Tag: pollution

Porter Ranch Gas Leak Compared To BP Gulf Oil Spill

environmental Strategist™, between the lines: Typically, when strategizing with a business about their environmental exposures, businesses just think about a spill and the cost to clean up the spill as their only exposure. The reality is the cost to clean up a spill / release is often times far less than the associated costs such as legal fees, third party bodily injury & property damage, third party business income, fines & penalties, investigation costs, disposal costs….

Pollution insurance policies can also protect you should a third party cause contamination to come onto your property, as in the example below. Pollution insurance policies can cover defense, bodily injury, property damage, business income and extra expense, investigation costs…. I wonder how many businesses and residents in California impacted by the gas leak wished they had invested into a pollution policy right now?

Keep in mind, when it comes to buying a pollution policy there is just one simple question the insured needs to answer: Understanding that insurance is simply a way to finance a loss, does it make fiscal sense to transfer your environmental exposures for fractions of a cent on the dollar or wait until an environmental loss occurs and spend one hundred cents on the dollar out of your own pocket for investigation costs, clean up, defense, third party bodily injury, third party property damage, waste transportation and disposal costs…?

While that vast majority of pollution policies we sell are for commercial businesses, we also sell to homeowner and condominium associations.

For solutions go to www.environmentalriskmanagers.com or www.estrategist.com.

Porter Ranch Gas Leak Compared To BP Gulf Oil Spill

By Susan Abram, Los Angeles Daily News

POSTED: 12/19/15, 4:09 PM PST | UPDATED: 2 DAYS AGO

Porter Ranch residents Susan Gorman-Chang and George Chang will be spending this Christmas away from home in a small two bedroom suite. The family re-located due to the ongoing gas leak in Aliso Canyon. (David Crane / Staff Photographer)

The smell came from the canyons and drifted over their neighborhoods in late October, but most residents who live in the gated communities ofPorter Ranch thought the northerly gusts of wind common to their area would sweep the stench of rotten eggs away. Instead, the odor persisted.

It became a phantom that haunted them during their twilight jogs and on their morning walks on dusty horse trails. It was there in their dens where they watched TV and in bedrooms where their children slept. It was even there on the playgrounds of nearby elementary schools.

“It was smelling really bad,” said Susan Gorman-Chang, who along with her husband, George, has lived in Porter Ranch for more than 20 years. Now, the couple has chosen to leave the area. “Our neighbor called the fire department. It was that bad.”

The Southern California Gas Co. knew what was happening a day before the fire department was called. They knew methane was leaking from a 40-year-old well in Aliso Canyon above the Santa Susana Mountains, that it was spewing tons of gas into the air. Several days later, they informed residents through letters that the agency would plug the leak as fast as possible.

DISPLACING A COMMUNITY

Eight weeks after that call was made, the leak continues. It has caused massive disruption in the northwestern San Fernando Valley community of Porter Ranch, an affluent community of nearly 31,000 residents about 28 miles from downtown Los Angeles. More than 1,800 families have been relocated by the gas company and more than 1,000 remain on a waiting list. Some say they can’t remember a displacement of residents this large since the Northridge earthquake in 1994, when 20,000 people were left homeless. Two local elementary schools have been impacted, with nearly 2,000 schoolchildren and staff slated to be moved to other schools in January.

Enough methane gas is being released to fill the Empire State building each day, state officials have said, and the concern has even reached the Federal Aviation Administration, which issued temporary flight restrictions over the area for small aircraft and helicopters.

The gas company has apologized but has said the leak may take four months to plug and to create a relief well.

“It’s like the BP spill on land,” said environmental activist Erin Brockovich, who was made famous by successfully battling Pacific Gas and Electric Co. over groundwater contamination in the community ofHinkley in the Inland Empire in 1996. “I’ve really never seen anything like this. I think the magnitude is enormous. Its like a volcano, and the gas is like the lava that can’t be shut off.”

LARGEST GAS STORAGE IN NATION

An abandoned oil field with 115 wells, the Aliso Canyon storage facility became the second largest in the nation when it was repurposed in the 1970s, with a capacity to hold 86 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Gas continues to leak from a narrow pipe enclosed in a breached 7-inch well casing. The affected well, known as SS 25, is 8,750 feet deep.

Aging infrastructure may be to blame. In a report presented to California’s Public Utilities Commission last year, concerns were raised by the gas company regarding well casings that were “further amplified by the age, length and location of wells,” according to the report. “Some SoCalGas wells are more than 80 years old with an average age of 52 years.”

The number of wells that have needed repairs has increased, from three repairs in 2008 when tracking of repairs began, to nine in 2013.

“Without a robust program to inspect underground storage wells to identify potential safety and/or integrity issues, problems may remain undetected,” last year’s report stated.

The affected well passed its pressure tests, including the latest one in 2014, according to the California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

The 1,200 tons of methane gas being released daily by the affected well is adding 25 percent more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere per month than normal, said Dave Clegern, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. Methane is about 9 percent of the total annual greenhouse gas emissions in California, Clegern added.

“You can figure that a million metric tons — which is about the estimated monthly amount — is the equivalent of putting about 200,000 more cars on the road for a year.”

Methane lives in the atmosphere for about 12 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Unlike carbon dioxide, which can live longer in the atmosphere, methane can be more devastating to the climate because of how well it absorbs heat, according the Environmental Defense Fund.

HEALTH FEARS

That may be bad for the environment, but families who live in Porter Ranch are wondering what the gas leak is doing to their lungs, hearts and the health of their children. Residents have reported headaches, nausea and nosebleeds. Even their dogs and cats were getting sick.

The nurse’s office at two nearby elementary schools reported increased visits by children, up to 38 one week. The most common symptoms reported by the students were headache and stomachache.

Earlier this month, county health officials said the gas leak did not pose any long-term health risks but then changed course after as the leak entered its sixth week and gas company officials said it might take four months to plug the well.

Prolonged exposure to trace chemicals, county health officials later said, some of which are known carcinogens, can cause long-term health effects.

