Environmental, Safety & Sustainability All Access: Recent Episodes
Mapistry
This podcast is created by the team at Mapistry. Discussions will be engaged around environment, safety, and sustainability. Coupled with talks and advice from experts to help our customers make smarter compliance decisions. This podcast is unrestricted, unfiltered, and ready to dive into all elements of being sustainable in our business world today. Mapistry is a comprehensive software that enables industrial companies to make intelligent environmental, safety, and sustainability decisions by automating data to easily complete safety and environmental inspections. Go to Mapistry.com for more information.
On this edition of Coffee & Compliance, we welcomed Shawn Cobb, Partner at Allen Matkins, who joined Ryan to delve into data-driven enforcement analysis and trends. Together, they explored emerging trends, best practices, and practical strategies to ensure your business stays ahead of regulatory challenges. This webinar is a must-attend watch for compliance professionals, legal practitioners, and anyone interested in harnessing the power of data to drive compliance success. Take advantage of this informative session. Grab your coffee and join us for an enlightening conversation on data-driven enforcement analysis and trends with Shawn Cobb
We talked to Desean Garnett, Supervisory Attorney-Advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9 Office of Regional Counsel. Desean discussed how their office enacts National Enforcement & Compliance Initiatives, how the Environmental Justice movement impacts their work, Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEP)s role, and the Vessel General Permit (VGP).
Are you looking to get rid of manual data entry and endless spreadsheets? From hazardous, universal, recyclables, and other waste streams, Mapistry's platform takes the hassle out of waste tracking so you can effortlessly monitor and manage all your waste streams in one centralized location. This webinar covered waste stream tracking for reporting and analysis, sustainability reporting, and TRI reporting.
Kathryn Connolly, Managing Consultant, Digital Solutions at Trinity Consultants, joined Ryan on this week's Coffee and Compliance. Kathryn Connolly, shared her expertise and insights on Air Emissions Management & Technology Consideration. With her extensive experience in digital solutions at Trinity Consultants, Kathryn guided attendees through the key considerations and challenges in effectively managing air emissions. She provided valuable strategies and practical advice to optimize air emissions management processes, from regulatory compliance to technology implementation.
How to get 200 hours back a year with Mapistry's Environmental Data Platform
Mapistry's Environmental Data Platform is designed to simplify and streamline the management of air emissions. With continuous data management for air emissions monitoring, you can easily monitor your emissions data in real-time. Our platform offers immediate notifications when approaching or hitting limits, so you can quickly take action to address any issues and maintain compliance with environmental regulations.
On April 21, 2021, US EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan called to create an “EPA Council on PFAS”. What does this announcement mean for you and your clients? What will the Council on PFAS be doing? Who will participate? And where is it going?
Speaker:
Beth Hummer, Counsel, Hanson Bridgett LLP
A review of the newest developments in environmental enforcement activities, regulatory changes, and challenges over the past 30 days!
We covered:
- new enforcement actions around the Clean Air Act
- violations at chemical plants
- hazardous materials reporting violations, and
- 😱 the first federal enforcement on PFAS in wastewater discharges.
See why thousands of industrial facilities trust Mapistry to solve EHS site compliance.
Centrally manage and track all your EHS compliance data, documents, and activities from a single location. Provide staff and facilities with immediate visibility to correct and prevent compliance problems before they impact your bottom line.
During the Getting the Most Out of Mapistry Webinar, we will cover:
- different types of forms and checklists
- setting up recurring tasks and sub-tasks
- logging air/water/waste data for permit limits
- analyzing tasks, inspections and air/water data
AND a look at our newest addition, the Compliance Calendar!
We reviewed the past month's EPA enforcement, including cases for air emission violations from tanks, haz waste violations, and targeted enforcement on vegetable oil producers. In addition, we gave an update on WOTUS court rulings and where the PM2.5 rules are headed. Plus, hear a customer story on managing environmental data!
