Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

All hazardous wastes are not created equal.  The basic model is that:

Read More

Tags: Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, EPA, RCRA

If government provided a unified approach to chemical regulation, then each chemical might be subject to a single set of requirements, which ideally would be tailored to reflect chemical-specific hazards throughout its life cycle.  Instead, each chemical is subject to its own loosely connected (some would say haphazard) collection of environmental, health and safety (EH&S) requirements.  Some are federal, some are state (or provincial if you’re in Canada), and others are regional and even local.  You may need to refer to agencies at all three levels (federal, state and local) to identify your regulators and their requirements – although many organizations only deal with the agency responsible for permitting and inspecting day-to-day activities.

Read More

Tags: Audit Standards, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, EPA, Hazcom, MSDS, mact

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created 80 years ago to protect investors, while also nurturing the growth of efficient and transparent markets for securities.  Over the intervening years, the balance between protection and growth has shifted many times, leading to many sets of requirements with conditions and exemptions to parse in order to determine entrepreneurs’ notice and filing requirements, and the range of investor opportunities and protections.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, SEC

One of the Dodd-Frank Act’s many directives to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was to require annual disclosures by publicly listed “resource extraction issuers” of payments they make to the U.S. federal government or foreign governments, related to commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals.  SEC thought it met this directive when it issued Rule 13q-1 and associated Form SD in August 2012.  However, on July 2, 2013 a federal judge decided that SEC misapplied its authority, and so vacated these provisions and remanded the issue to SEC to try again (American Petroleum Institute v. SEC).  Since Dodd-Frank required issuer reporting to begin no less than one year after SEC issued rules, the issuer reporting requirement is now on hold—but the statutory requirement remains in place so further rulemaking should be expected.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, SEC, International, Health & Safety, Environmental, Greenhouse Gas, ghg, fracking, hydraulic fracking

Partisan divides in Washington are preventing legislative action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and climate change, but President Obama recently announced administrative initiatives to advance these efforts even without Congressional action.  His new Climate Action Plan reaffirms domestic initiatives led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and international GHG emission reduction and climate change efforts.  The Plan has the following three main “pillars”:

Read More

Tags: Environmental risks, Environmental, EPA, Greenhouse Gas, ghg, climate change

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides a wide range of anti-discrimination measures, including prohibitions against employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (or “gender”), and national origin.  Title VII is administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and enforced when EEOC or aggrieved employees file lawsuits in federal court.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights, Workplace violence, EEOC, NLRB

July 1 was the deadline for subject facilities to file their annual toxic chemical release inventory (TRI) reports with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and their state, on one of two EPA-mandated forms, Form R or Form A.  These TRI reports are mandated by Section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), which was adopted as the first Congressional response to the December 1984 toxic gas disaster in Bhopal, India.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, Hazcom

As you look around your office, are there any summer interns working away?  And if so, are they being paid for their efforts, are they receiving academic credits, or are they working to build their resumes, portfolios and connections?

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights

Persons over 40 years old form a protected class under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967. Although separate from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ADEA provides protections similar to those preventing discrimination based on sex, race and religion. It applies to each employer “engaged in commerce who has twenty or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.” It is administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which promulgates regulations and guidelines similar to those for Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights, EEOC, NLRB

On May 28 Walmart bundled guilty pleas in a number of pending federal cases alleging environmental compliance violations at some of the company’s 4600+ stores in the U.S.  These arose because Walmart had not implemented a corporate hazardous waste management program until January 2006, leaving locations to manage—or mismanage—such wastes.

Read More

Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, California Legislation, Environmental risks, Environmental, EPA, Hazcom