However, they cautioned that levels examined so far in Porter Ranch are not believed to be associated with long-term health problems.

“As the duration of exposure increases, these trace levels can produce significant long-term health effects,” county Department of Public HealthInterim Director Cynthia Harding wrote in a memo sent to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “As this incident has moved from a short-term exposure event resolved within days, to now a long-term event potentially lasting months, supplemental monitoring of potentially harmful trace chemicals is warranted.”

What is less understood is mercaptan, or what’s been described as a harmless chemical that contains sulphur that is added to natural gas to make it smell like rotten eggs and so that it can be detected.

But very little is known about the health effects of methyl mercaptan, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The only information available is about a worker exposed to very high levels of this compound when he opened and emptied tanks of this compound,” according to the CDC. “He developed anemia, went into a coma and died about a month later.”

The last report on mercaptan offered by the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, a division of the CDC, was presented in 1992.

“We do not know whether long-term exposure of humans to low levels of methyl mercaptan can result in harmful health effects such as cancer, birth defects, or problems with reproduction.”

Guidelines released by the Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration to workers say that long-term exposure of mercaptan can cause dermatitis.

There also is little information about whether mercaptan causes cancer in people or animals. Methyl mercaptan has not been classified a carcinogen by the Department of Health and Human Services, the International Agency for Research on Cancer or the Environmental Protection Agency.

The gas began leaking Oct. 23. One day later residents began calling in complaints to the Air Quality Management District. Since then, there have been more than 1,400 complaints.

“We have received a large number of complaints, not unprecedented, but a large amount,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the AQMD. “This is a large number of complaints over a couple of months.”

The delay in communication by the Gas Co. to residents is what has raised distrust and anger in the community, said Alexandra Nagy of Food & Water Watch. The environmental nonprofit has helped Porter Ranch residents organize protests and rallies.

“This is an extreme health crisis and it is an extreme environmental crisis,” Nagy said. “These are real health symptoms. Residents are so fed up.”

THOUSANDS DISPLACED

Susan Gorman-Chang and her husband, George, said they moved into Porter Ranch in 1991 when new homes were being built. They had weathered the Northridge earthquake and even evacuated their home during wildfires that swept into the canyons above them. Last year, residents formed Save Porter Ranch to discourage Termo Co. of Long Beach, which now operates 18 wells in Aliso Canyon, from drilling 12 more within the next six years — a move that could potentially tap up to 200,000 more barrels of oil.

But the smell that was affecting them from the gas leak was too much. Gorman-Chang said she had trouble breathing after jogs. George Chang said he felt dizzy after morning walks. They were among the first families to relocate after the gas company agreed to reimburse residents who wanted to leave. Since mid-November, the Changs have lived in a two-bedroom hotel room in Chatsworth.

“We’re lucky,” Gorman-Chang said. “There are families that had to relocate down as far as Marina del Rey. And now many can’t find places to stay.”

But they miss their routine. George Chang said he still goes to his Porter Ranch home to pick up newspapers and mail. Gorman-Chang said she went back to their home about 4 miles away to make the Thanksgiving turkey because there is no stove in the hotel room.

Inside their room, there is a small Charlie Brown Christmas tree that George Chang ordered because he said it was important to keep spirits up. Their son, who attends Cal State Northridge, lives with them.

“It’s been a struggle,” Gorman-Chang said. “You have this delicate balance of life, and then all of a sudden it’s gone.”

‘A DISASTER AREA’

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday declared the leak in Porter Ranch an emergency to pave the way for state and federal assistance.

“This is a disaster area,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich said that day. “The financial liability of Southern California Gas Co. has to be to the neighbors who have lost residential properties, the ability to sell. The home valuation has gone in the toilet.”

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a civil lawsuit against SoCalGas alleging the Aliso Canyon leak has threatened residents’ health and hurt the environment. The lawsuit also alleges a public nuisance and violation of the California Unfair Competition Law from the leak.

“It is the most significant event and potentially biggest health emergency in the history of Los Angeles,” Feuer said. “There’s a huge spectrum of concern out there.”

Brockovich, who is working on behalf of the law firm Weitz & Luxenbergwhich filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents, said monetary compensation won’t be enough for the residents. She said the gas company should have had a contingency plan in place, in case of such leaks.

“There has to be a new plan moving forward,” Brockovich said. “As we move forward, lawsuits are not going to work anymore. There needs to be measures to change what has happened, to prevent it from happening again and to assure total safety to those people. This is, I think, a huge wake-up call.”

Staff Writers Dana Bartholomew, Sarah Favot, Dakota Smith and Greg Wilcox contributed to this report.

Los Angeles sues gas company over 6-week-old leak – more on the story here

December 22, 2015
Environmental Exposures Created By Loading Docks

by Chris Bunbury, eS – 12/17/15 : Environmental liabilities generally take place over long periods of time. A perfect example of this are loading docks. Some of the contaminants that come off trucks using loading docks are lead; cadmium; asbestos; anti-freeze; petroleum products; hydraulic fluids; release of fluids from loading dock levelers; loading & unloading of cargo…. Loading docks that are not maintained like in the picture above allow these contaminates to seep into the ground and spread via ground water, vapor intrusion or storm water runoff and can create environmental liabilities for the property owners.

Companies with loading docks need to have a loading dock management program that maintains the integrity of the dock while capturing contaminants so over time they do not create an environmental liability.

Real estate owners that lease out facilities with loading docks should include in their lease the tenant is responsible for maintaining the integrity of loading docks including an overview of what is expected in maintaining the integrity. Tenants should also be responsible to provide timely notification of environmental concerns related not only to the loading docks but the leased premises to the real estate owner/s.

environmental Strategist™ (eS) go one step further and feel the tenant should at a minimum, annually send to the property owner a signed document they have maintained the leased premises free of environmental liabilities. The reason you do this is because as the property owner you are ultimately responsible for the environmental condition of your property regardless of who caused the environmental liability. With the tenant environmental sign off report you are at a minimum building your defense should the tenant cause an environmental liability and you get dragged in as the real estate owner.

