Spring Environmental assists facilities with initial and periodic assessments such as compliance audits and inspections and ISO 14000 conformity, but goes further to support recurring compliance activities such as record keeping, monitoring and reporting.
Compliance Recordkeeping and Reporting
Spring Environmental assists facilities in obtaining and maintaining air, waste and water permits. Services include several types of periodica reporting, inspections, and creating and updating manuals and procedures to fit each company’s needs.
Project Examples:
- Vaagen Bros. Lumber is a sawmill located in Colville, Washington. Spring Environmental coordinates with the facility operators to develop several regular and periodic compliance based services including annual and semi-annual Air Operating Permit (AOP) compliance reports, monthly deviation reports, green house gas reports, annual emissions inventory, Form R reports, discharge monitoring reports, and stormwater inspections.
- Michelsen Packaging Company operates a tray manufacturing plant located in Yakima, Washington. Annually, Spring Environmental prepares green house gas reports, reviews and updates a wastewater operations and maintenance manual, and completes air registrations with the local regulatory agency.
- Honeywell operates and maintains several boilers located at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington. Spring Environmental assists them with coordinating and performing annual backflow and combustion testing, conducting quarterly maintenance inspections, and calculatiing quarterly and annual air emissions.
Compliance Audits and Facility Inspections
A compliance audit or facility inspection is a comprehensive review of an organization’s adherence to regulatory requirements, permits, corporate guidelines or in-house policies and procedures.Spring Environmental conducts environmental, health and safety reviews tailored to a clients’ specific needs, whether a formal regulatory compliance assessment or in-house evaluation of current operations and practices.
Project Examples:
- Spring Environmental has performed semi-annual and annual compliance audits at a variety of facilities, including the Stimson Arden Lumber Mill located in Arden, Washington. The purpose of the audits was to determine gaps in recordkeeping and monitoring and to identify solutions when necessary. Spring Environmental also conducted audits to prepare Compliance Assurance Monitoring and Compliance Certification reports for submittal to the regulatory agency, as required by the facility’s Air Operating Permit.
- U.S. Wax is a custom turnkey filling and private labeling house, producing some of the world’s finest cleaning and polishing compounds, waxes and polishes for automotive, motorcycle, marine and aviation applications. Spring Environmental performed a detailed audit of the facility’s hazardous waste program and developed a comprehensive management system ensure proper management of all waste streams generated by the facility.
ISO 14000 Gap Analysis
ISO 14000, from the International Organization for Standardization, addresses various aspects of environmental management, including the implementation of Environmental Management Systems (EMS). An EMS meeting the requirements of ISO 14000 is a management tool enabling an organization of any size or type to:
- Identify and control the environmental impact of its activities, products or services.
- Improve its environmental performance continually.
- Implement a systematic approach to setting environmental objectives and targets, to achieving these and to demonstrating that they have been achieved.
Fulfilling these requirements demands objective evidence which can be audited to demonstrate that the environmental management system is operating effectively in conformity to the standard. Spring Environmental is happy to assist our clients in evaluating the effectiveness of their EMS and conformity with ISO 14000.
Project Examples:
- Ponderay Newsprint Company – Ponderay Newsprint Co. is a newsprint paper mill located in Usk, WA. Spring Environmental assisted the facility with preparations for certification under the ISO14001 standard with an initial Gap Analysis, which identified areas for environmental management system improvement.