Julianne Finkelnberg, EHS Consultant at Toyota Racing Development USA, discuss how they avoid the most common stormwater permit violations by developing and implementing top-quality best management practices (BMPs). Additionally, hear how they have successfully streamlined their entire stormwater compliance process with a single software solution — from BMP management to water sampling, lab reporting, data analytics, and reporting workflows. Their world-class system is helping them not only increase EHS efficiency, but it’s helping them tremendously decrease risk exposure
Navigate the environmental compliance data gap challenges with insights into what facilities in your program have the highest environmental compliance risk of inefficiencies, violations, and lawsuits. Mapistry’s newest product release is a comprehensive environmental compliance risk score (ECRS) toolkit and dashboard that ties together core environmental actions with geographic and violation data to highlight the most pressing issues for EHS leaders. Watch our webinar to learn how to prioritize resources, identify specific areas of concern on individual facilities, and maximize operational time.
A review of the newest developments in environmental enforcement activities, regulatory changes, and challenges over the past 30 days!
In this episode we are going to be talking about the proposed PM2.5 rule and potential impact on facilities regarding air permits, enforcement cases, and California’s proposed rule to require companies to report carbon emissions.
Our kicked off our new look for our 2023 Coffee & Compliance series! In this webinar, we reviewed and shared trends from environmental enforcement activities and updating you all on regulatory changes and challenges.
Enforcement Analysis: We dived deep into EPA enforcement activity from the past month, including settlements for stormwater violations and waste disposal, including a new settlement requirements to use EPA online Environmental Justice screening tool to select disposal facilities. We also shared what the EPA’s 2022 Enforcement Report means for companies and how to think about compliance strategies for 2023.
Regulatory Updates: Waters of the US (WOTUS) was recently updated and in conjunction with the pending Supreme Court decision, gives companies another set of regulatory challenges to think through when laying out your 2023 strategy. Finally as a followup to our 2022 recap, we shared the latest developments on PFAS for TRI reporting and analytical tools.
Sharon Saknit Director of Global Environmental Compliance & Emissions
Costco Wholesale
Sharon presented this talk at Mapistrys EHS & S Summit.
Go to www.mapistry.com for more information
J. Tom Boer, Partner of Hogan Lovells US LLP
Roadmap ● Enforcement
Federal Enforcement Trends
State Enforcement Trends
Citizen Suit Trends
● Trends and Initiatives
EPA Enforcement Initiatives
Environmental Justice
Enhanced Injunctive Relief/NextGen
Supplemental Environmental Projects
Self
-Disclosures
What’s on the Horizon?
Tom Boer gave a talk at Mapistrys EHS&S Summit.
Speaker- Reed Carter, Environmental Manager of Graniterock
EHS Leaders of the Future. Compliance, Accountability, Understanding.
Part 2 of Jordans talk at the EHS & S Summit.
go to www.mapistry.com for more information
What is an EHS Leader of the future? What does it take to be an EHS Leader?
Jordan Kenworthy of Amazon gave a short talk at Mapistrys EHS & S Summit
We hosted a panel discussion on the state of the environmental industry with a special focus on the questions, challenges, and goals of the environmental professionals.
Courtney and Ryan from Mapistry spoke on their environmental experiences in industries from construction to aerospace manufacturing to answer the top questions from the community.
We took questions and had open discussions around topics such as common data challenges, working with regulators, current topics in the news, what to watch out for in 2023 and more!
TJ Mothersbaugh Business Development Manger at WaterTectonics gave a talk at Mapistrys EHS & S Summit about PFAS Today how are we treating it in water discharges.
● WaterTectonics ● Treatment Solutions ● PFAS in California ● PFAS Chemistry ● Sampling/Analysis Challenges ● PFAS Treatment Options ● Units Primer ● California PFAS Case Study ● PFAS Destruction ● Current PFAS Research Areas ● New (?) CECs
Traditional, siloed, and paper-heavy EHS processes are not sustainable. To modernize how they work, environmental and safety leaders must automate the manual, repetitive processes holding them back. But for EHS teams across the globe, securing a budget for technology can be a tall task. A compelling and robust business case is a critical requirement for starting your EHS compliance transformation, which shouldn’t be overlooked. In this session, we’ll review the value that EHS software can bring to your organization. We’ll also cover common pitfalls and leading practices for building your business case and garnering environmental and safety automation and analytics support.
