Surprise! That will be $78K please.

Came across this via CSHEMA and the Portland Tribune:

Lewis & Clark College officials were surprised to receive a $77,927 penalty from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for discharging chlorinated wastewater from a swimming pool to a nearby stream for more than four decades.

It pays to know (or costs to not know) if you're discharging to sanitary or stormwater, and doing it the right way...

"...the college has been disposing of wastewater from the swimming pool through its stormwater conveyance system, which discharges to an outfall pipe into a stream to the north of the campus."

Washington University in St. Louis to Pay $15,000 Civil Penalty, Clean High School Labs to Settle Hazardous Waste Allegations

Release date: 08/09/2010

Contact Information: Chris Whitley, 913-551-7394,

whitley.christopher@epa.gov

Environmental NewsFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Kansas City, Kan., August 9, 2010) - Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., will pay a $15,000 civil penalty and spend at least $45,000 on a supplemental project to help clean local high school laboratories of hazardous waste, as part of a settlement with EPA Region 7 over hazardous waste management issues at the university’s Danforth and School of Medicine campuses.According to an administrative consent agreement filed in Kansas City, Kan., an EPA representative conducted compliance evaluation inspections at the university’s Danforth Campus, at One Brookings Drive, and at the School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Avenue, on separate dates in April 2008.

Those inspections noted several violations of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which regulates the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste.At both campuses, the inspections found RCRA violations for failure to make hazardous waste determinations; operating as a treatment, storage or disposal facility without a proper permit; issues related to the storage of hazardous waste beyond legal time limits; failure to properly label hazardous waste storage containers; inadequacies in contingency plans for hazardous waste-related emergencies; inability to provide documentation of hazardous waste training plans; and failure to properly manage waste lamps.Additionally, the School of Medicine inspection noted RCRA violations for storage of mixed waste drums with inadequate aisle space, and storage of ignitable waste within 50 feet of the property line. The latter violation involved 13 drums of ignitable material stored on the Fourth Floor, and another four drums of ignitable material stored on the First Floor of the building.

As part of the settlement with EPA, Washington University has agreed to perform ongoing clean-out operations of laboratories at its Danforth and School of Medicine campuses, and provide documentation of those activities to EPA.Additionally, the university has agreed to spend a minimum of $45,000 on a supplemental environmental project to address hazardous waste issues in 12 high schools within the St. Louis Public Schools District.

Through the project, the university will hire an environmental services firm to remove, transport and dispose of wastes from school laboratories. University representatives also will meet with school staff members to discuss each school’s unique hazardous waste challenges and provide ideas to reduce future waste production.Schools targeted in project work plan include Beaumont, Blewett, Carnahan, Clark, Cleveland, Des Peres, Gateway, Laclede, Lyon, Mark Twain, Sherman and Sigal.“This enforcement action, coupled with the supplemental project to help the St. Louis Public Schools, will ultimately make academic laboratories, school campuses, and their surrounding urban communities safer places in which to learn, work and live,” said Karl Brooks, EPA Region 7 Administrator.

# # #Learn more about EPA’s civil enforcement of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

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CSHEMA conference in Minneapolis, July 2011

I just received a timely reminder from our friend Andy Phelan at the University of Minnesota to hold July 17-20, 2011 for the CSHEMA (Campus Safety Health and Environmental Management Association) conference to be held in our neighboring state. Not much specific information is available beyond the conference site and submission requests for abstracts (due Oct. 15), but you can still check out the conference website.

CSHEMA website: http://www.cshema.org/

Conference website: http://www.cshema.org/minneapolis.aspx

Charter Street coal plant embarks on its transition to cleaner fuels

It's not easy going green.

Just ask John Harrod Jr., who is helping guide the $250 million green makeover of UW-Madison's Charter Street Heating Plant.

The coal-burning plant will be converted so that it burns natural gas and cleaner, farm-grown fuels such as switchgrass. The changeover won praise from the plant's many critics, including the Sierra Club, which sued the university for violating the Clean Air Act. Gone will be the giant, dust-generating pile of coal that has become a symbol of the plant and its grimy history.
But Harrod, director of the UW-Madison Physical Plant, said getting rid of that coal pile and moving to cleaner biofuels has brought its own set of problems to solve — accommodating longer and more frequent trains, for example, or expanding the plant's footprint in its already squeezed urban setting, or figuring out new air standards for burning biofuels when even environmental regulators aren't quite sure what those final standards will be.

Those issues and others will be up for discussion Wednesday when UW-Madison hosts a hearing on the final version of the environmental impact statement for the project. The hearing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in Room 1106 of the Mechanical Engineering Building, 1513 University Ave.

"I would have to say there would have been easier ways to do this," said Al Fish, head of facilities and planning management for UW-Madison. "It's been an adventure." (More....)