Do you find environmental regulations confusing? Use these tips to protect against misunderstanding regulatory requirements.
Ensure that you are aware of all federal, state, and local regulations that govern your facility, products, and transportation activities. This must be a management activity. You should possess a well-defined process for identifying your obligations, and specific individuals should be assigned to perform this task on a regular basis. Environmental staff or whoever is responsible for environmental compliance should be notified as a matter of course to review all process, equipment, or product changes with any potential to activate new requirements.
- Track new and impending rules. Determine how your state and local governments publish information about their rules. If you pay dues to a state business association, they have staff who track these developments. Find out how you can get regular updates. Even better, make notes in your calendar to call two or three times a year for the latest information.
- Check with federal and state agencies for specific conferences and workshops many of them provide. The specific topic is often a cue to an upcoming enforcement priority. Some enforcement officials have been known to target applicable facilities whose personnel did not attend workshops.
Looking for environmental compliance help? You need the BLR environmental management online compliance portal Enviro.BLR.com. Instant access! Get the details.
- Make indoctrination into environmental responsibilities an intrinsic part of training for new staff as well as for staff who change positions or assume new responsibilities. A fundamental understanding at the operator level of environmental compliance, specific training in spotting the danger signs of non-compliance and clear instructions to report problems can be your best means of avoiding misunderstandings and oversights before they occur. “I knew that was a problem, but I didn’t know I was supposed to report it,” is a statement you never want to hear from floor staff.
- Network. Attend business conferences and outside training courses, particularly as they pertain to your business sector. Agency technical staff frequently show up at these events specifically to make themselves available to answer your questions. Sharing information with peers in your industry or related industries can be extraordinarily enlightening.
- Perform a facility-specific compliance audit. If you do this yourself, be sure to work from a source that covers all potential areas of regulatory exposure. EPA’s statute-specific audit protocols and sector-specific notebooks are tools developed to help you put together the background material and checklists needed to conduct audits. If you can afford it, consider bringing in an outside consultant to help you put together an audit program that you can use on a regular basis. Be sure the consultant has good experience in your industry sector.
Enviro.BLR.com puts practical RCRA, CAA, CWA, hazardous waste regulatory analysis and activity, news, and compliance tools at your fingertips 24/7. Try it.
Online Environmental Management Tools at an Affordable Price
Whether you need help identifying and managing regulatory requirements or some other important environmental issue, Enviro.BLR.com provides all the information you need, 24/7.
This essential online environmental management tool puts practical RCRA, CAA, CWA, hazardous waste regulatory analysis and activity, news, and compliance tools at your fingertips whenever you need it. With instant access, your expensive calls to lawyers and consultants, and the risk of costly mistakes from “not knowing,” are a thing of the past.
A basic subscription includes detailed environmental information and tools on federal EPA and 1 state. All 50 states are available. Full text regulations are also available as a low-cost option.
Your subscription includes:
- State-specific regulatory analysis
- Continuous regulatory updates—more than 500 posts each month
- Hundreds of compliance and training tools
- Environmental best practice and white papers
- “Site Navigator,” a powerful, easy-to-use search
- 2 weekly ezines sent to your desktop to keep you on top of the latest EPA developments, both federal and your state
- 3-day expert answers to your questions from our editors
If you’d like to personally evaluate Enviro.BLR.com and see how it can help you comply with environmental requirements, we’ll be happy to provide a no-cost, no-obligation tour of the website. Just let us know, and we’ll arrange it.
PingBack from http://www.rimonabantexcellence.com/t.php?aHR0cDovL3NhZmV0eWRhaWx5YWR2aXNvci5ibHIuY29tL2FyY2hpdmUvMjAxMS8xMi8yMi9zYWZldHlfcHJvZmVzc2lvbmFsX21hbmFnZW1lbnRfZW52aXJvbm1lbnRhbF9yZWd1bGF0aW9ucy5hc3B4