You are the owner of a public marina and boatyard in Florida

Unit Assignments

Unit IV Article Critique

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The Article Critique is required to be a minimum of two pages to a maximum of four pages, double-spaced, APA style, from the journals and articles available in our CSU Library Databases. The article should deal with any of the material presented in the first three units of this course. The article itself must be more than one page in length. The article critique should include the following components:

• A brief introduction of the article
• Analysis of the key points in the article
• Application and comparison of some points in the article that might be applied to the company you work for, or have worked for
• Summary of the article’s conclusions and your own opinions

The Ebsco Database (Business Source Complete) is the best source of journals for environmental and safety related articles. Students can access the CSU Online Library resources through the My Library button on the course menu under Resources.

Unit VIII Case Scenario

Students may choose ONE of the TWO scenarios listed below for the Unit VIII Case Scenario Assignment. After selecting one of the two case scenarios below, students should provide a response that is a minimum of three to four pages (approximately 900-1100 words), double spaced, and following APA style guidelines. References should be provided for all resource material.

Information resources can be gathered from the journals and articles available in our CSU Library Databases or from the students own research of peer reviewed journals and/or internet based regulatory support material (i.e. EPA’s website).

The Ebsco Database (Business Source Complete) is a very good source of journals for articles related to the subject matter. Students can access the CSU Online Library resources through the My Library button on the course menu under Resources.

Scenario #1

You are the owner of a public marina and boatyard in Florida. Your marina is quite large and, along with being a marine retailer, it rents slips to small and large power boats and yachts, sailboats, and houseboats. It has a Yacht Club and popular restaurant/bar on the property. A portion of the property also is set aside for a small commercial fishing operation and boat repair and maintenance facility. This facility houses outdoor pressure washing areas, material handling and storage areas, blasting and painting areas, engine maintenance and repair areas, welding and fabrication areas, and dry-dock facilities.

Recently there have been complaints to you and the state about pollution in the waterways leading into and around your marina. There are scattered gasoline and oil slicks in the waters, loose trash around the docks and in the water adjacent to the restaurant, a large number of seagulls that create a nuisance around the restaurant facility (mostly around the old, cracked, garbage containers at the back of the restaurant).

The boat repair and maintenance facility is generally well run but there is evidence of open and exposed 55 gallon drums of dirty spare parts and discarded items outside the facility, greasy looking trails of muck outside the warehouse doors, and un-diked areas for liquid storage tanks of paints, solvents, resins and other materials. Rainwater washes these areas directly into either the marina waterways or offsite to the city stormwater system.

The state has contacted you and requested a response from you regarding these complaints. It is indicating that you need to file for a SWPPP (Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan) under a generic NPDES permit (Sector Q and R).

What would you include in a comprehensive, multimedia pollution prevention education program for your employees, the owners of boats that rent slips, and the general public that utilizes your docking facilities? Your focus should be on best management practices that support environmentally friendly practices intended to protect and preserve Florida’s natural aquatic environments. You should also focus on the requirements for the SWPPP.

Scenario #2

You are the newly appointed, and first, Environmental Manager of a major home products manufacturing plant in a major southern U.S. city. Your facility manufactures a wide range of household cleaning products and is a three shift operation that employs over 300 workers. The plant ships out finished products in all sizes of containers from household spray and liquid bottles to industrial sized 55 gallon drums and 500 gallon totes. There is a shipping and receiving warehouse facility with 20 bays for tractor trailer trucks. There are 6 large diked outdoor storage tank farms for raw materials and finished products. There is a private railroad car spur that unloads raw material hazardous chemicals into 5-10,000 storage tanks. There is also an attached $1 million dollar enclosed building used to unload the gas chlorine (approximately 20 million tons per year) that is utilized in many of your products (this facility is fully sealed off with protective alarms and gas scrubbers in case of a chlorine leak). You have a TSD permit that allows you to operate a wastewater recycling operation on site that treats both your aqueous and solvent based wastewaters. You utilize these recycled waters in both cleanup operations around the plant and in the actual product manufacture when quality control permits. The TSD was secured by the corporate environmental engineering department and the recycling operations themselves were run by the production department. There has never been a full time environmental manager on site.

Recently a survey and audit has determined that your VOC emissions from the manufacturing plant floor operations have jumped above the 50 ton mark for the first time. There have been persistent leaks that have allowed small amounts of sodium hydroxide and other hazardous chemicals to migrate outside the plant into the sewer system that adjoins the property. It appears that these leaks have come from the caulking materials that are at the base of the wall and floor of your unlined raw material tank farms.

There have also been problems with the air emissions from older designed ink production date coders and the blow molding presses where the plant makes its own polyethylene bottles. Finally, the number of spills on the bottle filling lines has increased dramatically over the past six months and caused a measurable amount of finished product (both solvent based and water based) to be swept into the floor drains that are on the production floor. These drains lead to the city water treatment systems and not to your recycling operations.

The plant manager is tired of hearing of all of these problems and the loss of product. He is irate about the repeated visits from the local city water treatment plant official (who he hates and is a fan of a rival SEC football team); along with the most recent annoying visit from the state water permitting authority. That is why he requested corporate headquarters to allow him to hire a full time Environmental Manager. Here is where you enter the scene – as you arrive for your first day at work he lays out the litany of problems, spills, and complaints. He wants to know your plan for addressing these issues and how you can put a halt to all this mess and institute a full Pollution Prevention plan for the plant. And he wants it – Yesterday! He finishes his mini-tirade with a warm “Welcome to the Big Time World and, remember – I don’t ever want to be part of the six o’clock news – you get my drift!”

In your response, please identify and be specific about what you would do, what programs would you address and implement to remedy the problems. Where would your priorities lie for creating the complete Pollution Prevention Program for your facility? You do have support from corporate environmental engineering and in-house production engineering staff along with a reasonable budget, but the plant employees themselves are rather cool to the idea of any extra work that might be created for them. Aside from his initial gruffness, the plant manager has subsequently and sincerely pledged his support for all your programs.

Information about accessing the Blackboard Grading Rubric for this assignment is provided below.

BEM 4001 Pollution Prevention