Pollution Engineering - February 2009 - (Page 17)

ENVIRONMENTALMANAGEMENT By Norman Wei Tracking Environmental Compliance and Data When compiling data for an operation, choosing the right tools for the job can make or break an environmental plan. E nvironmental managers must confront a myriad of time-consuming tasks on a daily basis. One of them is the management of environmental data. Another is compliance tracking. Those responsible for several site remediation jobs across the country must make sure that the different tasks associated with these jobs are being carried out in a timely fashion. How can the performance of environmental programs be tracked? For small jobs, many managers use Excel spreadsheets to track deadlines. Microsoft Outlook can also be used to track the different tasks and deadlines. For example, a large-quantity generator could use Outlook to send an alert a month before the March 1, 2010 deadline to prepare the biennial report. Quarterly reports such as are required in air permits could have deadlines set in Outlook or in a spreadsheet. To track new regulations, by far the best and least expensive way is to subscribe to EPA’s listservers. Many state agencies have similar services. And they are all free. All you need to do is to subscribe to the service on the agencies’ websites and they will e-mail you alerts on new and pending regulatory developments. There are also commercial services such as Business and Legal Reports – www.blr.com – that offer regulatory updates along with analysis for an annual subscription fee. For Fortune 500 companies with limited staff and multiple locations, domestic or worldwide, they might want to consider subscribing to commercial services that track both compliance issues and deadlines. The costs of such programs are based on the number of users, with a subscription fee of between $15 and $25 per person per month, plus an annual license fee. Marian Carr, vice president of one such provider, California-based Locus Technologies Inc., maintains that her company is not in the business of keeping track of changing regulatory requirements. It partners with other companies that specialize in that area. What this company does is integrate compliance updates into its tracking program so that its users will stay on top of the deadlines. Programs like this are designed to allow company employees from different locations to update their activities online with relative ease. The database resides on a remote off-site server that is accessible to the customers’ senior managers who want to have a bird’s eye view of their corporate compliance picture. The storage and management of environmental data is also becoming a big concern for many companies. Employees may be storing their environmental data on different spreadsheets at multiple locations. That can become a problem when someone in senior management wants to look at the big picture. A similar problem arises when different consultants are working on different projects. Environmental data could be stored in different formats at different locations. There is no guarantee that these formats are compatible with one another, leaving companies at the mercy of the consultants. There are basically two options. One is to have the consultants send backup copies of all the data and then the company must find a way to make them compatible. Another option is to require all consultants to provide the data in one format. Tracking compliance performance will be a higher priority in the coming years. With the Democratic White House and Congress, expect a much more focused approach on environmental regulations and compliance enforcement than in the previous eight years. PE “ The storage and management of environmental data is also becoming a big concern for many companies. ” Norman Wei is the founder and principal of Environmental Management and Training LLC., an environmental consulting and training firm based in Ocean Shores, Wash. He offers regulatory compliance seminars and consulting services throughout the country. His company website is www.proactenv.com. His environmental blog is www.normanswei.wordpress.com. Visit www.pollutionengineering.com and electronically forward a copy of this article to a colleague or customer. FEBRUARY2009 www.pollutionengineering.com 17 http://www.blr.com http://www.proactenv.com http://www.normanswei.wordpress.com http://www.pollutionengineering.com http://www.pollutionengineering.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Pollution Engineering - February 2009

Pollution Engineering - February 2009 Contents The Guest Dialog EnviroNews PE Events Legal Lookout Casebook Canada Environmental Management When Cleanup is Rocket Science RemTEC Features A Chile Air Filter Safer Waste Handling Reaps Rewards 2009 Environmental Software Review Some Serious Sliplining Environmental Software Products Biosolids Equipment Classified Marketplace Advertisers Index State Rules

Pollution Engineering - February 2009

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