VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I’m Kathy Milenkovsi. I’m an energy and environmental attorney with Steptoe & Johnson in their Columbus, Ohio office. Did you know that last year the US EPA announced six new enforcement initiatives for the 2011-2012 biennium? One of those was ensuring energy extractions after compliance with environmental law. What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re in the oil, gas or mining industry, it means that there is a significant increase in the likelihood that an EPA inspector might show up at one of your sites. Today, I’d like to give you a few tips on what to do if that happens.
Tip No. 1 – remember the golden rule, it should be obvious. EPA inspections are intimidating and they can be frustrating and disrupt your schedule. Nevertheless, it’s important to remain courteous, and kind, and helpful – help the inspectors – don’t vent your frustrations or get angry with them as that’s not likely to help the process.
Tip No. 2 – be prepared. It helps if you and your environmental management team know in advance what to expect if an EPA inspection occurs. You should know that EPA may come focused on one area like air or water compliance or they may be there to do a multimedia inspection which looks at everything. They may come with a few people or they may bring a team of dozens. They may be there for a few days or for a complex facility, even a few weeks. They are likely to want to look at records, photos, they’ll take samples, they’ll tour the facility, they may interview some of your employees. If you are prepared for this in advance and know how to deal with these requests, you will likely be much more confident and more comfortable, if and when an inspector actually shows up at your site.
Tip No. 3 – have an opening conference. Before the inspection kicks off, it’s important to have your upper level management come, meet the inspectors, greet them and welcome them to your facility, and give them an overview of what your company does and how your facility operates. At that meeting, you can introduce the inspectors to the environmental management team, and at that point, really, you can turn the meeting over to EPA and let them tell you why they’ve chosen your facility and what they hope to accomplish and how long they plan to be there.
Tip No. 4 – knowledgeable escorts. I can’t stress this enough, but you need to ensure that you have escorts available from your environmental team who are knowledgeable with your environmental compliance program, who can accompany the inspectors on every step of their journey. If the inspectors are asking questions, your escorts should take notes, pay attention to who they talk to, what they ask, what the response was, if they stop and are looking at something; make a note of what they looked at. If they take samples, request a split sample, if they take photographs, request a duplicate photograph. It is essential to document essentially what happened at the inspection, and this way the escorts can report back to management on a daily basis of what happened during that day’s events. Particularly important, if EPA does identify some areas of concern, you should identify ways that you can try to address them and let them know when they come back the next day that you’re already working on fixing the problems.
Tip No. 5 – be on top of your paperwork. EPA is almost certainly going to request to review your records and your monitoring data and so forth. You should be sure you know where and how those records are organized, and if you can make such a request, you should try to provide them with a conference room, or a clean desk or somewhere - where they can spread out and comfortably review and photocopy those documents. It obviously helps if your records are organized and are up to date. Nothing leaves a bad impression quite like missing or disorganized records.
Tip No. 6 – at the end of the inspection process, you should request a closing or debriefing conference. Ask the inspectors what their thoughts are, whether they have any findings or thoughts, and if they have any concerns that they have identified, try to figure out what you’re going to do to address those and let them know. EPA may come back to you with written requests for more information, if they do, you should promptly respond to those and just remember that the inspection is really a first step, and it can either be the first step or the last step to the enforcement process. And hopefully, if you have dealt with everything properly, you can avoid enforcement.
If you have any questions about EPA inspections or other environmental matters, please feel free to call any of our attorneys. You can find out contact information on our website at www.steptoe-johnson.com.