November 9-11, 2021
Join SCS at the RETA National Conference – the largest gathering of Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians that offers 3 full days of educational and networking activities and events. You can also take the CARO, CIRO, CRST, or CRES Review Courses.
Lee Pyle: Ms. Pyle is a Vice President of SCS Engineers, the Business Unit Director of our SCS Tracer Division, and our National Expert on Risk Management Plans and Process Safety Management. Ms. Pyle serves as lead engineer on many projects and has been involved in preparing over 100 Risk Management and Safety Management Programs. She is a key element in developing the Risk and Safety program at SCS Tracer Environmental, including document preparation for specific Administrating Agencies throughout the state of California and ensuring that all our risk programs are acceptable to these agencies.
Bill Lape: Mr. Lape is a Project Director for the Risk Management Group in our Tracer Environmental Division. His responsibilities include outlining project budgets, organizing project schedules, and quality control. He is experienced in developing and deploying standardized Risk Management and Process Safety Management (PSM) Programs, including process safety program implementation and PSM support to manufacturing facilities that utilize ammonia as a refrigerant.
The Florida Engineering Society (FES) and the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida (ACEC-FL) promote professional engineers in Florida. FES and ACEC support engineering education, advocate licensure, promote the ethical and competent practice of engineering, and further the public’s knowledge and understanding of the profession’s importance.
These firms create innovative solutions while upholding their responsibility to the public’s health, safety, and wellbeing.
June 21st – 25th, 2021
Join SCS at the Annual IIAR Natural Refrigeration Conference, the largest conference and exposition dedicated to the natural refrigeration industry. We provide opportunities for the industry’s leading manufacturers, technicians, and regulators to learn more about SCS’s comprehensive programs and training.
Lee Pyle: Ms. Pyle is a Vice President of SCS Engineers, the Business Unit Director of our SCS Tracer Division, and our National Expert on Risk Management Plans and Process Safety Management. Ms. Pyle serves as lead engineer on many projects and has been involved in preparing over 100 Risk Management and Safety Management Programs. She is a key element in developing the Risk and Safety program at SCS Tracer Environmental, including document preparation for specific Administrating Agencies throughout the state of California and ensuring that all our risk programs are acceptable to these agencies.
Bill Lape: Mr. Lape is a Project Director for the Risk Management Group in our Tracer Environmental Division. His responsibilities include outlining project budgets, organizing project schedules, and quality control. He is experienced in developing and deploying standardized Risk Management and Process Safety Management (PSM) Programs, including process safety program implementation and PSM support to manufacturing facilities that utilize ammonia as a refrigerant.
Free Webinar
Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with sensors capture a multitude of readings in a single swoop, monitoring and observing locations difficult to access on foot or by vehicle. The combination of UAV-mounted technologies produces photogrammetric and aerial photographic imagery, offering the ability to take measurements from photographs. This technology enables large-scale assessments providing a comprehensive view of a landfill’s overall health.
Mitigation is faster using collected geotagged data, which enables identifying potential problematic areas such as leachate collection headers, landfill gas headers, flares, wellheads, tanks, pipelines, equipment, even buildings. You can zero in on hot spots, unidentified tanks, or terrain that could be causing runoff problems reducing the time normally spent to locate, diagnose, and mitigate.
The same technology also helps energy firms, contractors, and other businesses inspect and monitor long horizontal projects, such as power lines and pipelines, or tall vertical structures, such as bridges and high rises. Performing autonomous flights over time provides historical data assessment and visualization of work’s progress, location of workers and equipment, and assessing and documenting weather or other impacts.
SCS Engineers’ March webinar is now online! Learn more about drone-mounted technology and how to achieve the most benefit. This webinar will help you develop capabilities to assess technology’s potential for addressing operational issues now and in the future. This is a free, live webinar with Q&A – open to solid waste, landfill, landfill gas professionals, contractors, municipalities, and the energy sector.
Our panelists bring comprehensive expertise to the discussion, including solid waste expertise and landfill management; a licensed pilot − flying and assessing over 120 landfills, pipelines, and other infrastructure; Remote Monitoring and Control (RMC) systems including Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), air quality compliance and pollutant dispersion and air measurement programs. The team answers questions throughout the presentation, and the second portion of the program is devoted to Q&A and idea exchange.
SCS Engineers and Florida East Coast Industries (FECI) are to be honored at the annual conference in Florida planned for August 2021. The firms will receive a 2021 Engineering Excellence Award by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida. The honor acknowledges SCS for the environmental engineering firm’s innovative design that integrates groundwater remediation with the stormwater management system on a 500-acre former landfill site. The design enabled the developer to remediate the former landfill into the Countyline Corporate Park in Southeast Florida.
Industrial real estate is in high demand, but former landfills and brownfields present environmental challenges that can become cost-prohibitive to redevelop without sound environmental expertise. FECI retained the professional services of SCS Engineers to provide consulting and design services addressing the environmental concerns preventing the transformation of a former landfill into a state of the art business park.
Environmental guidelines require 28% (or about 140 acres) of the site to be set aside for stormwater retention. The set aside would require the relocation of several thousand cubic yards of waste and prevent the 140 acres’ redevelopment. The estimated loss of $300 million in potential real estate sales, coupled with the groundwater remediation expense, made the site redevelopment cost-prohibitive. Unless resolved, the problem also impeded FECI’s corporate sustainability goals.
