News affecting regulations, technologies, companies, people and events in the pollution industry

Bush Finalizes Brownfields Legislation

President Bush recently signed bipartisan legislation that will encourage the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields sites. Additionally, the FY '03 budget will increase available EPA funds from $98 million to $200 million for brownfields cleanup and the budget proposes to permanently extend the Brownfields Tax Incentive, which encourages the redevelopment of brownfields. According to government estimates, the $300 million annual investment in the Brownfields Tax Incentive will leverage approximately $3.4 billion in private investment and return 8,000 brownfields to productive use, thus cleaning up our environment, creating new jobs and protecting small businesses from frivolous lawsuits.

Approximately 40 states have developed voluntary programs that are cleaning up hundreds of brownfield sites faster and more effectively, and with less litigation, than under the federal Superfund program. These programs set high cleanup standards and provide liability protection under state law for new owners and operators of brownfields sites.

However, these state programs have been hindered by the lack of liability protection in federal law. Under Superfund, owners and operators of a contaminated property could be held liable for the cost of cleanup, regardless of whether they actually caused any of the contamination. This potential liability created a strong incentive for businesses to avoid redeveloping brownfields.

The Brownfields Legislation reconciles this issue by lifting many of the previous liability barriers.

Industry: DuPont and Enviance Join Forces

The DuPont Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) Excellence Center and Enviance, a San Diego-based environmental technology company, recently announced a technology agreement and launch of environmental reporting software developed for the preparation of the EPA-mandated Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) report.

The new reporting technology, dubbed the Enviance TRI, allows for the processing, calculation, and manipulation of emissions data required to complete Form R requirements, the foundation of the EPA-mandated report. The new technology simplifies the report preparation process by providing TRI filers with tools that allow for the auto-population of data into Form R and the electronic filing of the TRI report with the EPA.

Established under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), the Toxics Release Inventory is a publicly available database containing information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities. The EPCRA law requires industrial facilities each year to publicly report the quantities of toxic chemicals released into the air, water, and land. This information is reported annually by manufacturing facilities as well as federal facilities. More than 70,000 TRI Reports are filed annually, and EPA estimates that industry spends approximately 8,000,000 hours each year in preparing the TRI Report.

People

HNTB Corporation announces that Hugh P. Caspe, P.E., has joined the firm as associate vice president, national director of tunnel services.

Honolulu, HIùClayton Group Services, Inc. announced that Dan Ford, R.G., director of environmental services in Clayton's Hawaii office, has been promoted to vice president.

Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. is pleased to announce that Lynn L. Bergeson has been elected to serve a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) beginning 2002, term ending 2004.

Two senior environmental and project management professionals, Ryan J. Birdseye and Robert J. Verlaan, have joined AMEC's Earth & Environmental office in San Diego.

Environmental Support Solutions announces the appointment of Gary Nielsen as the company's chief financial officer.

Anita M. Larson has joined the engineering and environmental services firm AMEC as manager of the company's Earth & Environmental offices in the Denver area and in Colorado Springs.

Awards

Monsanto Company has named five recipients of this year's Edgar M. Queeny Award for science and technology. These scientists were the key individuals responsible for the discovery, development and successful implementation of a new catalyst technology for the manufacture of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide. The 2001 Queeny Award recipients are: Dr. Jerry R. Ebner of Pharmacia Corporation, and Mark Leiber, Dr. Jingyue Liu, Dr. Peter E. Rogers and Dr. Kam To Wan of Monsanto Company.

Dr. R. Rhodes Trussell, senior vice president with MWH, has been awarded the 2001 Donald Boyd Award by the AMWA for extraordinary personal service in the drinking water quality field.

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