kennett is subject to the Risk Management Program regulations because it uses, stores, manufactures or handles the on-site movement of 10,000 pounds or more of anhydrous ammonia in its fertilizer production process.

Facilities like Ag Distributors that mix or blend fertilizers using anhydrous ammonia, but which do not sell anhydrous ammonia directly to farmers, must implement the most stringent type of Risk Management Program. Risk Management regulations are intended to help prevent accidental releases of harmful chemicals, and help local emergency responders prepare for and respond to chemical accidents. Failure to have an adequate Risk Management Program and Plan can compromise a facility’s ability to prevent
releases and minimize the impact of releases that do occur.

These are not the first agricultural product firms hit with these fines. In October 2009, EPA discovered that AG Link, Colfax and their eight facilities located at Almira, Davenport, Edwall, Coulee City, Reardan, Colfax, Wilbur, and Steptoe, Washington failed to update their risk management practices at least every five years as required by the CAA. The facilities store more than 10,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, which exceeds the threshold quantity that triggers federal planning requirements.

In 2007 the following firms were fined. Under this effort, EPA took legal action against the following facilities throughout New England: – A.T. Wall Company, Inc. (Warwick, R.I.)- Danbury Water Pollution Control Plant (Danbury, Conn.)- Gold Medal Bagel Bakery, Inc. (West Haven, Conn.)- Mace Adhesives and Coatings Co., Inc. (Dudley, Mass.)- Northampton MA Wastewater Treatment Plant (Northampton, Mass.)- Shield Packaging Co., Inc. (Dudley, Mass.)- Stonyfield Farm, Inc. (Londonderry, N.H.) – Webster Wastewater Treatment Plant (Webster, Mass.) The bulk chemicals used and stored at these facilities included anhydrous ammonia, toluene, isobutene and chlorine. As a result of these cases, the facilities have agreed to correct the violations and pay penalties ranging from $300 to $3,650.

For further information: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/C52FA12AA069AA5F8525783F00662CA3

Environmental Strategist, between the lines: Prisons are mini cities facing a vast array of environmental exposures in their day to day operations. (Refer to attached ERMI Environmental Risk Assessment for Municipalities) Even your community jails face an array of environmental exposures such as leaks from fuel storage tanks used for backup power generators, mold, sick building syndrome, lead, asbestos, vapor intrusion, leaks from elevator hydraulic fluid storage tanks, adverse reactions and interactions of chemical compounds that accidentally commingle during a fire….

It would have been a lot cheaper for the tax payers if this prison system was proactively managing their environmental exposures. Below you can read what happens when the government shows up. Studies have shown if a business waits until an environmental problem occurs and any governmental body gets involved, the cost to address the environmental problem will increase on an average of 35% to 50%.

Prison Air Pollution

Prisons are where they keep criminals. What has that to do with the environment? The answer is that prisons need to be heated and like industrial boilers or even home heating systems they must burn fuel and in the combustion release potential air pollutants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections and the Department of General Services for alleged Clean Air Act violations at boiler plants generating power, heat and hot water at four correctional facilities.

Under the agreement, the Department of Corrections will pay a civil penalty of $300,000.

As a result of this settlement:

• A baghouse to control particulate matter will be installed at the Rockview facility;
• New gas-fired boiler units at the Laurel Highlands facility will be constructed;
• Coal-fired boiler units at the Muncy facility will be shut down and replaced by an existing natural gas- fired boiler;
• The Huntingdon facility is required to either add particulate matter controls, or convert
  to gas-fired boiler units.

This settlement has reporting obligations to ensure the prisons stay on schedule with the terms of the agreement. Should the facilities’ boilers fail to meet the requirements, they will be subject to stipulated penalties, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per day contingent on the type and length of the violation.

Such problems with prisons is not that uncommon. US Region III (M-d Atlantic States) has over 100 prisons which have been found to commonly violate RCRA (Hazardous waste), SPCC (Spill control and containment)and other environmental regulations. The Office of Enforcement, Compliance and Environmental Justice has targeted overcrowded, older facilities with industrial shops suspected of causing environmental damage.

