Clean Shop: Air and Water Regulations

   While the waste created by stone fabrication certainly doesn’t offer the same level of danger as any number of other byproducts created by industry – radioactive isotopes, toxic chemicals and their ilk – it’s also not as benign as you might think.
   Do your fabrication dry, and you run the risk of dust in the air. Indoors, it’s a hazard to your employees; outdoors. it’s a threat to the neighbors.
   Do the job wet, and you’ll have to figure out a way to deal with thousands of gallons of water each day that contain that same dust.
   Regardless of your choice, you’ll likely encounter federal, state and local regulators you’ll have to keep happy. However, they all stress their main goals are health and safety, and they’d rather work with business owners than assume an adversarial relationship … although they surely can.
  
A MATTER OF EMISSIONS
   Take the matter of airborne shop dust. For centuries, stoneworkers who spent too much time at their craft were prone to suffer from breathing problems.
   Today, we call the problem silicosis and recognize that inhaling silica, with its sharp edges damaging the air sacs lining human lungs, causes it. On a list of possible problems, it’s that threat to the health of stone-fabrication workers that gives regulators the greatest concern.
   Certainly there are few places in the country more concerned with air pollution than Southern California. The Diamond Bar, Calif.-based South Coast Air Quality Management District wields plenty of authority in making sure that all of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties meet federal air-quality requirements.
   However, that agency’s media spokesperson, Tina Cherry, says when it comes to stone fabrication, those businesses are exempt from its permitting process.
   “We’ve looked at these facilities and tested the air in and around them and decided they’re exempt from permitting,” she says. The only time a shop would see someone would be on a nuisance complaint.
   “They aren’t exempt from our public-nuisance rule, which says if they’re creating a bunch of dust that’s crossing the property line and neighboring residents complain to us, we’d go out and issue a violation,” Cherry explains.
   However, she adds that if an inspector is called to a facility and notices a lot of dust and dust-related problems, the agency may refer the situation to occupational health officials, in this case the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA).
   While California is divided into locally-based air quality management districts, the states also play a role in maintaining air quality. Under the Federal Clean Air Act, some states have an option where businesses likely to generate less than 50 percent of the federal threshold of emissions may utilize a process called the registration option, which allows more flexibility in terms of record keeping.
   However, this shouldn’t be a concern for most stone fabricators. Mike Nelson, an ombudsman with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in St. Paul, Minn., says that state has four companies that fall under the U.S. Census Bureau’s SIC (standard industrial classification) code 3281 (cut stone and stone products) that have permits from either the federal government or the state in Minnesota.
   Size is the determining factor, and only Cold Spring Granite Co. in Cold Spring is large enough to require a federal permit.
   
DAMPENING THE PROBLEM
   When it comes to air in the shop, however, the size of the business definitely doesn’t matter. If an inspection shows dust to be a problem, or an employee files a complaint or a health official treats an employee with breathing problems, expect to hear about it.
   Depending on where your shop is located, you’ll be dealing with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), or state officials. Currently, the federal agency is responsible for enforcing its own requirements in only half of the 50 states. The others have what are called approved state programs and work/health/safety issues, including inspections, are handled through them.
   Steve Smith, an industrial hygienist with Cal/OSHA, explains that there are several reasons why states opt to do their own enforcement of these issues.
   “This way, we can have a program that’s oriented to California-specific issues,” he says. “When the program was established, back in the 1970s, we made an agreement with federal OSHA. We think we’re more stringent and more responsive to issues that relate to California, both from the employer and employee sides.”
   John Brennan, the division director with the general industry safety and health division of Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA), agrees. He says new regulations are formulated when information the agency is receiving shows a need.
   “We look at Michigan data, and if we see a trend we feel we need to act on, we’ll do that,” he says.
   Currently, he says there’s nothing suggesting that the stone industry needs more regulations.
   In fact, if there’s good news for stone-fabrication shops – those that fall under 3281 of the SIC code – it’s that Michigan isn’t focusing heavily on them right now. Brennan explains that the agency is in the midst of its second five-year strategic plan, and 3281 isn’t targeted under it.
   “If they’re not targeted companies, they don’t normally show up under planned, or wall-to-wall, inspections,” he says. “For us to do an inspection they would have to get on our random list or their injury/illness rates would have to be over the average for that SIC code.”
   However, he adds that the agency has done 20 inspections of businesses that fall under SIC 3281 since 2000.
   “Most of them are from employee complaints,” Brennan says. “Michigan State University also has a grant from MIOSHA where they review injury and illness reports from clinics and hospitals. Employers are supposed to respond to them, and we’ve had a couple referrals from that grant for air quality violations related to silica.”
   California isn’t exactly cracking down on stone shops, either. However, that state’s Smith says the agency is aware of the fact that the growth of the industry is probably leading to more exposures.
   “We put out a hazard alert about a year ago because of concern about the silica content of the stone,” Smith says. “Some people new to the business may not know granite has a fairly high concentration of silica in it. We wanted to remind them that silica is a known health hazard and a suspected carcinogen, and there’s a fairly low permissible-exposure limit – so employees are supposed to be protected.”
   However, he adds that most shops the agency inspects don’t seem to be having a problem with it.
   “What we’ve found is the best way to control it is to work the stone wet,” Smith says. “If shops are using wet methods, they tend to be in compliance with airborne limits. Those that don’t work wet seem to have the problems.”
   However, that’s not the only option, according to Brennan.
   “Another way is local exhaust ventilation,” he says. “It doesn’t help to have a fan on a wall somewhere, though; you need it to be positioned right where the work is being done.”
  