**Tech Talk: Digitizing Forms in Mapistry.
This talk was recorded at Mapistry EHS & S Summit in Napa, California, with Catalina Elias of Calportland.**
Most companies are still doing the “50 spreadsheet shuffle” for reporting, are unsure if they did all the permit requirements, and have no consistency in how data is captured across their company. Yet they are struggling to keep key environmental staff and fill open roles. Shifting from a culture of “fire-fighting” to a proactive environmental program requires a shift in how you supplement and empower your environmental team. In this Coffee & Compliance, we dived into common environmental program challenges, how to find software solutions, and where to look for the biggest wins!
Shawn Cobb Partner at Allen Matkins gives a talk at Mapistrys EHS & S Summit on Emerging Compliance Risks: A look at the Top EHS Lawsuits and Penalties in the Past Year.
Talking on topics like: Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Hazardous Waste, etc....
Travis Porter of WA Department of Ecology spoke about the current state of the industrial stormwater permit in Washington, common challenges for companies, what’s coming up and how they are handling emerging contaminants such as PFAS in their permit process.
Introduction to ESG Disclosure, Standards and Framework, Proposed SEC Regulation
GHG Inventory Considerations, What’s Next and Key Takeaways
Go to www.mapistry.com or info@mapistry for the slide deck or to learn more
Sonya Price from MMC Materials discusses Tech Talk: Data Capture in the Field in Mapistry.
Data capture in the Filed: How to make the 4 letter agencies love you! Capturing: Environmental Inspections, OSHA Inspections, MSHA Inspections, Internal Inspections, and Documents required by agencies.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was just signed into law, but as the final version trickles out what implications are there for companies around environmental compliance?
Maureen Gorsen, a Partner with Sidley, joined us on Coffee & Compliance dove into the key areas for industrial operations from the IRA as we discussed the provisions and funding on environmental enforcement, data access, monitoring, and environmental justice. Maureen is the former director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the former general counsel of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) and the California Natural Resources Agency. From her vantage point in private practice, she shared the items on the top of the list for industrial companies around tax breaks related to environmental related capital investments and the risks associated with funding for Environmental Justice and skyrocketing data collection and public data availability.
Completing required environmental inspections is more than just checking a box. From collecting samples to submitting reports on time, the “basics” of staying compliant are constantly evolving. Environmental leaders need to keep their team well-educated to maintain compliance and prevent fines. Sometimes that means getting their team on the same page and reiterating the basics to ensure a strong foundation for compliance success.
During this webinar, hear our discussion with Martin Marietta’s Environmental Director, Erika Guerra, about the basics of building and operating a successful environmental program.
Some key themes we discussed:
- Best practices for developing a core environmental compliance program
- Structuring and training your environmental team
- Identifying gaps and issues that inhibit compliance
Do you know if your facilities are falling behind on inspections or if you are on track with water and air permit requirements?
During this webinar, learn why it’s critical to bring all your environmental and safety data together in one location so you can ask questions, analyze performance and prevent problems proactively. Also, discover why hundreds of facilities use Mapistry’s analytics platform to make it fast and easy to accomplish this. Quickly capture and visualize your data in real-time while empowering teams to make data-driven decisions.
Explore how to:
- Lower risk by detecting and responding to compliance gaps early
- Improve efficiency with centralized access to compliance data
- Quickly deploy detailed analytics for your organization – go from raw data to visualizations in minutes
- Hold teams accountable and see the results quickly – cleaner facilities, safer facilities, 100% completion rates on inspections
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was just signed into law, but as the final version trickles out what implications are there for companies around environmental compliance?
Maureen Gorsen, a Partner with Sidley, will be joining us on the latest edition of Coffee & Compliance. Maureen is the former director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the former general counsel of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) and the California Natural Resources Agency. She is going be diving into the key areas for industrial operations from the IRA as we discuss the provisions and funding on environmental enforcement, data access, monitoring, and environmental justice.
