Minimizing Liability
The presence of PFAS impacts human health and the environment, community development, business continuity, and mission operations. We leverage global expertise to customize solutions that meet your business and mission needs – developing a strategy that minimizes liabilities by preventing releases before they happen and addressing impacts effectively.
Environmental Health and Safety Compliance and Auditing
During the past 100 years, the number of laws, standards, and guidelines required for compliance have increased dramatically, and today, those include PFAS regulations.
It seems, just when you understand the current requirements, the regulatory environment shifts and you must modify your approach. Adaptability is critical because failure to meet new PFAS regulations could potentially harm people, the environment or lead to litigation, financial liability, and or reputational damage. Despite the effort to comply, it is still easier and cheaper than recovering from a compliance misstep.
We provide PFAS compliance support for these new regulations which impacts every facility and every industry:
- Stormwater
- Wastewater and Biosolids
- Drinking Water
- Air
- Waste
- Chemical inventory
Product Phase Out and Clean Out
Phasing out PFAS-containing products—because it’s not in your business’ best interest or because it’s now required by statute—and clean-out of equipment eliminates the potential for PFAS to be released to the environment.
One of the most common uses of PFAS has been to fight flammable fuel fires. Our experience includes decades designing special hazards fire protection systems with respect to flammable liquids protection in automatic and manual fire suppression systems.
Our fire protection engineers develop plans, schedules, and processes to remove and replace aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) with non-fluorinated fire protection options and recommend alternatives and methods for AFFF-containing systems cleanout.
We also work with fire protection systems manufacturers, providing us access to information and design solutions while products are still coming to market.
Charlie Honorowski Fire Protection Engineer
Waste and Residuals Management
Managing and disposing of PFAS-containing waste—whether it’s spent treatment residuals, environmental investigation derived waste, or construction waste—is expensive and disposal options are limited. We know how to characterize, profile, and manage these waste streams cost-effectively and in compliance with federal, state, and local laws, as well as disposal facility requirements. We closely track evolving regulations and proactively identify solutions to minimize costs and potential future liabilities.
Project Highlight: Fluorine Free Fire Suppression System Design Durham, North Carolina
We designed a large pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, which included a storage room and tank farm for flammable materials. The original design incorporated a fire suppression system that used alcohol resistant AFFF. During design, North Carolina banned AFFF used in newly constructed systems. We evaluated the availability and performance of fluorine free foams, studied the feasibility for the system design, and modified the design to accommodate fluorine free foam use.