December 17, 2015
Above Ground Storage Tank Risk Management Strategies

12/9/15 – by Chris Bunbury, eS – Environmental Risk Managers President:

From contractors to agriculture, manuifacturers, auto dealer and repair facilities, trucking companies, gas stations… Above Ground Storage Tanks (AST’s) are abundant if our business world.

Initial reactions generally are AST’s make sense versus Underground Storage Tanks (UST’s). In talking with insurance professionals I will hear the insured does not really have an environmental exposure because their raw materials are stored in AST’s with secondary containment. The AST pictured above is in secondary containment. However as you and I am sure the contractor at this job site can see the integrity of the secondary containment has been compromised. It is important to annually test the integrity of an AST’s secondary containment.

More than likely if there is a release from this AST it will breach the secondary containment and allow pollutants to spread. As a side note this tank is located in an area where local residents get their potable water from wells on their property, no city water supplied.

I also point out this picture was taken after hours and there was no lock on the tank that would restrict vandals from stealing fuel or just pumping it on the ground for fun. Regardless, the owner of the tank is responsible if there is a release, even if caused by vandals.

At least this tank was placed in some type of secondary containment. I would say more times than not AST’s are just placed on the ground with no secondary containment. Farmers, like contractors will move AST’s around on their property to conserve fuel. We see claims for this after it rains and the ground the AST was placed on gets saturated and unstable allowing the tanks to tip and spill its contents.

Is an AST’s located where natural disasters (tornados, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes…) occur? Natural disasters can destroy the integrity of the tank releasing its contents?

While AST’s seem to be a better option than UST’s, when a spill does occur, the contents can spread faster and further than with a UST release.

Most states do not require financial assurance on AST’s like they do for regulated UST’s. One benefit to financial assurance is when a loss does occur there are some monies available to address the environmental liability. AST’s can easily be insured on a standalone basis or using a contractors pollution liability policy or a site pollution insurance policy.

If you are a AST owner you need to have not only a risk management strategy to reduce your exposure to loss but a financial assurance strategy for when a release occurs.

As you environmental team member Environmental Risk Managers can assist you in proactively addressing your client’s environmental exposure to storage tanks.

December 10, 2015
Toxic lead removal could be California’s biggest yet
environmental Strategist, between the lines: Some of the products you may be using today that contain lead are chocolate, cosmetics, computers and other electronics, construction trade materials, batteries, keels of boats, car and truck tires….
- Production and use of lead is growing worldwide.
- Roughly 10 million tons are produced annually with half of that coming from recycling.
- Lead is usually found in ore with zinc, silver and most abundantly in copper.
- The United States is one of the world’s top producers of lead.
- At the current rate of use it’s predicted that lead will run out in just under forty years.
After reading about a lead issue California is dealing with it should become pretty clear that lead is a huge environmental exposure most people do not think about.

Workers remove topsoil from homes in the 1200 block of South Indiana Street in Boyle Heights that may have been contaminated by lead from an Exide Technologies plant in Vernon. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

By: Tony Barboza, LA Times

The task of removing lead-contaminated soil from thousands of homes near a closed Vernon battery recycling plant would be the largest cleanup of its kind in California and rank among the biggest conducted nationwide, say environmental officials and experts in toxic remediation.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control announced last week that soil testing shows decades of air pollution from the Exide Technologies facility deposited toxic dust across a wider area of southeast L.A. County than previously estimated, possibly fouling as many as 10,000 homes.

“It is safe to say that no lead cleanup of neighborhoods in California involving DTSC has approached the number of potential properties that could be involved in this case,” department spokesman Sandy Nax wrote in an email.

Community groups that rallied for the plant’s closure are now urging state officials to dedicate additional funds quickly to expand soil testing and clean more homes. Over the last year, contaminated soil has been removed and replaced at 146 of the homes closest to the facility in Maywood and Boyle Heights, with Exide footing the bill.

“Every day, week or month that goes by, our children are being exposed to the poison that is lead,” said Mark Lopez, who lives a few miles from the Exide plant in East Los Angeles and heads the group East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. “We hope the next battle is not having to fight DTSC for the cleanup.”

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that has no safe level of exposure. It can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems and diminished IQs in children. Because of its use throughout the years in gasoline, paint and batteries, the metal is one of the most common contaminants at cleanup sites across the nation.

Exide issued a statement Monday standing by the findings of a report it filed last week with state regulators “that establish the limits of lead impacts from the Vernon facility.”

The Georgia-based company has said its contributions to lead in the soil are small relative to other sources, such as lead-based paint in older homes, leaded gasoline phased out decades ago and other businesses in the heavily industrial city of Vernon. The report said contamination from the plant was limited to nearby industrial zones and do not extend into residential areas.

The preliminary results released by the state last week were based on soil samples from 146 additional homes spread over a two-square mile area stretching out from the plant and into Boyle Heights, Maywood, Huntington Park and East Los Angeles. The sampling data were used to predict where similarly elevated levels of lead should be expected.

Officials with the toxic substances department have not determined how many of potentially thousands of properties will ultimately require soil cleanup, but acknowledged last week that it would be considerably more extensive and costly than anticipated.

In a deal reached in March with the U.S. attorney’s office, Exide agreed to close and demolish the 15-acre facility to avoid criminal charges stemming from years of environmental law violations. As part of the settlement, the company is required to pay $50 million for a state-supervised pollution cleanup, including $9 million to remove lead contamination from homes.

Now, the cleanup cost could balloon to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

State and federal officials say the agreement with Exide requires the company to pay the full cost of cleanup, even if it exceeds $50 million. But the toxic substances department said last week it was looking for funds to pay for the work while the agency seeks additional money from Exide and other responsible parties.

Lead emissions from smelters, mines and battery processing facilities have resulted in extensive cleanups before, many of them through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program to deal with the nation’s most hazardous sites.

