Environmental health and safety management at vulcan chemicals: Total quality and auditing

At Vulcan Chemicals, total quality requires auditing and auditing ensures total quality. This article details the continuing integration of the two processes and describes some of the audits—and their measured regulate.     

Total quality practitioner. Improving environmental process

Quick fix. Putting out firs. Do it over. Fix it again. Bottlenecks. Come back to it later. Out of stock. Back order. Not what we ordered. Is that the best you can do? It's the contractor's fault. Not within specs. Defective. Nobody's perfect. Lost in the system. Over budget. Delayed. Late penalities. Fines.     

Geographic information systems: a tool for strategic ground water quality management

Geographically‐related information is needed for several elements of an integrated ground water quality management programme, including ground water monitoring planning, prioritization of pollution sources, usage of permits and inspections for source control, and planning and completion of remedial actions. Geographic Information Systems (GISs) can be used to support these elements along with delineating wellhead protection areas (WHPAs), prioritizing existing contaminant sources and evaluating proposed changes in land usage in such areas. Eight case studies of the use of GISs in wellhead protection programmes are summarized, including examples from Rhode Island, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Massachusetts and Texas. Six additional examples are mentioned relative to the use of GISs for evaluating ground water pollution potential, facilitating data analysis for environmental restoration of a large area with numerous waste sites, evaluating trends in ground water nitrate contamination, establishing a national database for ground water vulnerability to agricultural chemicals, simulating water table altitudes from stream and drainage basin locations, and selecting radioactive waste dump sites. The applicability of GISs and their associated advantages in wellhead protection and other ground water management studies are demonstrated via the case studies. The GIS technology provides a unique opportunity for analysing and visualizing spatial data. Contaminant and source prioritization within WHPAs is needed for both extant conditions and in the evaluation of proposed land use changes. The coupling of a GIS with contaminant/source prioritization would provide a strategic tool which could be used to plan targeted ground water monitoring programmes, to identify appropriate management or mitigation measures, minimize introduction of contaminants from existing sources into the subsurface environment, and to evaluate the potential of proposed land use activities for causing ground water contamination. GISs can be useful in providing current information for policy makers, planners and managers engaged in ground water quality decision making.     

Assessing the value of information for water quality management in the North Sea

Global Earth Observation (GEO) is one of the most important sources of information for environmental resource management and disaster prevention. With budgets for GEO increasingly under pressure, it is becoming important to be able to quantify the returns to informational investments. For this, a clear analytical framework is lacking. By combining Bayesian decision theory with an empirical, stakeholder-oriented approach, this paper attempts to develop such a framework. The analysis focuses on the use of satellite observations for Dutch water quality management in the North Sea. Dutch water quality management currently relies on information from 'in situ' measurements but is considering extending and deepening its information base with satellite observations. To estimate returns to additional investments in satellite observation, we analyze the added value of an extended monitoring system for the management of eutrophication, potentially harmful algal blooms and suspended sediment and turbidity in the North Sea. First, we develop a model to make the potential contribution of information to welfare explicit. Second, we use this model to develop a questionnaire and interpret the results. The results indicate that the expected welfare impact of investing in satellite observation is positive, but that outcomes strongly depend on the accuracy of the information system and the range of informational benefits perceived.     

Publicly-provided information in environmental management: incorporating groundwater quality goals into herbicide treatment recommendations

Use of publicly-provided information to promote environmental quality has received somewhat less attention in the environmental management literature than use of other environmental policy tools based on economic incentives such as emissions taxes, subsidies and marketable permits. Yet publicly-provided information may have potential as an environmental policy tool, especially in managing problems of agricultural pollution, due in large part to the existing capability of public information agencies associated with the agricultural research community. Information provided by these agencies is known to be an important factor in decision making in agriculture and may have potential for influencing decisions that relate directly to preserving the integrity of environmental resources. Moreover, this potential may have particular relevance for protecting groundwater quality from agricultural production since the results of contamination are often at least partially internal to the farm decision maker. This paper develops an empirical model to formulate publicly-provided herbicide treatment recommendations designed to protect both the quality of groundwater and the income of farmers. An economic and statistical model of a crop-pest system is used in conjunction with a groundwater loading model to derive the trade-off relationship between producer income and movement of herbicide material through the root zone. The trade-off relationship can provide the basis for formulating herbicide treatment recommendations and can also shed light on appropriate groundwater quality goals.     

