The Buzz
About The Buzz
We all know that man is not an island. Most of us don’t work inside a bubble, and so our professional responsibilities often bleed into places that are not officially “in our job description.” With that in mind, we’re introducing a new feature: The Buzz. As you may or may not know, Forester Media, Inc. (our parent company) publishes six national publications that focus on everything from stormwater management to municipal solid waste to energy efficiency. Because of the overlap that occurs between many of the industries served by our magazines, we often find that the insight provided by the editor or contributors of one publication is relevant to a wide swathe of our national audience. From time to time, we will highlight some of these crossover pieces in the pages of our magazine, and we hope that this industry “buzz” will give you some new outlooks, different perspectives, and even more access to the tools and information you need.
Doing the Right Thing Because It’s Right
By John Trotti
(From the Grading and Excavation Contractor Editor’s Blog)
Foremost of the three great lies is the line, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,” which, as I see it, is in no danger of surrendering its ranking. So every time I hear word that there are public works (or, for that matter, OSHA, IRS, or animal control) inspectors wandering around the area, I find myself getting edgy. After all, of the dozens of possible outcomes from such visits, not one of them leaves me an iota better off than I was before their arrival. Yet these people exist for a reason, and, like it or not, they are very likely going to have their way, whether we think what they’re checking on is important or not.
Aha, I can almost hear some of you saying. He’s going to talk about runoff, erosion control, dust abatement, and all those sneaky little requirements the environmentalists have created to complicate what used to be a pretty straightforward matter of moving dirt from one place to another. Well guess what? There’s some truth in here, only maybe “what used to be” doesn’t hold water today any more than the time-honored tradition of dumping used oil into the ground on the assumption that “old Mother Nature will take care of it.”
Here again, there’s some of that same grain in the sense that, yes, Mother Nature is going to keep right on chugging, no matter how many gallons of hydrocarbons we pour down the storm drain, or how many tons of dust we swirl into the atmosphere, or how many yards of mud we push into creek beds or track out onto highways.
But we as fisherman concerned with the bounty of our waterways; we as parents of children who will inherit the fruits of our stewardship and profit by our examples; we as taxpayers who have to pick up the tab for the corporate lifestyle that as citizens of a free society we choose to follow; we as living, breathing organisms superbly adapted over countless millennia to nature’s definition of what clean air, water, and dirt entails; we as stewards of life here on the planet who have been blessed with the ability to envision, weigh, and act on the consequences of our actions . . . certainly we ought to know better.
Neither It nor Them
We—not our government, its regulators, investigators, or enforcement agents—are the ones on the cutting edge when it comes to what our descendants will have to live in, work with, and pass along in their package of genes. While the Clean Water Act and its progeny have some pretty healthy teeth to get us to pay attention to what we’re doing, in the main they are guidelines based on our corporate experience—relatively short when you think about it—of how best to accommodate our desires to build, grow, expand, and move on, within the limits of the rugged but no longer quite so limitless boundaries of our biosphere.
It’s what our society is beginning to recognize and demand, and where once you might have seen a handful of woolly-headed activists standing hand-to-hand singing mawkish peace/love/eternal blessings refrains in defense of some little known glob of protoplasm well on its way to extinction, today you find society’s heavy dudes—lawyers, bankers, and ultimately the people who hold the keys to the projects on which you hope to work—standing four-square in the amen corner, ready to enforce rules and regulations you may not like and they may not understand.
Well maybe you can chalk some of this up to an excess of political correctness, but beneath the veneer lies the growing awareness in all of us that there are many costs associated with development—notably those having to do with detrimental impacts on natural resources—that are blithely shuttled off to people who may or may not be beneficiaries of the process. So the question is not whether we should get on board the environmental movement but how best to excel in the activity.
Standards for Success
Off and on over the years, I’ve promoted the thesis that an environmental management system (EMS) could give you a leg up on your competitors, pointing out that any reduction in pollution-related incidents is bound to result in a stronger bottom line. Consider what an EMS can do for you:
- Identify and eliminate redundant regulatory compliance efforts
- Help eliminate waste and curb harmful emissions
- Guide the selection of proper BMPs that can become benchmarks for future projects
- Determine the overall appropriateness of pollution prevention strategies
- Predict and thereby reduce the number and severity of environmental infractions
Will this lead to a healthier, safer environment? Maybe. But, viewed within the context of your business as a whole, an EMS will almost certainly promote a happier bottom line for your balance sheet . . . an impact we can all live with.
John Trotti is the editor of MSW Management and Grading and Excavation Contractor.
Impassable
By Janice Kaspersen
(From
the Stormwater Editor’s Blog)
Recently, the US Supreme Court reached a decision in a case that
has implications for the Clean Water Act—or doesn’t, as it turns out. The case
itself had really nothing to do with water quality, but instead turned on the
definition of “navigable waters.”
A
little background on the case, PPL Montana
LLC v. Montana: The state of Montana had
tried to charge rent to a power company that has hydroelectric dams on three
Montana rivers. The Montana Supreme Court awarded the state nearly $41 million
in rent for the riverbeds for a seven-year period, 2000 to 2007, and left open
the possibility that the state could charge the company for periods of time
after 2007 as well. Last week the US Supreme Court reversed the Montana court’s
decision.
For the
state’s claim to be valid, the rivers must be considered “navigable.” The power
company contended that they are not, because some segments of the rivers are
impassable and river traffic must get around them via overland portage. The
Montana Supreme Court declared in its decision that “navigability for title
purposes is very liberally construed”; it called the impassable segments “merely
short interruptions” and said that each river as a whole should be considered
navigable. However, one Montana judge, in a dissenting opinion, said that
“courts are not to assume an entire river is navigable merely because certain
reaches of the river are navigable,” and that was essentially the US Supreme
Court’s opinion as well.
What
does this have to do with the Clean Water Act? The CWA applies to “navigable
waters,” and if the US Supreme Court had upheld the Montana court’s decision,
it would have been a significant expansion of the definition of a navigable
water.
Several
industry associations expressed their approval of the outcome. ARTBA, the
American Road and Transportation Builders Association, said the decision
“removes a road block that could have needlessly delayed transportation
improvements…. An expanded definition of ‘navigability’ could have resulted in
a scenario where the EPA and Corps would have the option of exerting
jurisdiction over roadside ditches, potentially adding years to already
expansive review and approval process for transportation infrastructure
projects.”
Variations
on this theme have been litigated before, although more often it’s a different
term that’s in dispute; the CWA applies to all waters with a “significant
nexus” to navigable waters, and it’s been debated whether wetlands and
intermittent streams, for example, should or should not be covered under the
definition. Cases in 2001 (Solid Waste Agency of Northern
Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers) and 2006 (Rapanos v.
United States Supreme Court) have
narrowed the applicability of the CWA.
In the
event, last week’s US Supreme Court ruling did not change the definition of a
navigable water. Do you think there would have been significant expansion of
the CWA’s application if the original Montana court ruling had stood? And do
you think we’ll be seeing further debates and litigation on this topic in
coming years?
Janice
Kaspersen is the editor of Stormwater
and Erosion Control.
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