Many of those were the result of pollution from secondary lead smelters, which like Exide melted down used car batteries into raw materials for new ones.

One of the largest is an EPA cleanup in Omaha, Neb., that has removed soil from the yards of more than 12,000 homes contaminated by an old smelter’s lead emissions. The cleanup has been going on for more than a decade, at a cost of more than $300 million.

A moderate-sized cleanup is a few hundred homes, said Ian H. von Lindern, who worked for decades as a consultant on environmental cleanups, including the Bunker Hill Superfund Site in northern Idaho, where more than 6,000 properties were cleaned of lead-tainted soil.

“Ten thousand would be large,” he said.

Determining the extent of the contamination from a facility like Exide will be challenging and expensive, environmental cleanup experts said.

Removing the lead could take many years — but would significantly reduce health risks to young children. Those age 6 and under are most vulnerable to lead poisoning because they often play outside and ingest soil and dust.

The county health department has tested the blood of hundreds of people who live near Exide as part of a free screening program funded by the company. The tests have not revealed any lead poisoning requiring medical intervention, but the program has faced criticism for screening few young children

Cleaning up a yard takes about a week and costs about $45,000, the toxic substances department said. Contractors dig up and haul away contaminated topsoil and replace it with new dirt.

Department officials said last week they are studying other major cleanups and believe the lead could be removed from soil in L.A. County at a lower cost.
October 14, 2015
America’s Toxic Mining Pools: Ticking Time Bombs?
Environmental Strategist, between the lines: There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines littered across the United States.

Do not fool yourself and think you are in the clear once you get environmental professionals involved. Below is a simple example of how even “environmental professionals” make mistakes.

As you will read below, abandoned mines can release an array of environmental contaminants which can cause third party bodily injury, third party property damage, business interruption, investigation and cleanup costs, legal fees…

This leads to the question “Who are your neighbors?” What if a neighboring property causes contamination to come onto your property and it happens to be from an old abandoned mine and there is not an identifiable responsible party? Under Federal law the property owner is responsible for the environmental condition of their property regardless of who caused the environmental problem. Pollution liability insurance can protect you from pollution liabilities caused by third parties.

There are over 500,000 abandoned mines in the U.S. containing noxious brews

Bob Woods, special to CNBC.com

Thursday, 27 Aug 2015 | 10:29 AM ETCNBC.com

On August 5, 3 million gallons of toxic sludge gushed out of the long-abandoned Gold King mine near Silverton, Colorado, and into the Animas River. The Tang-colored torrent, percolating with arsenic, lead and other pollutants, was inadvertently unleashed by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractors attempting to clean up wastewater that’s been accumulating since the mine closed in 1923.

Brennan Linsley | AP Water flows through a series of sediment retention ponds built to reduce heavy metal and chemical contaminants from the Gold King Mine wastewater accident outside Silverton, Colorado, August 14, 2015.

The poisonous plume ran downstream into waterways in Utah, New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, but subsequent tests reportedly show that the toxins have dissipated and the water is safe. Regardless, the episode has revealed an even more frightening, long-festering problem: There are an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines nationwide, though mostly in Western states, an unknown number of which contain similarly noxious brews that could potentially be released and contaminate innumerable water systems and adjoining lands.

The Denver Post‘s Bruce Finley reported that “230 other old mines [in Colorado are] leaking heavy metals-laced muck into headwaters of the nation’s rivers. These old mines have leaked so much for so long, thousands of gallons a minute, that state agencies don’t track the combined toxic flow.” The EPA has calculated that 40 percent of river headwaters in the West are contaminated by acid mine drainage, which occurs when sulfides in mines are exposed to air and water, creating what’s basically sulfuric acid.

“These are disasters we know are waiting to happen,” said Jennifer Krill, executive director of Earthworks, a Washington-based environmental group that’s been advocating for reform of a 143-year-old federal law seen as a major source of the dilemma. The General Mining Law of 1872, signed by President Ulysses S. Grant during the unbridled building of the West, permitted mining of gold, silver and other hard-rock minerals on public lands for next-to-nothing lease prices, zero royalties (unlike those paid by oil, gas and coal lessees), scant environmental oversight

Despite numerous attempts, the law remains on the books, but that may soon change. “An entire river system turning bright orange ought to be the wake-up call for Americans that it’s time to stand up and take notice,” Krill stated.

“If we modernize the 1872 law, we’ll start to reverse what’s going on by making sure the mining industry takes responsibility for its messes.”-Jennifer Krill, executive director, Earthworks

Perhaps, but while the horrible images remain fresh, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, has already called for a congressional hearing on his recently proposed legislation to modernize the antiquated law. Essentially, HR 963—the Hardrock Mining Reform and Reclamation Act of 2015—would levy an 8 percent royalty on new and existing hard-rock mines to create a federal fund to supplement the meager public and private money currently spent on cleanup and remediation activities. Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico announced that he will introduce a similar bill in the Senate next month.

“The federal estimate for cleaning up contaminated mines is $54 billion, which I think is low-balling,” Grijalva said. “While this [Gold King] incident was a mistake by EPA, the underlying problem is the huge number of abandoned hard-rock mines that are effectively ticking time bombs threatening our rivers and our lands. Congress must provide robust funding to clean up these mines, which is exactly what my [bill] does.”

“No one is arguing that there isn’t clearly a problem,” said Luke Popovich, vice president of external communications for the Washington, D.C.-based National Mining Association. Yet changing the 1872 law is not the solution, he said, adding that “it is just a predictable way to exploit this accident by raising a completely irrelevant issue.” He cited several post-Earth Day laws—including the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act—that have addressed environmental concerns over mining. “We’re probably the most heavily regulated industry in the U.S.,” he said.

Instead, the mining industry favors so-called Good Samaritan legislation, which would allow for private groups and mining companies to clean up toxic sites, but at no liability in case of spills like those into the Animas River. “We’ve discussed royalties on new mines,” Popovich said, “if they’re reasonable.” He declined to suggest a figure.

