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Foremost of the
three great lies is the line, "I'm from the government and
I'm here to help you," which as I see it is in no danger of
surrendering its ranking. So every time I hear that there
are public works (or OSHA, IRS, or Animal Control for that
matter) inspectors wandering around the area, I find myself
getting edgy. After all, of the dozens of possible outcomes
from such visits, not one of them leaves me an iota better
off than I was before their arrival. Yet these people exist
for a reason, and like it or not they are very likely going
to have their way, whether or not we think what they're checking
on is important.
"Aha!" I can almost
hear some of you saying. He's going to talk about runoff,
erosion control, dust abatement, and all those sneaky little
requirements the environmentalists have created to complicate
what used to be a pretty straightforward matter of moving
dirt from one place to another. Well, guess what? There's
some truth, only maybe "what used to be" doesn't hold water
today any more than does the time-honored tradition of dumping
old, used oil into the ground on the assumption that "old
Mother Nature will take care of it."
Here again there's
some of that same grain in the sense that yes, Mother Nature
is going to keep right on chugging no matter how many gallons
of hydrocarbons we pour down the storm drain, or how many
tons of dust we swirl into the atmosphere, or how many yards
of mud we push into creek beds or track out onto highways.
But we as fishermen
concerned with the bounty of our waterways; we as parents
of children who will inherit the fruits of our stewardship
and profit by our examples; we as taxpayers who have to pick
up the tab for the corporate lifestyle that as citizens of
a free society we choose to follow; we as living, breathing
organisms superbly adapted over countless millennia to nature's
definition of what clean air, water, and dirt entails; we
as stewards of life here on the planet who have been blessed
with the ability to envision, weigh, and act on the consequences
of our actions … certainly we ought to know better.
Neither It nor
Them
We—not our
government, its regulators, investigators, or enforcement
agents—are the ones on the cutting edge when it comes
to what our descendants will have to live in, work with, and
pass along in their package of genes. While the Clean Water
Act and its progeny have some pretty healthy teeth to get
us to pay attention to what we're doing, in the main they
are guidelines based on our corporate experience—relatively
short when you think about it—of how best to accommodate
our desires to build, grow, expand, and move on, within the
limits of the rugged but no longer quite so limitless boundaries
of our biosphere.
It's what our society
is beginning to recognize and demand, and where once you might
have seen a handful of woolly headed activists standing hand-to-hand
singing mawkish peace/love/eternal blessings refrains in defense
of some little-known glob of protoplasm well on its way to
extinction, today you find society's heavy dudes—lawyers,
bankers, and ultimately the people who hold the keys to the
projects on which you hope to work—standing four-square
in the amen corner ready to enforce rules and regulations
you may not like and they may not understand.
Well, maybe you
can chalk some of this up to an excess of political correctness,
but beneath the veneer lies the growing awareness in all of
us that there are many costs associated with development—notably
those having to do with detrimental impacts on natural resources—that
are blithely shuttled off to people who may or may not be
beneficiaries of the process. So the question is not whether
we should get onboard the environmental movement but how best
to excel in the activity.
Standards for
Success
My January/February
2003 Editor's Comments promoted the thesis that an Environmental
Management System (EMS) could give you a leg up on your competitors,
pointing out:
Aside
from the obvious advantages of standardization—reduction
of pollution-related incidents, decreased cost of remediation,
fewer complaints, less regulatory hassle, and reduced insurance
rates—there are a number of related benefits that will
come from increasing the visibility of those standards throughout
your entire operation.
As
examples of such benefits, you might consider:
- An EMS can identify
and eliminate redundant regulatory compliance efforts.
- An EMS can help
you measure, evaluate, and eliminate waste, and curb harmful
emissions.
- An EMS can help
you choose proper BMPs and determine beforehand their probable
results.
- An EMS can help
you define "best practices" standards that will become benchmarks
for future projects.
- Standards can
be used to guide daily action and determine the overall
appropriateness of pollution-prevention strategies.
- By allowing
you to predict environmental performance, an EMS can help
reduce the number and almost certainly limit the severity
of environmental infractions.
Will this lead
to a healthier, safer environment? Maybe. But viewed within
the context of your business as a whole, an EMS will almost
certainly promote a happier bottom line for your balance sheet
… an impact we can all live with.
Send
John an Email
GEC
- November/December 2004
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