The Standard, Environmental Standards, Inc.

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The Standard
March 2009 - Page 2

Big News, Small Change
New Location For Charlottesville Office
As of April 1, 2009 (and no, this is no April Fool’s joke), the Virginia Office of Environmental Standards will be moving to a new location.

The new address will be:

1208 East Market Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902

The phone, fax, and e-mail addresses will remain the same.

The Virginia office is undertaking this move to a larger facility to accommodate the growth of our Virginia organization and to provide enhanced facilities to serve our clients.

If you have any questions regarding our updated contact information or the capabilities of the Virginia Office, please contact Phil McKalips at 434-293-4039

As always, please feel free to stop by and visit our new facilities and speak with our staff.

Pollution Caps For The Chesapeake Bay
Blue Heron In late November, then US EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson renewed the Agency’s commitment to speed Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts with its partners. US EPA officials outlined plans for an unprecedented effort to set pollution caps needed to meet water quality standards throughout the Bay’s watershed. “Working together we can turn the tide on a cleaner, healthier Bay,” said Mr. Johnson. “It will take the federal government and our partners to solve the challenges of the Chesapeake Bay.”

Administrator Johnson said that leadership in the development of a Bay-wide pollution cap (Total Maximum Daily Load or TMDL) will be among US EPA’s significant contributions. The process for creating the TMDL – the largest of its kind – was outlined by US EPA officials on November 21, 2008, at the Chesapeake Executive Council meeting at the Washington, DC, Union Station.

A TMDL is a tool of the Clean Water Act and sets maximum pollutant “loads” that waters can accept without exceeding state water quality standards. The Bay-wide TMDL is scheduled to be completed in December 2010 and will identify pollutant caps by major river basin in the 64,000-square-mile Bay watershed.

The TMDL will allocate “loadings” of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment to all jurisdictions in the watershed, including New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and DC.
“This is a major undertaking that will involve substantial public input and close coordination with the states,” said Jon Capacasa, Director of the Water Protection Division in US EPA Region 3, the lead agency for the TMDL development. “This process will help states implement strategies for accelerated restoration activities.”

US EPA Region 3 will work closely with modeling and water quality experts at the Chesapeake Bay Program in developing the TMDL and will engage the states in the process through the Bay Program’s committee structure. The Agency also will work with state agencies as they develop accompanying implementation plans that identify specific actions needed to satisfy the caps. The states will provide commitments every two years for the necessary actions.

More information on the TMDL process is available at www.epa.gov/owow/tmdl/.

2008 US EPA Region 3 Compliance And Enforcement Annual Results
US EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Office (Region 3) has issued a report that details the enforcement program in fiscal year 2008. According to Region 3, industries, government agencies, and other regulated entities agreed to spend more than $3.4 billion on pollution controls and environmental projects; the mid-Atlantic enforcement program achieved environmental and public health benefits through both small-scale and large-scale settlements. Key elements of the report are presented below.

Maryland became the first state in the nation to sign a US EPA agreement to self-police its environmental compliance.
As part of a settlement agreement between US EPA and a southeastern Pennsylvania transportation authority more than $1 million will be spent on a wind energy project. The authority agreed to pay a cash penalty of $169,527 and purchase 152 million kilowatt hours of clean energy (in place of conventionally generated energy) over the next 2 years.
One of the most comprehensive remediation settlement agreements in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was reached when a manufacturer agreed to pay $10 million to prevent future discharges to a creek and to spend about $9 million for environmental projects.
In a settlement with federal, state, and county authorities, a sanitary authority in western Pennsylvania agreed to a plan to reduce the annual discharge of untreated sewage into local waterways. Under the proposed consent decree, the authority agreed to a multi-year strategy to upgrade the sewage systems, to pay a $1.2 million penalty for past Clean Water Act violations, and to undertake $3 million in environmental projects.
A national settlement will have an unprecedented impact on air quality in the eastern United States (primarily, Pennsylvania in Region 3). National pollutant reductions saving $32 billion in health costs annually could result. The company agreed to cut 813,000 tons of air pollutants annually at an estimated cost of more than $4.6 billion, pay a $15 million penalty, and spend $60 million on projects to mitigate the adverse effects of its past emissions.
A national case with a mining industry company brought the largest civil penalty in US EPA's history against a company for wastewater discharge permit violations. The company will pay a $20 million civil penalty in a corporate-wide settlement to resolve Clean Water Act violations at coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.
A settlement was reached with six defendants for alleged wetland violations in a case that began in 1999 over one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land - 1,560 areas in Virginia. In addition to $100,000 in penalties, approximately one-half of the land (873 acres of non-tidal wetlands) will be restored and preserved in perpetuity under a conservation easement.
A manufacturer of acetate products in Virginia was investigated and found guilty of Clean Air Act violations associated with monitoring and repairing equipment at the facility. The company will pay $60,000 and has increased its efforts to monitor and detect leaks of hazardous air pollutants.
A long-sought resolution to a Clean Air Act case that began with a full compliance inspection in 2003 was for $200,000 for past Clean Air Act violations at a chemical manufacturing facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

According to US EPA Region 3, many 2008 cases that seem relatively small are gaining significant results cumulatively. These cases include more than 130 administrative orders issued by the regional drinking water and underground injection control programs this year alone. Within 4 months, more than 43 of the facilities (two-thirds of the total) returned to compliance. Most orders went to systems in Pennsylvania and Maryland to implement sampling plans for monitoring for either E. Coli or total trihalomethanes.

Region 3 conducted 3,000 environmental inspections and trained state inspectors who conduct double or triple the number of US EPA inspections in their states. The Agency reported that it had had a “robust” federal facility enforcement program, which included 15 administrative settlements with federal facilities in the mid-Atlantic region in response to underground storage tank (UST) violations. Settlements reportedly ranged from $450 to $94,374, which compared to many environmental cases is relatively small. Looking at these cases collectively amounts to $304,743 in cash penalties and compliance at 15 federal facilities.

To help the District of Columbia with its compliance monitoring and enforcement workload as the District works to more fully establish a new organization, US EPA invested in UST inspections and enforcement in DC that resulted in 39 administrative settlements for a total of $464,796 in cash penalties. These penalties ranged from $150 to $80,000 and addressed violations of the UST regulations.

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