Earthworks, meanwhile, will continue its push for reform of the mining law. “The government shouldn’t be paying for the cleanup,” Krill said, noting the EPA’s related shoestring budget. “If we modernize the 1872 law, we’ll start to reverse what’s going on by making sure the mining industry takes responsibility for its messes.”

More Related Articles:
September 17, 2015
Matson settles Hawaii’s claims over molasses spill for $15M

What is a pollutant? environmental Strategist describes a pollutant as any material, substance or product which is introduced into an environment for other than its intended use or purpose. There are numerous examples of fresh water, milk, cheese, fruit juice, beer, etc… all being classified as pollutants, and insurance coverage for pollution incidents being denied by the General Liability carriers due to total pollution exclusions. As the article below points you can add Molasses to the list of pollutants.

In today’s transparent business environment, successful businesses balance managing and transferring their environmental exposures to drive their growth and profits. Environmental Risk Managers (ERMI) has a cornucopia of educational resources to coach you and your client’s on managing and transferring their environmental exposures.

This Sept. 12, 2013 file photo shows various kinds of dead marine life on the dock fronting the La Mariana Sailing Club in Keehi Lagoon in Honolulu. A major shipping company will pay the state more than $15 million for a 2013 molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii’s attorney general said Wednesday, July 29, 2015. (AP Photo/Eugene Tanner, File)

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

Jul. 29, 2015 10:15 PM EDT

HONOLULU (AP) — A major shipping company has agreed to pay more than $15 million to compensate for a 2013 molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii’s attorney general said Wednesday.

Attorney General Doug Chin called the settlement with Hawaii-based Matson Navigation Co. one of the largest for an environmental violation in Hawaii’s history. The settlement includes a combination of cash, restoration efforts and funding for environmental programs, he said.

Matson is also agreeing to cease its molasses operation in Hawaii and pay for removal of its molasses tanks and any remaining molasses, Chin said.

The company will pay $5.9 million to the state, and the costs related to ending the molasses operation are estimated between $5.5 million and $9.5 million, which would put the total settlement amount between $11.4 million and $15.4 million, Matson Inc. said in a statement.

“The range Matson provides in its press statement appears to reflect a desire to report a smaller loss to its investors for its next earnings report,” Chin said in response. “I have received assurances and the evidence strongly indicates that it will in fact cost $9.5 million for Matson to terminate its molasses operations in Hawaii. The state will make sure that Matson spares no costs and cuts no corners.”

The 1,400 tons of molasses that spilled into the harbor in 2013 killed more than 26,000 fish and other marine life. Enough molasses to fill about seven rail cars oozed out from a section of pipe Matson thought had been sealed, suffocating marine life and discoloring the water as the sticky substance sunk to the bottom of the harbor.

The spill, in an industrial area about 5 miles west of Waikiki’s hotels and beaches, shut down much of Honolulu Harbor for nearly two weeks.

Reaching a settlement allowed the state to avoid a lawsuit that would have taken eight to 10 years to resolve in court, Chin said.

The $5.9 million paid to Hawaii includes money to re-grow a coral nursery to help replace coral that had been damaged or destroyed. It will also reimburse the state for cleanup efforts and other costs, including nearly $2 million in legal fees. There will also be a contribution to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, which is being hosted by Hawaii next year.

Matson executives said previously that they were not prepared for the possibility of a spill, despite transporting molasses from the pipeline for about 30 years.

In this Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 photo, a Maston ship sits in Honolulu Harbor near the site of a molasses spill. A major shipping company will pay the state more than $15 million for a 2013 molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii’s attorney general said Wednesday, July 29, 2015. (AP Photo/Oskar Garcia)

Earlier this year, Matson Terminals Inc. pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges for illegally releasing the molasses into the harbor without a permit on Sept. 9 and 10, 2013. As part of a plea deal, Matson agreed to pay fines and restitution totaling $1 million, including $600,000 that went to the Waikiki Aquarium and Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii.

Matson is the biggest company that ships goods to Hawaii from the mainland.

“Matson has been a member of the community for more than a hundred years, and the company’s leadership understands the damage the molasses leak caused,” Gov. David Ige said in a statement. “The resolution allows reparations to occur now and helps see to it that such an environmental disaster does not happen again in Hawaii.”

Now that there’s a settlement with Hawaii, the company doesn’t face any other pending claims, said Matson spokesman Jeff Hull.

“Environmental stewardship is a core value in our company, so this event was a blow to all of us at Matson,” President and CEO Matt Cox said in a statement. “We can’t take back what happened, but we’ve done our best to make it right.”

Matson shares climbed 51 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close Wednesday at $40.07, and they were up 1 cent in after-hours trading.

September 15, 2015
Silica – The Workplace Killer

environmental Strategist, between the lines: If you are not familiar with the pollutant Silica, please keep reading. Some of the businesses impacted by exposure to Silica are agriculture, real estate developers, excavators, road builders, manufacturers, mining operations, and municipalities with dirt roads…. Pollution liability insurance can protect you for silica exposure.

Silica: Setting a Standard

After decades of fighting for better worker protections against silica, new standards finally are within reach.

Aug 5, 2015Ginger Christ | EHS Today

Two years ago, Alan White of the United Steelworkers Local 593 testified in support of new silica standards during public hearings held by the U.S. Department of Labor.

White, who had worked at a foundry in Buffalo, N.Y. for nearly two decades, found out six years ago that he would die from exposure to silica in his workplace.

Despite his smoke-free, alcohol-free lifestyle, simple activities like walking the mile home from work became too difficult as a result of the onset of silicosis – a chronic lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica particles.

“When I got my first job at the foundry, I made more than $60,000 the first year and thought I was set. I was ready and willing to give my all to work. But I never realized that that included my life,” White said during his testimony. “Now I know that my lifestyle probably won’t benefit my long-term health because of the devastating effects of silica exposure.”

Today, White still is working, still fighting a battle he knows he can’t win against a disease brought on by unsafe work conditions.