DOWN THE DRAIN
   Of course, those who work wet may have a different problem: wastewater.
   Those multiple gallons that keep the dust down have to go somewhere, and if you’re sending them down your local sewer or into a creek or ditch behind the shop, you’re likely to meet local regulators as well.
   The basis for much of that regulation is the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) set up under the federal Clean Water Act. As with OSHA, much of the responsibility for its administration has been turned over to the states, except in the cases of Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
   Again, it’s a case where size matters. Jim Strudell, a water quality permit writer with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in St. Paul, Minn., says when it comes to water quality, that agency is focused on other industries with potentially greater pollution impacts.
   “When I think of stone-related issues, we have a large iron-mining district in Minnesota,” he says. “When we think of big processing operations, that comes to mind.”
   Not that the agency doesn’t have permits for natural stone processors and fabricators. He, too, mentions Cold Spring Granite as an example. While there are others, Strudell says they don’t need to meet the same requirements as Cold Spring needs to, mainly because of size.
   “They aren’t dealing with us because they don’t generate as much wastewater,” he says. “It also depends on what kind of wastewater they’re generating and how they manage it.”
   Tom Frame, the supervisor of environmental management for the Minneapolis Department of Regulatory Services, agrees. While that city has a reputation for being tough when it comes to how it handles wastewater, Frame says the level of permitting that municipality requires depends on what’s going down the drain.
   “Our wastewater is treated by the Metropolitan Council of Environmental Services and based on their standards there might be an industrial permit required because of the level of particulates being discharged,” he says. “However, I haven’t seen any of those permits for particulate levels. Typically sanitary discharge has all kinds of solids in it; chemicals and acids cause more problems for the treatment facilities.”
   Frame says from his standpoint, a bigger problem might come with companies who are doing cutting and grinding at a construction site where discharge is finding its way to the city’s storm-drain system.
   “What we want as much as possible is that discharges from businesses in the city be clean water,” he says. “Where we’ve seen people working on streets, we see solids being suspended in the outfalls on city lakes and on the Mississippi. That creates complaints and may be a violation the city has to address as part of a permit process.”
   The real bottom line, both with clean-air and clean-water issues, is that if shops stay on top of the situation, they won’t likely draw the attention of regulators.
   “If industry does some housekeeping and takes care of the problems themselves, we don’t have to regulate them,” Frame says, echoing MIOSHA’s Brennan. “Most regulations stem from a particular need that isn’t addressed by an industry.”
   The Internet has also made it much easier for businesses of all types to stay on top of what regulations apply to them. It’s a rare agency that doesn’t have a Website with plenty of navigation links and contact information if human assistance is required.
   Regulating agencies believe they’re making it easier to get help than in the past, too. Frame, for instance, says the city of Minneapolis has what it calls one-stop shopping, where all the city departments involved in the planning and approval process participate in a review.
   “Any perspective developer can bring in a basic plan, tell us what they hope to do and the city will write up our concerns and the basic criteria the business owner will need to meet,” he says.
   It goes beyond that, though. The state of Minnesota’s Nelson notes that the Clean Air Act requires each state to have an ombudsman to help small businesses deal with air quality programs.
   CalOSHA’s Smith notes that agency also has a consultation service as part of its program. Its goal is to educate people on these issues, rather than cite them for violations.
   “They give advice and they do evaluations,” Smith explains. “We’ve tried to emphasize getting the word out and helping people before we get a complaint.”
   He says it’s been his experience that employers want to do the right thing for their employees.
   “If they’re aware that dust has a hazardous component to it, they see the value of controlling it, and we’re getting some pretty good success there,” Smith says.

This article first appeared in the January 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.