We have a natural inclination to
associate environmental regulation and pollution with industry. Air
emissions, water discharges and the generation of hazardous wastes are
the stuff we associate with chemical plants, petroleum refineries,
manufacturing, electric power plants and the like. The public does not
associate pollution or the detection and enforcement of environmental
violations by the EPA with office parks, colleges, universities and
hospitals, nor, in some cases do the people who work in these
facilities. The EPA does.
EPA
links colleges, universities and hospitals with a wide range of
environmental obligations. Among the general checklist of
environmental issues that EPA ties to colleges and universities are the
management and upkeep of oil storage tanks (used for heating oil or
gasoline to fuel campus vehicles), the proper identification, safe
storage and proper disposal of hazardous wastes generated in science
departments and maintenance facilities, the regulation of air emissions
from campus power plants and boilers, asbestos and lead paint in older
buildings and the proper handling of campus sewage. EPA believes that
many colleges are not fully aware of their responsibilities under
environmental laws and that, in some cases, this lack of awareness puts
staff and students at risk.
EPA
has developed a longer list of concerns with respect to healthcare.
Hospitals, according to EPA, are the fourth largest source of mercury
discharged into the environment. They also produce a wide variety of
hazardous wastes, such as chemotherapy chemicals, radionuclides,
medical wastes, and 1% of all municipal solid waste generated in the
U.S. Additional concerns commonly raised include management of
asbestos and lead paint in older buildings and the proper operation of
storage tanks, boilers and power plants.
To
encourage improved environmental compliance at these institutions, EPA
Region 2, which includes all of New York State, has launched
initiatives to encourage self-audits of colleges, universities and
hospitals. These programs are outgrowths of a policy adopted by EPA in
2000 to promote environmental compliance audits generally. These
initiatives in New York began with letters to 365 colleges and
universities and 480 hospitals, and a number of outreach programs, but
have only slowly gained acceptance.
.
Entrance into the formal
program requires a "Facility Audit Agreement" with EPA which combines
incentives with obligations. The signer agrees to perform a
comprehensive self-audit for compliance with environmental regulations,
to report its findings, including disclosure of environmental
violations, and to select and implement corrective actions within 60
days of discovery. In return, the EPA agrees to waive the
"gravity-based" component of penalties and to minimize any penalty
imposed to repay the economic benefit of noncompliance and to assign a
low priority for future compliance inspections. EPA asserts that, in
every instance reviewed to date, it has actually waived the entire
penalty. In addition to the formal self-audit program, approximately
50 institutions have self-reported violations leading to negotiations
with EPA to set penalties and design corrective actions.
Facilities
that do no volunteer to self-audit remain targets for inspection and
enforcement actions. And there have been a number of high profile
enforcements publicly touted by EPA.
The
enforcement actions include hazardous waste violations asserted against
C.W. Post College, Kean University, New Jersey City University and
Clarkson University and, most recently, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center, for the improper storage and disposal of chemotherapy wastes,
as well as a general failure to determine whether wastes were
hazardous. The penalties sought range from $23,000 to more than
$214,000. Overall, EPA has commenced proceedings against colleges and
hospitals seeking penalties totaling more than $1.6 million. According
to an EPA spokesperson, more enforcement actions are in the works. She
also notes that ongoing inspections are proving that EPA's concerns
were justified. While on average only 1 in 30 hazardous waste
inspections of industry results in a penalty assessment, for colleges
and hospitals the ratio is 1 in 3.
Despite
its outreach programs, EPA Region 2 has signed only 14 self-audit
agreements with colleges and universities, including one comprehensive
agreement with the State University of New York covering all 64
campuses. However, coverage in central and western New York has been
otherwise sparse, including only Syracuse University and Canisius
College.
EPA Region 2 has signed 21 self-audit agreements with
hospitals, with nine of those agreements announced in the past two
months. The only upstate hospital in the self-audit program is St.
Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse; however, Strong Memorial Hospital
co-sponsored with EPA an environmental compliance and pollution
prevention conference which EPA regards as one of its great successes
in the healthcare initiative.
Clearly,
most of the more than 800 colleges, universities and hospitals in EPA
Region 2 have not responded to EPA's initiative, which has only 35
official participants. Adding in the 50 that have disclosed violations
without joining the program, participation is still barely above 10%.
EPA attributes the lack of response, in part, to difficult economic
times for colleges and hospitals. The self-audit program represents a
commitment of money and staff to actually conduct an audit and to
correct any problems uncovered by the audit. Once the agreement is
signed, the audit must be completed. On the other hand, doing nothing
puts the burden on EPA and DEC to allocate their limited resources to
conducting inspections. Given the high correlation between an
inspection by EPA and the discovery of violations, it appears that the
vast majority of colleges and hospitals are betting that they will not
be inspected. With the certainty that some facilities will be
inspected and fined and the possibility that undiscovered practices are
putting students and employees at risk of harm, this seems like a bet
which may save money and effort in the short run, but has no real
winners.
Reprinted with permission of The Daily Record, @2004