He is not alone.

The American Lung Association estimates that 2 million U.S. workers, particularly those in mining, quarrying, sandblasting, pottery making, rock drilling, road construction, stone masonry and tunneling, are exposed to free crystalline silica dust and thus are at risk for developing silicosis.

About 100 people die from silicosis each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, while that number has decreased dramatically (85 percent) in the past 50 years, deaths among younger people (those aged 15-44) are still occurring, a trend the CDC attributes to new jobs that place workers at risk for silicosis like hydraulic fracturing, sandblasting denim and engineered stone countertop fabrication and installation.

The effects of silica dust have been known for centuries, yet it continues to be a workplace killer.

That’s because the silica standards in place by OSHA were set 40 years ago and attempts to delay updates to those standards have stalled the process, said Peg Seminario, safety and health director for the AFL-CIO.

“It’s still a problem because it’s not controlled and it’s not controlled both because the standards are out of date and aren’t sufficiently protective and also are hard to oversee and enforce. It’s still a problem because too many employers aren’t installing safeguards,” Seminario said.

However, after years and multiple attempts to set new standards, change could finally be on the horizon. OSHA as soon as early 2016 could pass new standards for worker protection from silica.

A Time for Change

The new standards proposed by OSHA – one for general industry and maritime and one for the construction industry – would set a new universal permissible exposure limit: an 8-hour time-weighted average of 50 micrograms of respirable crystalline silica per cubic meter of air. The standards, which also suggest control measures and precautions, would replace the existing standard set in 1971 that is based on calculations and differs by industry.

“It’s not just limiting the amount, it’s really putting in a different approach that actually helps you get controls in place,” Seminario said.

With the new standards in effect, nearly 700 lives could be saved each year, OSHA estimates. And another 1,600 new cases of silicosis per year could be prevented.

“My health will not improve, but as OSHA moves forward with this silica standard other workers will be able to enjoy their time with their grandchildren,” White said.

The new standards would align OSHA with the recommended exposure limit (REL) that NIOSH proposed in 1974, said Stephanie Stevens, a health communication specialist for NIOSH.

Despite the lack of formal protections, however, some industries are taking steps of their own to manage the hazard.

The Silica/Asphalt Milling Machine Partnership, for example, developed the Best Practice Engineering Control Guidelines to Control Worker Exposure to Respirable Crystalline Silica during Asphalt. The document established recommendations for the use of ventilation controls and of water sprays to help industry lower silica exposures.

The effort, led by the National Asphalt Pavement Association, was 10 years in the making and involved collaboration between labor, industry and government groups.

“It’s not as though there haven’t been efforts made by some employers; there have. The voluntary efforts haven’t been sufficient,” Seminario said. “It’s not become a widespread practice.”

Instead, companies and foundries like the one from which White developed silicosis focus on “obvious safety hazards” like trips and falls, lifting, heat exposure and plant traffic.

“But they did not tell us about the unseen dangers. They never told me about silica and the health effects that breathing it can cause,” White said.

Some industry groups are arguing that the new standards proposed by OSHA are too restrictive.

The Construction Industry Safety Coalition, a group of 25 national trade associations, in March said that the new standards would cost the industry $5 billion per year – 4.5 billion more than OSHA estimated – and would cut 52,700 jobs from the national economy.

Jeff Buczkiewicz, president of the Mason Contractors Association of America, said that “the current silica rule has done a fantastic job of reducing related illnesses.”

“Our industry needs a rule that is based on real-world construction site scenarios that is not technologically and economically infeasible to implement,” he said.

But Seminario said the AFL-CIO doesn’t believe the current standards are protective and partially attributes the decline in the number of silica-related deaths to the nature of work and how workers are more transient, thus less likely to have health problems identified as silica-related.

“The [fact] that we still have so many in industry saying the current standard is fine, that we just need more enforcement, that to me is just criminal and so dishonest. It just demonstrates that there really is no interest in protecting workers,” she said.

RELATED

Working with Silicosis: Alan White’s Story

President Obama Should Veto Safety Cuts, ‘Poison Pills,’ Safety Groups Say

OSHA and NIOSH: Protect Workers from Silica Exposure during Countertop Installation

September 9, 2015
Financial Business Model for Colleges

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Financial business models for colleges & universities depend upon grants & donations to meet their bottom line. Grants & donations can and do create environmental exposures for colleges and universities. It’s critical that colleges and universities have a financial assurance strategy to make sure environmental exposures faced through grants & donations do not blow up their bottom line.

The financial assurance strategy must also take into account the communities that have grown up around colleges and universities. This means their financial assurance strategy must address not only clean up of pollutants but third party bodily injury, third party property damage, third party business income, natural resource damages, legal fees, investigation costs… environmental Strategist™ call this development and execution of an environmental Management Strategy (eMS). For more on eMS to drive growth and profits in today’s business environment, go to www.estrategist.com.

The LEHR site in Davis, seen in 1976, once performed radiation research on animals. Wells there are showing rising levels of chromium-6, which was not part of the research. UC Davis

Toxic metal levels rise on UC Davis property – scientists confounded

BY EDWARD ORTIZ

Levels of the carcinogen chromium-6 are rising in groundwater at a UC Davis site used as an animal-testing laboratory during the Cold War, and university officials are at a loss to explain why.

Currently, 42 of the 100 monitoring wells at the former Laboratory for Energy-Related Health Research, or LEHR, do not meet state standards for safe levels of chromium-6, a heavy metal also known as hexavalent chromium.

Exposure to chromium-6 can lead to skin irritation, occupational asthma, and kidney and liver damage, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The carcinogen came to the fore in the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich,” in which the lead figure sued Pacific Gas and Electric over chromium-6 found in a Mojave Desert community’s drinking water.

Many wells at the LEHR site – where the effects of low-level radiation were tested on laboratory animals – have five times the state standard of 10 parts per billion for chromium-6.

