Compliance

As part of the Environmental Excellence Awards application, Practice Greenhealth asks whether your organization has any current EPA compliance violations. Applicants with significant violations of environmental regulations are not eligible for an award. The credibility of the Practice Greenhealth awards program is dependent upon not recognizing organizations with serious, unresolved environmental compliance violations, even when they have done great work in other areas.

Many applicants assume that if they are not personally aware of any violations, their organization probably doesn’t have any, but this is not always true. In past years, some really great applications had to be turned down due to outstanding or significant environmental compliance violations.

Practice Greenhealth conducts a compliance screen on all award applicants, but we also suggest that you spend some time as part of your award application process finding out if your organization has environmental compliance issues. If you find violations on record, please contact us with details so we can help you evaluate their significance or likelihood of creating a barrier to receiving an award.

Determining your compliance status

The most important step you can take to determine your compliance is to ask around. Environmental compliance may be overseen by several departments, so you will need to reach out to Environmental Health & Safety, Environmental Services, Risk Management, Legal, Facilities Management, Engineering, Regulatory Affairs, and Plant Operations. Check with these departments to get any pertinent information, including:

• When was the most recent violation?
• What was the nature of any violation(s)?
• What steps were put in place to remedy any violation(s)?
• Was a fine assessed for this violation?
• When did the facility report to the regulatory body about this remedy?
• Has the facility fulfilled its obligations regarding this violation?

Alternately, you can use the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) tool to view your compliance history. Follow these simple directions:

• Go to www.epa.gov/echo
• In the box titled Compliance Searches, click on All Data. This will take you to a second screen. Under Geographic Location, pull down to your EPA Region and then enter your organization’s zip code and hit the Search button next to Geographic Location.
• Or you can simply use the Quick Search on the homepage by entering your zip code or city, state.
• Find your organization in the list and click on the link to get a Detailed Facility Report
• As you review the data in the Detailed Facility Report, scroll down to the Three Year Compliance Status by Quarter
• Use the Data Dictionary to determine what the fields mean. For example, Under AIR Compliance Status, you will find that the code C-INSP means the facility is “in compliance, based on inspection”

Note: Not all organizations will be listed in the ECHO database.

What to do if you have a violation

If your organization has a violation in the past 12 calendar months, please check with Practice Greenhealth to determine if you are still eligible for an award. Practice Greenhealth will consider and weigh the gravity, date of occurrence, and resolution status of violations and may still choose to grant an award.

Please contact Lin Hill, Awards Coordinator, at 866-998-9973 with any questions about compliance violations and Practice Greenhealth awards eligibility.