Michele Stanley, VP of Government and Regulatory Affairs for the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA) discusses the top environmental issues and regulatory trends and risks facing the building materials industry, especially in aggregates around sand stone & gravel production.
Michele, recently recognized by The Hill as one of Washington’s Top Lobbyists, touched on the most pressing environmental policy topics including Waters of the US (WOTUS), environmental justice, the recent Infrastructure Reduction Act legislation and more!
Michele Stanley, VP of Government and Regulatory Affairs for the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA) discusses the top environmental issues and regulatory trends and risks facing the building materials industry, especially in aggregates around sand stone & gravel production.
Michele, recently recognized by The Hill as one of Washington’s Top Lobbyists, touched on the most pressing environmental policy topics including Waters of the US (WOTUS), environmental justice, the recent Infrastructure Reduction Act legislation and more!
Hear the latest environmental update nation-wide with two of the industry’s top environmental lawyers about recently adopted legislation, impacts to industrial manufacturer’s, and what companies need to be prepared for.
Todd Ravazza, the Director of EHS at Clark Pacific, a leading manufacturer of prefabricated building systems. Throughout the conversation, Todd highlighted some of the key lessons he learned during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; he spoke about the future of health and safety, what reopening means for businesses, and how we can take the lessons learned to improve EHS for industry.
As a professional starting off in hazardous materials, Todd learned quickly the importance of understanding what you are doing and how you are going to deal with it. This passion and interest for the scientific side of the industry evolved into a 26 year career as an environmental, health, and safety professional. The standards with which industrial facilities handle health & safety obligations have shifted a lot in the last 16 months and for Todd, the biggest lesson has been preparation. He also shared some key steps that have been successful for Clark Pacific: know where you are going, think about how you can do more with less, and make micro adjustments along the way.
“Setting our course has been super critical.”
Todd emphasized the importance of prevention and creating a culture that is forward-thinking in terms of pandemic-preparedness. Overall, he views the last 16 months as an important learning opportunity. By collaborating with his team, Todd was able to delegate intelligently and discover talent or interest in new roles; the pandemic response protocols challenged the team to be continually learning which allowed for healthy response-time and organizational growth.
The pandemic, growth of digitization, and heightened demands from the CEO and board to measure ESG initiatives have put the spotlight on environmental, safety, and sustainability data like never before. Despite the opportunity to harness EHS&S data for the better, leading companies feel that their teams are unprepared to make the transition to a data-driven EHS&S organization. This session will give you a crash course on what EHS&S teams need to know about unlocking their EHS&S data via integrations, APIs, data lakes, data warehouses, and BI tools. It will feature a panel of EHS&S leaders who have hands-on experience successfully spearheading data initiatives at their organization.
How to Collect & Use Data to Improve Compliance and Prevent RiskAs the risk and complexity of regulatory compliance continues to grow exponentially, EHS teams face mounting pressure to identify and correct hazards and risks before they turn into costly violations, fines or legal action.
During this podcast learn about:
- Using data as a proactive regulatory compliance tool
- Simplifying data capture — upload, integrate or capture via mobile
- Using data to understand common pitfalls and deficits in your EHS program
- Creating a roadmap for building and implementing an excellent program
What will be the biggest environmental liabilities for heavy industry over the next 4 years? Tune into our next webinar to hear industry experts from Nixon Peabody and Mapistry as they discuss the EPA’s latest picks for their National Compliance Initiatives (NCIs) for the FY 2024 to 2027.
During this webinar, we’ll discuss the EPA’s priority areas for enforcement and compliance initiatives for the next few years and how it will impact facilities. We will also cover what facilities can do to reduce the risk of non-compliance and also how to handle an enforcement action tied to these initiatives that a company might experience. These NCIs also have a trickle down impact on regional EPA offices (ie our EPA Region 9 webinar on regional water enforcement)
Ensuring the completion of regular facility inspections has always been critical, however, in recent months, the need for better quality assurance surrounding inspections is rising rapidly as companies struggle to navigate the COVID crisis, transition to remote working conditions, and grapple with the growing risk of enforcement actions and audits. As a result, pencil whipping and operating without the proper inspection controls and visibility are leaving facilities more vulnerable to compliance gaps and legal risk than ever before.