The chemical is but one of many found at the LEHR site, where research on the biological effects of radiation was conducted for agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy from 1960 to 1989, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 15-acre location off Old Davis Road south of Interstate 80 has been a federal Superfund site since 1994, and millions of dollars have gone toward cleanup efforts.

Research at the site involved exposing hundreds of beagles to strontium-90, dousing them with cobalt-60 and injecting them with radium-226 to determine how humans might survive nuclear exposure. But chromium wasn’t involved.

“This is a conundrum for us,” said Sue Fields, environmental manager at UC Davis. “There is really no indication that there was any dumping of chromium at the LEHR site.”

Fields believes the answer will not be found anytime soon.

“Part of the problem is, the more we look the more we find,” she said.

Chromium-6 is typically found in areas where there has been a lot of industrial activity, such as electroplating. That type of activity has never occurred at the LEHR site or in Davis, Fields said.

Moreover, the pattern of wells with high chromium levels at LEHR do not match areas where toxic waste was disposed at the site.

“We’re finding that chromium-6 seems to be more widespread than just our disposal areas at the site,” Fields said.

UC Davis has enlisted Stanford University expert Scott Fendorf to help solve the puzzle.

“It’s not easy to identify the source, but the distribution of chromium-6 does not parallel other known contaminants introduced at the LEHR site,” said Fendorf, who has been studying chromium for 25 years.

“As such, it seems more likely that it is of natural origin,” Fendorf said.

However, naturally occurring chromium-6 cannot fully explain the rising levels at the LEHR, Fields said.

One theory she believes is that changes are happening in the soil where naturally existing chromium-3 is mixing with sludge dumped into three landfills at the site over the years.

Another theory is that chromium-6 may have been introduced into the ground or the groundwater by years of dumping rust inhibitor chemicals used to clean out underwater pipes serving the many cooling and heating towers on the UC Davis campus.

“The reality is, we’ve not found any evidence of any such kind of release on the campus,” Fields said. “If someone had dumped a bunch of chromic acid or corrosion inhibitors into the ground, it would still be in the soil.”

Fields said UC Davis is doing remediation on the LEHR site where it is extracting groundwater from wells and treating it at a nearby wastewater plant so that it can be converted to naturally occurring chromium-3.

The university has spent $20 million on cleaning up the site since the early 1990s, Fields said. The University of California system has spent an additional $6 million. The university shares the cleanup costs at LEHR with the Department of Energy.

While workers and visitors at the LEHR site do not face exposure risks, the danger is that chromium-6 could contaminate aquifers and groundwater in the rural area nearby. Fields said most farms there likely use deeper wells that do not have chromium-6 problems, but there is not much data because those wells are private.

Establishing why chromium-6 levels are rising at LEHR may shed some light on why the toxic metal is being found in groundwater regionally, Fields said.

New state standards for chromium were set in 2014 and apply to public wells and drinking water. The new standards put the majority of Davis’ drinking wells over the limit for chromium-6. The city is joining Woodland in building a new surface-water project that will tap the Sacramento River for drinking water by the end of 2016.

One private well in the Binning tract area of Davis has recorded five times the standard set by the state. Property owner Martha Daschbach said that she is no longer able to use the well on her property because of the high chromium-6 levels and is forced to use bottled water to replace well water.

Wells in Woodland and Dixon are also over state standards, according to data provided to The Sacramento Bee from the State Water Resources Control Board.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to an area in Davis as the Benning tract. The correct name is the Binning tract.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/article22711758.html#storylink=cpy

August 4, 2015
It’s Spring Time and The Smell of Meth Is In The Air
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers wearing protective Hazmat gear work to dismantle a ” meth lab cave” built into the side of a hill in a wooded area. An investigation into a meth manufacturing operation led to the discovery of the underground lab.
Mark Bugnaski / Kalamazoo Gazette

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Meth labs are a huge environmental hazard that can impact each and every one of us. Meth labs can be found in places such as homes, trailers parks, apartments, automobiles, hotel rooms, commercial buildings, storage units, or as the link below points out, mother nature.

From the US Forest Service website on meth labs:

As an environmental hazard, the byproducts of meth labs contaminate their surroundings with harmful fumes and highly explosive chemical compounds. Abandoned meth labs are basically time bombs, waiting for the single spark that can ignite the contents of the lab. In the hands of the untrained chemists simultaneously using meth and working with the flammable chemical components, a working meth lab is just as unsafe.

Simply put, meth kills. The drug stimulates the central nervous system, producing excess levels of neurotoxins the brain cannot handle. As a health concern, meth eliminates brain functions and leads to psychosis and, in some cases, deadly strokes. Other long-term effects of meth use include respiratory problems, irregular heartbeat, extreme anorexia, tooth decay and loss, and cardiovascular collapse and death.

How to recognize a Methamphetamine lab?
- Unusual, strong odors like cat urine, ether, ammonia, acetone or other chemicals.
- Coffee filters containing a white pasty substance, a dark red paste, or small amounts of shiny white crystals.
- Glass cookware or stove pans containing a powdery residue.
- Shacks or cabins with windows blacked out.
- Open windows vented with fans during the winter.
- Excessive trash including large amounts of items such as antifreeze containers, lantern fuel cans, engine starting fluid cans, HEET cans, lithium batteries and empty battery packages, wrappers, red chemically stained coffee filters, drain cleaner and duct tape.
- Unusual amounts of clear glass containers.
Getting rid of a meth lab is dangerous and expensive. Meth cookers dump battery acid, solvents and other toxic materials into rivers or the ground. Much of the waste is highly flammable and explosive.
- One pound of meth produces six pounds of toxic waste.
- Even months after meth labs have been closed, chemical residue still remains.
- The chemicals used in the manufacturing process can be corrosive, explosive, flammable, toxic, and possibly radioactive.
- Solvent chemicals may be dumped into the ground, sewers, or septic systems. This contaminates the surface water, ground water, and wells.
- Traces of chemicals can pervade the walls, drapes, carpets, and furniture of a laboratory site.
Pollution liability insurance can protect you against the environmental exposure to meth labs. Contact your environmental team member at environmental Risk Managers to strategize in more detail. Instead of poisoning Mother Nature, let’s embrace her

More Reading –

Spring thaw uncovers meth-related dump sites across Michigan

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/05/spring_brings_visibility_to_me.html#incart_m-rpt-2
May 7, 2015
A Rising Tide of Contaminants

environmental Strategist, between the lines: It may surprise you to know the vast array of contaminates our waste water treatment plants are not equipped to treat. The untreated contaminants are then discharged into our waterways. This article gives 40,000 foot view of what is taking place with our waterways from some of the materials / chemicals we produce along with the politics.