In 2004 the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) settled a multi-facility enforcement action, which EPA initiated after finding significant violations during a multi-media inspection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Greensville County, Virginia in May, 2003.

EPA conducted 14 follow-up inspections at various VADOC-operated prisons throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, and discovered non-compliance with environmental regulations at many of the facilities.

From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published January 11, 2011 06:01 PM

For further information: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/DA36C738DD17B0D88525780E006E608E

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Below is information on a sustainable
website that can assist your construction and real estate developers to increase sales
and reduce environmental liabilities, while better protecting human health and the
environment.

When you consider that sustainability has become a social value and therefore a business opportunity, this service can offer some advantages.

Environmental Risk Management Strategies:

1. Under Federal Law (Superfund) you own your manifested waste from cradle to grave. If you are able to reduce the waste sent to disposal facilities it can reduce future Superfund liabilities.
2. Using this site could reduce job costs and allow users to be more competitive when bidding work.
3. Users can market how as part of their “Best Practices” they divert waste from landfills and reuse or recycle appropriate materials.
4. Businesses that take advantage of the website can use it as a social value marketing tool to generate new business opportunities.

(Note: I have not tried this website service.)

Nothing Wasted
03/21/2011 by Wayne Engebretson

Here’s an interesting B2B enterprise that’s both forward-looking and simultaneously “circular” in thought — connecting companies by mutual interest in material waste. RecycleMatch is an online marketplace that is seeking to take the “fill”
out of landfill, but providing a means for companies to sell, and even give, recyclable materials to other companies that might want to reuse, upcycle, recycle, or downcycle those materials for a variety of uses. By building a supply and demand mechanism for the 7.7 billion tons of commercially generated non-hazardous materials currently considered waste, they are succeeding in making the recycling market more efficient and a viable, cost-efficient option for sustainable-minded businesses.

Comparisons to eBay seem natural in light of its auction-based business model of buying and selling by bidding, lending new meaning to the phrase “what’s one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Sellers can list their materials on RecycleMatch at no cost, paying only once they’ve chosen a qualified buyer. Sellers pay a 5% commission on a sale, or a $5/ton landfill diversion fee. The minimum fee is $250.

For buyers, there is no cost to use RecycleMatch. Advantages for buyers include:
Availability of a wide selection of materials; customized email alerts; the opportunity
to make inquiries to sellers through a confidential messaging system; viewable
sellers reputation scores; and a complimentary escrow service for safe payments and
transactions.

Materials that can be bought and sold cover a wide spectrum:

• Plastics – Among the types available are Polystyrene, PolyPropylene, PolyEthylene Terephthalate (PET)
• Paper – Includes cardboard, newsprint, office and printer-grade paper
• Metals – Types include non-ferrous, ferrous, and alloys
• Textiles – Acetatea and Triacetate, acrylic, and carpet, among others
• Rubber – Butyl, EPDM, Hose/belts and latex
• Chemicals – Acids, adhesives, bases
• Building Materials – such as glass windows and concrete scrap
• Electronics
• Wood

RecycleMatch provides short case studies on their web site that illustrate how their service can provide mutual benefits for participating companies. A few notable examples :

An oil company in Houston whose LEED™ certified building was damaged by Hurricane Ike. Thousands of windows were damaged, but was deemed unrecyclable due to the special film used on the glass. RecycleMatch helped prove the consensus wrong — a match was found for a company that could crush the glass and use it for manufacture of counter tops and other green building materials

A paint roller manufacturer from Wisconsin wanted a recycling solution for 40 bales per month of post-industrial polyester scrap, problematic for potential end users as the scrap was multicolored and contained PVA coating. RecycleMatch provided the means to find a willing company that could reprocess the material into agglomerated plastics for use in products like car seat cushions

A company that upcycles old sweaters and suit jackets into “new” apparel wanted to find a place that would make good use of the wool scraps left over from their work. RecycleMatch provided a connection to a company that would take the 1,000 lbs/month scraps and use them in knitting starter-kits

More information can be found online at www.recyclematch.com.