Additionally, learn about:
- How to eliminate pencil whipping and have worry free inspections with 100% accuracy
- Monitoring real-time inspection data to quickly pinpoint and problem-solve gaps early
- How to analyze inspection results from inspection completion to corrective action creation and the number of days to complete tasks
- Ways to empower and hold disbursed teams accountable with access to inspections field data, corrective actions, deadlines and critical alerts
- Why businesses are digitizing their EHS compliance inspections — from environmental audits, to corrective actions, safety audits and more
Speakers: Erika Guerra, Environmental Director, Lehigh Hanson and Erica Flukinger, Digital Change Leader, HeidelbergCement
- What is the primary method you recruit for your EHS teams and why that way?
- How do you see the value of technical knowledge in compliance vs the ability to be a business partner to the operations side?
- How much time do you spend on professional development and is that using external resources or internal tools/trainers?
- Do you see much crossover between operations and EHS?
- How much training do you do on the soft skills like having difficult conversations or organization?
John Bird of Arauco talk about bio-filters and iterations and challenges & successes with bio-filters.
As sustainability continues to be a focus for industries worldwide, it is more important than ever for companies to understand ESG reporting and implement processes to ensure environmental regulations are being met and reported on correctly.
Download this webinar to hear environmental experts from Trinity Consultants dive into the “E” of ESG — we’ll discuss the current landscape of sustainability and how heavy industrial companies can stay ahead of emerging risks. We’ll also cover these topics:
- Current ESG reporting requirements and new developments
- How public and private companies manage sustainability
- Best practices for tracking and reporting sustainability
John McNamara of CR & R sits down with Ryan Janoch to discuss composting operations around the waste management industry. They talk specifically about organic management through anaerobic digestion as a carbon neutral energy source.
Mary Jo Press global safety program manager at Tesla on Leadership Best practices. She will go over
1. How to identify strengths and weaknesses within the program & how to make a plan for change
2. How to implement policies
3. How to give feedback on performance to different roles within the company
4. How to become a leader and increase your role within your company
This week Darrin Gamblin, an Environmental Attorney at the Downey Brand, joined us on Coffee and Compliance to talk about the Biden Administration’s impact on air compliance. During our conversation, Darrin walked us through some of the changes we saw during the Trump Administration. Although it seemed like the Trump Administration made significant changes to environmental policies, the administration rolled back relatively few regulations. Instead, Darrin said, the Trump Administration introduced a substantial amount of air permitting guidance, which he expects the Biden Administration to review and potentially rollback. With the new Biden Administration’s whole government approach, which looks at climate regulations from many different angles, Darrin believes there will be a focus on individual facilities, especially facilities located in disadvantaged communities. He thinks this scrutiny could lead to increased enforcement by agencies. Darrin warns that it is becoming more critical than ever for facilities to maintain compliance because any problems a facility can have will be more visible than in the past.
US Supreme Court's Ruling on Groundwater Discharges & the Clean Water Act - with Sean Herman from Hanson Bridgett.
Hear Amy Kronson, Senior Environmental Scientist at State Water Resources Control Board discuss recent industrial stormwater compliance regulatory updates as well as trends and impacts related to the California Industrial Stormwater General Permit (IGP). Also, don’t miss our discussion about the latest info on TMDLs requirements and what’s to come in the new IGP.
This is a great opportunity to hear a regulator’s perspective on stormwater enforcement, common risks to avoid in 2022, and how you can prepare for any upcoming changes.
Learn how to:
- Proactively correct hazards and compliance deficiencies before they turn into bigger problems by having real-time data to spot trends and benchmark results.
- Focus EHS staff time on value-added activities and increase the number of facilities they can oversee by reducing their time on manual data entry, scanning paper, and driving site to site for basic tasks.