Environmental audit: III. Improving the management of environmental information for toxic substances

Environmental programs have been commonly driven by a preoccupation with the collection of data in the mistaken belief thatdata is synonymous withinformation. The distinction between data (that is, the quantified and qualitative attributes of a particular environment) and information (specifically, data processed so as to focus upon a particular environmental problem) will become far more important to environmental managers. They will increasingly manage their information through use of what has become known as information resource management (IRM) and the attendant use of critical success factors methodology. Environmental managers will thereby move away from concerns about data and specific EDP hardware and applications toward managing information as a valuable agency resource. In applying IRM, they will find it helpful to include a number of planning elements and to resolve early a number of issues critical to its successful use.     

Water quality modeling of fertilizer management impacts on nitrate losses in tile drains at the field scale

Nitrate losses from subsurface tile drained row cropland in the Upper Midwest U.S. contribute to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Strategies are needed to reduce nitrate losses to the Mississippi River. This paper evaluates the effect of fertilizer rate and timing on nitrate losses in two (East and West) commercial row crop fields located in south-central Minnesota. The Agricultural Drainage and Pesticide Transport (ADAPT) model was calibrated and validated for monthly subsurface tile drain flow and nitrate losses for a period of 1999-2003. Good agreement was found between observed and predicted tile drain flow and nitrate losses during the calibration period, with Nash-Sutcliffe modeling efficiencies of 0.75 and 0.56, respectively. Better agreements were observed for the validation period. The calibrated model was then used to evaluate the effects of rate and timing of fertilizer application on nitrate losses with a 50-yr climatic record (1954-2003). Significant reductions in nitrate losses were predicted by reducing fertilizer application rates and changing timing. A 13% reduction in nitrate losses was predicted when fall fertilizer application rate was reduced from 180 to 123 kg/ha. A further 9% reduction in nitrate losses can be achieved when switching from fall to spring application. Larger reductions in nitrate losses would require changes in fertilizer rate and timing, as well as other practices such as changing tile drain spacings and/or depths, fall cover cropping, or conversion of crop land to pasture.     

Environmental information sharing: a means to support the legitimization of oyster farmers’ stewardship over water quality management in NSW,Australia

Oyster farmers depend on good water quality. Activities upstream from estuaries result in externalities that impact water quality. Over the last 10 years, oyster farmers have been developing estuary‐wide environmental management systems ( EMSs ) to tackle internal (i.e. industry‐related) and external (i.e. catchment) issues in N ew S outh W ales, A ustralia. Drawing on interview‐based research and document analyses, this paper shows that the process of creating an EMS for the oyster industry, as well as the creation of the EMS itself, resulted in legitimizing the industry's stewardship over the natural resource it depends on (water). For the oyster industry, this result was due to a change in the scale on which EMSs have been developed: instead of viewing issues at the individual business level, the systems expanded their viewpoint to the entire catchment, and included every oyster business in the estuary, as well as all other activities in the upper catchment. By providing a means of communicating internal efforts and with the support of local government bodies, EMSs provided a mechanism with which influence over upstream actors and activities could be exerted. We demonstrate this by using the ‘social‐ecological systems’ and ‘ ENCORE ’ frameworks, emphasizing the transitions that allowed for this change of scale to take place.     

Applying value of information methods to prioritize elements for water quality management with an example of linear alkylbenzene sulfonate in the Yodo River,Japan

Narrowing the decision space is crucial in water quality management at the meso-scale for developing countries, where a lack of data and financial budgets prevent the development of appropriate management plans and result in serious water quality degradation in many rivers. In this study, a framework for handling this task is proposed, comprising a lumped water quality model, with sensitivity and uncertainty analyses, and a management domain, including loss estimation and value of information analysis. Through a case study with linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) in the Yodo River, it is found that non-point sources and flow rate are factors that influence LAS concentration at the hot spot location. By considering the entire process of water quality management planning, we identify that the definition of the cost function of LAS treatment determines the appropriate estimation for the expected loss in reducing LAS under uncertain water quality conditions. The value of information analysis with “expected value of including uncertainty” and “expected value of perfect information” further helps estimate the benefit of including uncertainty in decision-making and the financial cost for obtaining more information regarding inputs that have been previously prioritized.