Legislation & regulations

DEP cites illegal tire dump in Pennsylvania county

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), partnering with the municipality of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, has cited Monster and Mom and Bobo’s Car Wash LLC for illegally storing an estimated 50,000 scrap tires.

Penn Hills Police discovered the tire dump, which is adjacent to a day care center. The operators of the tire dump solicited the scrap tires from throughout the area, the DEP says.

Penn Hills Police filed summary criminal charges against the owners of Monster and Mom in the Penn Hills District Justice’s Office. After a hearing, the district justice found Monster and Mom guilty and imposed a fine.

In addition to the court action taken by Penn Hills Police, the Pennsylvania DEP issued an order requiring immediate cleanup of the site and proper recycling or disposal of the tires. An investigation into other incidents of illegal tire dumping at the site continues, according to the DEP.

Pennsylvania regulations require an operator of a waste aggregation and storage facility to first obtain a permit from the DEP. A review of DEP records showed that Monster and Mom does not have a permit to store, collect, process or dispose of waste. Monster and Mom has a Waste Tire Hauler Authorization, which authorizes only the transportation of end-of-life tires from a source to a permitted recycling or disposal facility.

OSHA announces final rule regarding respirable silica dust

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a final rule to improve protections for workers exposed to respirable silica dust March 24, 2016. The rule is designed to curb lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney disease in America’s workers by limiting their exposure to respirable crystalline silica, OSHA says.

OSHA says the final rule will:

• reduce the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, averaged over an eight-hour shift;
• require employers to use engineering controls (such as water or ventilation) and work practices to limit worker exposure, provide respiratory protection when controls are not able to limit exposures to the permissible level, limit access to high exposure areas, train workers and provide medical exams to highly exposed workers;
• provide greater certainty and ease of compliance to construction employers—including many small employers—by including a table of specified controls they can follow to be in compliance, without having to monitor exposures; and
• stagger compliance dates to ensure employers have sufficient time to meet the requirements, e.g., extra time for the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry to install new engineering controls and for all general industry employers to offer medical surveillance to employees exposed between the PEL and 50 micrograms per cubic meter and the action level of 25 micrograms per cubic meter.

The final rule is written as two standards: one for the construction industry and one for general industry and maritime.

Employers covered by the construction standard have until June 23, 2017, to comply with most requirements. Employers covered by the general industry and maritime standard have until June 23, 2018, to comply with most requirements; additional time is provided to offer medical exams to some workers and for hydraulic fracturing employers to install dust controls to meet the new exposure limit.

More information on the final rule is available at www.osha.gov/silica.

Massachusetts legislature considers bill that would replace deposit law

According to an article by The Associated Press (AP) that appeared in the Boston Herald in late March, the Massachusetts legislature is considering a proposal that seeks to replace the state’s 33-year-old beverage container deposit law.

The bill has the support of food and beverage industry groups, which were encouraged by the 2014 defeat of a ballot question to expand the bottle bill, according to article.

The bill would eliminate the 5-cent deposits consumers pay on soft drink and beer containers and would replace them with a three-year, 1-cent-per-container fee to be paid by beverage distributors and wholesalers. The collected fees would be deposited into a fund that would help cities and towns develop single-stream recycling programs, according to the AP article.

Nicole Giambusso of the Massachusetts Beverage Association tells the AP the 1-cent fee would raise an estimated $114 million for recycling programs, which critics of the proposed legislation say would not be nearly enough to fund the recycling programs proposed by supporters of the legislation.

Hawaii recycling centers reject mislabeled bottles

Costco brought in pallets and pallets of bottled water to meet demand during last year’s hurricane season in Hawaii, a report from news station KITV 4 says. But the store’s customers across the state are finding out those bottles are being rejected by recycling centers because they don’t have the proper HI-5 labels that are required for deposit beverage containers.

According to the news site, Costco said it brought in shipping containers full of bottled water, and six months later, customers still are trying to bring the empty bottles to the state’s redemption centers, where they are supposed to receive 5 cents per bottle.

The state says it fined Costco $16,000 for improper labeling of the bottles after they began appearing in redemption centers last fall, the report notes.

The state Health Department’s Steve Chang said unlabeled containers can be returned to Costco.