- Cut spending on sustainability and ESG needs by automatically leveraging required compliance activities. This reduces unnecessary spending and highlights sustainability measures to drive top-line revenue growth.
- Hold teams accountable and more easily promote top performing plant managers – cleaner facilities, safer facilities, and metrics to rely on mean you know who your top performers are to drive your business forward!
The SEC is considering a number of changes to evaluate a firm’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks — are you prepared? This session will discuss the impacts of the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rule, what quarterly reporting on sustainability would mean for your organization, and how you can prepare your EHS team now for heightened scrutiny and reporting standards in the future.
Speaker:
Marta Orpiszewska, Senior Associate, Hogan Lovells
Hear Jordan Kenworthy, Regional Environmental expert at Amazon, share environmental compliance insights and tips to mitigate risk that she’s learned throughout 10+ year career overseeing environmental compliance for extensive manufacturing operations at companies like Georgia-Pacific (their Dixie products facilities), Cargill Corn Milling, and Consolidated Grain and Barge.
Hear her discuss the skills and strategies that have helped propel her career forward in EHS as well as “insider” tips for surviving and thriving today’s rapidly changing regulatory and risk landscape.
Hear enforcement group attorney and compliance officers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency share insights on enforcement priorities and strategies for 2022 — and how these may impact industrial and manufacturing companies in the year ahead.
During this discussion, learn how the Biden Administration has shifted regulatory priorities, discover the latest trends in enforcement and citizen-initiated lawsuits, and get tips to prepare for a successful regulatory inspection. This will be a great opportunity for industry to hear directly from the EPA on their enforcement priorities and how they can best work together to maximize compliance
Ian Wren Hydrologist and Environmental Program Manager at Barkeeper talks with the Co-Founder of Mapistry about industrial stormwater and how the NGO protects the Bay.
Julianne Finkelnberg, EHS Consultant at Toyota Racing Development USA, discuss how they avoid the most common stormwater permit violations by developing and implementing top-quality best management practices (BMPs). Additionally, hear how they have successfully streamlined their entire stormwater compliance process with a single software solution — from BMP management to water sampling, lab reporting, data analytics, and reporting workflows. Their world-class system is helping them not only increase EHS efficiency, but it’s helping them tremendously decrease risk exposure.
Traditional, siloed, and paper-heavy EHS processes are not sustainable. To modernize how they work, environmental and safety leaders must automate the manual, repetitive processes holding them back. But for EHS teams across the globe, securing a budget for technology can be a tall task. A compelling and robust business case is a critical requirement for starting your EHS compliance transformation, which shouldn’t be overlooked. In this session, we’ll review the value that EHS software can bring to your organization. We’ll also cover common pitfalls and leading practices for building your business case and garnering environmental and safety automation and analytics support.
On April 21, 2021, US EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan called to create an “EPA Council on PFAS”. What does this announcement mean for you and your clients? What will the Council on PFAS be doing? Who will participate? And where is it going?
Speaker:
Beth Hummer, Counsel, Hanson Bridgett LLP
“If you fail to plan, you should plan to fail.” In a post-pandemic world, EHS managers face tremendous new leadership challenges. Remote work heightened expectations for continuous visibility, and an ever-evolving regulatory landscape makes the task of keeping their compliance operations running smoothly harder than ever. In this session, we will explore how the new normal is threatening to build a cohesive and productive team, and EHS leadership must be ready to adapt. Leave this session with a better understanding of how to adjust your leadership style to enable growth and engagement on your team — even when they are dispersed across multiple plants and facility locations.
Speaker: Robert McGehee Director of Environment and Land, LafargeHolcim
As workplace safety readiness and response continue to be top priorities for EHS leaders, analytics is emerging as a critical way for staff to gain real-time visibility and insight into safety performance. Hear how Mary Jo Press from Tesla is incorporating data-driven processes to drive excellence in their day-to-day safety operations, and how data helped Telsa make the smartest decisions for their employees and business during the pandemic.