Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

California Revises Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator Certification Rules

The latest State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) regulatory tweaks broaden coverage but also give wastewater treatment plant owners some welcome wiggle room. Effective April 1, 2013, the SWRCB has revised its regulations regarding wastewater treatment plant classification, operator certification, and contractor registration. The rules have been expanded to cover privately owned wastewater treatment plants. However, they also establish a provisional operator certification. This means owners of Class I wastewater treatment plants who are finding it hard to recruit certified operators may employ provisional operators while conducting their search. In addition, the definition of wastewater treatment plant has been revised to clearly state that water recycling treatment plants are included within the definition. Numerous other key changes affecting California CCR compliance have been made to these regulations.

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?

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.

Organizations with a well-established ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) are discovering a new advantage as the issue of “social responsibility” becomes more widespread throughout business communities. EMS managers are finding that techniques and methodology from their EMS can be used to identify and prioritize social responsibility issues and efficiently integrate them into their organization. Furthermore, managers building an EMS system are able to develop it in concert with social responsibility initiatives.

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted to protect the employment rights and opportunities of people with disabilities, and ensure their access to public services and accommodation. In September 2008, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 repudiated several U.S. Supreme Court decisions interpreting ADA narrowly, and provided additional clarifications intended to ensure the broad availability of ADA’s protections. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) develops and applies employer standards, facilitates lawsuits by aggrieved employees, and can enforce ADA directly by filing its own lawsuits.

On April 16, 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court delivered another reminder that agreements must be drafted clearly and specifically if they are to deliver predictable outcomes – otherwise a court’s later efforts to sort through ambiguities may produce surprises. The case is U.S. Airways v. McCutchen. It arose under a medical benefits plan subject to the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

We’ve all just received a grim reminder how easily public celebrations can become public nightmares. Readers who may now be nervous about special events in their areas should know that law enforcement and security professionals have developed security protocols that formalize hazard assessment and management. One important template for such protocols was published in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) – Planning And Managing Security For Major Special Events: Guidelines for Law Enforcement.

Many US federal laws provide explicit protections for whistleblowers – employees who report actual or potential violations of those laws to their employers or to the federal agencies that administer and enforce those laws. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has administered one such provision under its general worker protection authority for more than 40 years, and presently administers provisions under 22 distinct laws. The best known and most litigated of these non-OSHA laws probably is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOx) – Section 806 of that law protects whistleblowers who report activities that may violate anti-fraud provisions of the federal Securities Acts. The rest of this posting discusses this SOx provision; readers subject to additional laws should consider the implications for their activities.

By now, every reader should know that employers in the United States must verify would-be employees’ eligibility to work in the U.S.  The critical form for doing so is Form I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification), issued and administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) unit of the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Earlier this month, President Obama signed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, which renews and revises a wide variety of federal regulatory and grant programs intended to reduce gender-related violence against women. Although many of these protective measures are workplace-related, the amendments also expand protections for students at 99% of the nation’s colleges and universities (those that receive “Title IV” money from the U.S. Department of Education). These schools must comply with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act) by providing an Annual Security Report each October 1.