EHS Career Trends/Certification

Tips for Managing Environmental Regulations

By Chris Kilbourne Dec 21, 2011 EHS Career Trends/Certification

Updated: Dec 21, 2011

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.

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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.

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