Third party SWPPP managers, a great investment
Failure to comply to clean water regulations can be costly and damage your reputation. It is essential that large, commercial sites hire third party stormwater managers to help illuminate violations.
Recently, ABF Freight System Inc. had to settle over allegations of Clean Water Act violations relating to stormwater at locations across the United States. The freight carrier will have to pay a civil penalty of $535,000, part of which will be directed to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Maryland, and Nevada. ABF, which operates more than 200 transportation facilities across 47 states and Puerto Rico, will also enhance and implement its comprehensive, corporate-wide stormwater compliance program across its transportation facilities. This program will include a memorialization of stormwater roles and responsibilities, comprehensive employee training with contractor awareness, implementation of standard operating procedures, and tracking facility-specific corrective actions.
The complaint alleges that ABF failed to comply with certain conditions of their CWA permits at nine of its transportation facilities. Some of the alleged conditions were spills that had not been cleaned up, failure to implement required spill prevention measures, failure to implement measures to minimize contamination of stormwater runoff, failure to conduct monitoring of stormwater discharges as required, and failure to provide all required training to ABF’s employees.
U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes for the Western District of Arkansas said, "Water quality affects every citizen equally, it’s importance simply cannot be overstated. Companies must comply with Clean Water Act provisions to prevent waterways from being contaminated by industrial pollutants."
The settlement ensures that measures will be implemented at hundreds of transportation facilities across the nation to protect nearby waterways and the communities that live along them. The settlement also requires ABF to conduct tiered management oversight inspections at its permitted and NEC facilities throughout the three-year implementation of this consent decree.
Undoubtedly ABF, at one point thought that having a stormwater expert walk them through compliance was a hassle. That routine inspections were a waste of time. However, in hind site, the value of time spent protecting the community's environment was also a defense against a bad reputation and the hassle of fixing problems.