By DEBORAH BLUM – SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Deborah Swackhamer, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota, decided last year to investigate the chemistry of the nearby Zumbro River. She and her colleagues were not surprised to find traces of pesticides in the water.

Neither were they shocked to find prescription drugs ranging from antibiotics to the anti–convulsive carbamazepine. Researchers realized more than 15 years ago that pharmaceuticals – excreted by users, dumped down drains – were slipping through wastewater treatment systems.

But though she is a leading expert in so-called emerging contaminants, Dr. Swackhamer was both surprised and dismayed by the sheer range and variety of what she found. Caffeine drifted through the river water, testament to local consumption of everything from coffee to energy drinks. There were relatively high levels of acetaminophen, the over-the-counter painkiller. Acetaminophen causes liver damage in humans at high doses; no one knows what it does to fish.

“We don’t know what these background levels mean in terms of environmental or public health,” she said. “It’s definitely another thing that we’re going to be looking at.”

Or, she might have said, one of many, many other things.

The number of chemicals contaminating our environment is growing at exponential rate, scientists say. A team of researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey tracks them in American waterways, sediments, landfills and municipal sewage sludge, which is often converted into agricultural fertilizer. They’ve found steroid hormones and the antibacterial agent triclosan in sewage; the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) in fish; and compounds from both birth control pills and detergents in the thin, slimy layer that forms over stones in streams.

“We’re looking at an increasingly diverse array of organic and inorganic chemicals that may have ecosystem health effects,” said Edward Furlong, a research chemist with the U.S.G.S. office in Denver and one of the first scientists to track the spread of pharmaceutical compounds in the nation’s waterways. “Many of them are understudied and unrecognized.”

In an essay last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, titled “Re-Emergence of Emerging Contaminants,” editor-in-chief Jerald L. Schnoor called attention to both the startling growth of newly registered chemical compounds and our inadequate understanding of older ones.

The American Chemical Society, the publisher of the journal, maintains the most comprehensive national database of commercially registered chemical compounds in the country. “The growth of the list is eye-popping, with approximately 15,000 new chemicals and biological sequences registered every day,” Dr. Schnoor wrote.

Not all of those are currently in use, he emphasized, and the majority are unlikely to be dangerous. “But, for better or worse, our commerce is producing innovative, challenging new compounds,” he wrote.

Dr. Schnoor, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa, also noted rising concern among researchers about the way older compounds are altered in the environment, sometimes taking new and more dangerous forms.

Some research suggests that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are broken down by plants into even more toxic metabolites. Equally troubling, scientists are finding that while PCBs are banned, they continue to seep into the environment in unexpected ways, such as from impurities in the caulk of old school buildings.

PCBs have long been identified as hazardous, but not every contaminant is so risky, Dr. Schnoor emphasized.

“Out of the millions of chemical compounds that we know about, thousands have been tested and there are very few that show important health effects,” he said in an interview.

But, he added, the development of new compounds and the increasing discovery of unexpected contaminants in the environment means that the nation desperately needs a better system for assessing and prioritizing chemical exposures.

That includes revisiting the country’s antiquated chemical regulation and assessment regulations. The Toxic Substances Control Act went into effect in 1976, almost 40 years ago, and has not been updated since.

The law does require the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain an inventory of registered industrial compounds that may be toxic, but it does not require advance safety testing of those materials. Of the some 84,000 compounds registered, only a fraction have ever been fully tested for health effects on humans. The data gap includes some materials, like creosote and coal tar derivatives, which are currently manufactured at rates topping a million pounds a year.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Schnoor and other scientists want to see the act updated and transformed into a mechanism for science-based risk assessment of suspect compounds. Indeed, everyone from researchers to environmental groups to the American chemical industry agree that the law is frustratingly inadequate.

“Our chemical safety net is more hole than net,” said Ken Cook, president of theEnvironmental Working Group, an advocacy group. The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, doesn’t regulate the environmental spread of pharmaceuticals. And the toxic substances law ignores their presence in waterways.

“Where does that leave us in terms of scientific understanding of what drugs to regulate?” Mr. Cook said.

Anne Womack Kolton, vice president for communications at the American Chemistry Council, an organization representing chemical manufacturers, agreed. “Think about the world 40 years ago,” she said. “It was a vastly different place. It’s common sense to revise the law and make it consistent with what we know about chemicals today.”

The two sides don’t agree on what standards for chemical testing are needed or what kind of protective restrictions should be put in place for chemicals deemed hazardous. And they are in deep disagreement about whether a revised federal law should preempt actions taken by tough-minded states like California.

The council argues for federal standardization as the most efficient route; environmental groups believe that such an action would weaken public protection. Legislators have so far not been able to resolve those differences. This month yet another proposed update to the act stalled in a Senate committee.

“Congress has not sent an environmental law to the president’s desk in 18 years,” Mr. Cook said. “And in the current environment, it’s very difficult to get something through.”

Still, Dr. Swackhamer, who recently stepped down as chair of the E.P.A.’s science advisory board, notes that despite the lack of legislation, scientists have been working toward better ways to assess the risks posed by the increasing numbers of chemicals in our lives. Some may help whittle the inventory of T.S.C.A. compounds down to a priority list that focuses on less than a thousand products.

That’s still a daunting number of chemical unknowns. But given the tens of thousands of materials in the inventory, it’s a start.

December 5, 2014