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government & policy IMPROVING REGULATORY COMPLIANCE State-federal project aims to overcome barriers to environmental compliance by batch chemical firms Bette Hileman C&EN Washington T he Environmental Protection Agency and the New Jersey De- partment of Environmental Protec- tion (NJDEP) are close tofinishingtheir joint Chemical Industry Project, which is aimed at improving environmental compliance in the batch chemical indus- try. The effort, which consists of four pi- lot projects, is expected by government and industry officials to yield materials and lessons that will continue to be ap- plied in New Jersey and in other states. "Our feeling is that it was a very valu- able process," says Scot C. Mackey, direc- tor of regulatory affairs at the Chemical In- dustry Council of New Jersey. "It was nice to be able to explain to regulators the difficulties of implementing regulations." The initial impetus for the four-year project came from the President's Coun- cil on Sustainable Development. In 1995, it noted that many industry regula- tions seemed to be written with large continuous-process chemical manufac- turers in mind and urged EPA to look at the special challenges that batch chemi- cal makers face in complying. EPA chose New Jersey as the state to carry out pilot projects because it has a high concentration of batch chemical firms. To start the effort, EPA and NJDEP convened a stakeholder group of govern- ment, industry, environmental, and com- munity representatives. They were asked what factors inspire companies to achieve better environmental performance. The group came up with a list of 45 possible projects to encourage compliance. From this list, four pilot projects were chosen: • Compliance assistance—in which mechanisms are developed to allow companies to better understand their regulatory obligations. • Hazardous waste exchange across facilities—in which a waste from one fa- cility is safely used as an input at anoth- er facility. • Effluent trading—in which a com- pany with lower-than-required water emissions of a specific pollutant sells a loading reduction to an- other facility that cannot afford to meet the efflu- ent limit. • Flexible methods of regulatory compliance— whereby companies work with regulators to estab- lish flexible ways to com- ply with state and federal rules. To date, the compli- ance assistance effort has been the most valuable of the four projects, Mackey says. To carry it out, EPA, Tunis NJDEP, and chemical company and trade association represen- tatives worked together for two years to assess existing compliance assistance re- sources, survey the regulated communi- ties about their compliance needs, and create and distribute a unique package of compliance assistance materials. Initially, the participants decided that the primary barrier to compliance was not the amount of information available for companies, but rather unclear presen- tation and ineffective dissemination of the information. Industry representatives said the information was often hard to find and prohibitively expensive. They also claimed that complying with the reg- ulations took a great deal of time, espe- cially for small businesses. The project team focused on New Jersey state regula- tions because EPA was already develop- ing an Internet-based compliance assis- tance center for federal rules. Part of the project involved rewriting 20 New Jersey regulations in plain English and posting them on a web site (http:// www.state.nj.us/dep/enforcement/home. htm). Also on the web site are phone num- bers of experts who can answer questions and flowcharts that allow small businesses to quickly understand what they need to do to comply with regulations. Last fall, two compliance assistance workshops for industry were held. NJDEP and the industry associations are still working to keep the information on the web site current, Mackey says, and more workshops may be held if reg- ulations change. Participants in the Chemical Industry Project found the waste trade and effluent trading efforts less valuable than the com- pliance assistance effort. However, some concrete actions grew out of these endeav- ors. For example, under the effluent trad- ing project, Fabricolor, a dye and pigment maker in Paterson, N.J., set up an effluent trade with another firm. § New Jersey regulations M limit the concentration of g copper in effluent to 5.0 mg «| per L Fabricolor's effluent | contains 5.0 to 5.1 mg per | L of copper. Fabricolor purchased a copper efflu- ent credit of 1 to 2 mgper L from another firm that treats its effluent more stringently than neces- sary, as a sort of insurance policy for the days when Fabricolor might violate the regulatory limits, says Fabricolor Vice President M. Barry Bochner. Ten percent of the cop- per credit will never be used, he adds. This trade benefits both the environ- ment and industry, Bochner explains, because Fabricolor will not have to in- stall the expensive end-of-pipe equip- ment required to remove more copper from its effluent, and the total amount of copper emitted by the two firms is less than the regulations allow. This is the first and only water trade that has ever taken place, says Cather- ine S. Tunis, EPA manager of the Chem- ical Industry Project. However, a lot of people have asked for the report on ef- fluent trading, she says, and more trades may happen in the future. Under the waste trade project, Infine- um USA, Linden, N.J., which makes fuel additives, and a refinery—both of which send wastewater to the same private wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)— have initiated a trade. Refinery dis- charges to the WWTP contain organics, including alcohols and other hydrocar- bons. The alcohols are used as food by the microbes in the WWTP. But during 46 OCTOBER 18,1999 C&EN