SCS’s experts in landfill design, closure, and remediation, developed a solution tying together the groundwater remediation and stormwater management systems. The integrated system allows for shallow aquifer recharge with stormwater and captures impacted groundwater at the site’s boundary. “We were able to provide an alternative design acceptable to all the permitting agencies, eliminating the need to set aside large areas for stormwater retention,” said Mr. Som Kundral, P.E., SCS’s senior project manager.
SCS’s remedial actions protect public health while opening the site for reuse. The project will be completed in phases. Phase I, consisting of 160 acres, is complete, with two million square feet of occupied businesses and a 30-acre community park. Development of the other three phases, which include another six million square feet, is underway.
The development will create hundreds of new jobs, deliver several hundred million dollars to the city and county tax base, and provide a 30-acre public park. “The engineering solution protects the environment while meeting FECI’s strategic, social, economic, and sustainability goals,” said Mr. Eduardo Smith, P.E., SCS’s senior vice president of client success.
Learn more about these related topics, events, and case studies at SCS Engineers:
The Emergency Planning and Community-Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was enacted by Congress to assist local communities in protecting public health by requiring facilities to file an annual EPCRA Tier II Report, identifying hazardous chemical inventories maintained at the facility. Submitting Tier II Reports allows the local emergency personnel to be aware of the chemicals that are present within facilities in their jurisdiction, and prepare for and respond to chemical emergencies.
The annual federal deadline for submitting Tier II Reports is March 1st (more to come on
this deadline). Facilities are required to report any chemicals, which are included within the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200). A list of EHSs and their TPQs can be found at 40 CFR 355, Appendix A. The EPA has compiled a “List of Lists” which provides a consolidated list of chemicals that are subject to EPCRA Tier II reporting along with their Threshold Planning Quantities (TPQ). The TPQ is the amount of chemical kept on-site above which you must file a Tier II. It is important to note that ammonia has a Tier II reporting threshold of 500 pounds.
Some states require that Tier II forms be submitted electronically, while other states may require hard copy submittals. Still, others require both digital and printed submissions.
Keep reading to find out more from Travis Weber at SCS Engineers, Tracer Environmental Practice…
That’s Bill Lape in a word. Bill is a Certified Industrial Refrigeration Operator, a Certified Refrigeration Service Technician, and a member of the National Board of Directors of the Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians Association – RETA. He is also a certified Process Safety Management Professional through the University of Wisconsin.
PSM SAFETY & COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS IN THE AGE OF PANDEMICS PSM safety programs and training remain a top priority during the pandemic. While online training is not a complete substitute for live, face-to-face PSM training and instruction, in the age of pandemics, it is a viable option. What to look for in PSM – ammonia refrigeration system safety training?
EPIC FAIL: ICE BUILD UP When developing your inspections for your system’s mechanical integrity program, always be mindful of the potential consequences of ice buildup, particularly if it continues for an extended period of time.
Scientists and experts agree that climate change is a present-day threat to communities across the U.S., manifesting in both predictable and unpredictable ways. As detailed in the National Climate Assessment Vol. 4 (NCA4), coastal storms are increasing in strength and frequency, forest fires are becoming much larger and more destructive, annual precipitation is changing and increasing in variability, and widespread flooding is becoming more common both in the interior of the nation and along the coasts.
These changes present complex challenges to the waste management industry that must be addressed and planned for. For example, one challenge is an increasing frequency of large-scale weather events and natural disasters, which are creating more debris that must be managed and which affects the characteristics of landfilled waste. Landfill design needs to incorporate precipitation changes and increased threats due to weather variability, flooding, and sea-level rise. Precipitation changes affect gas generation rates and require a diligent reaction to maintain effective gas collection. Because of weather pattern changes, risks of cover material erosion and swales have increased for landfills in both wet and dry climates, which may require stronger natural caps or the use of emerging technologies for alternate cover. Additionally, landfills are affected by an increase in the variability of precipitation and rapid changes between weather extremes.
It is clear that waste management facilities must adapt to these changes in addition to scenario building for pandemics to maintain effective operations. Adaptations available include making changes to landfill design and planning, such as incorporating precipitation changes into the modeling of leachate and gas generation or increasing the distance between the bottom liner and groundwater.
Systems should be regularly evaluated and areas needing repairs should be corrected quickly and diligently. Gas generation models should be updated regularly and collection systems need to be expanded or adjusted to account for precipitation increases or decreases.
More frequent and intense storms are creating challenges for cover material management, liquids management, and maintaining slope stability. Facilities should implement innovative uses of both existing technology and new or emerging technologies.
Communities with waste management facilities should include waste management infrastructure in emergency management plans, including maintaining landfills and collections operations and using landfills as both temporary debris storage and as an option for final disposal.
Since climate change effects vary by region and locale, many facilities are developing a specific plan for adaptation and management. To reduce the inevitable costs of adaptation and maintain responsiveness to weather changes, a reactive approach is being abandoned in favor of a proactive approach.
About the Author: Jacob Shepherd is a Senior Project Professional specializing in air compliance and reporting within EPA Region III. He is experienced in environmental engineering, air compliance, renewable energy, landfill and landfill gas engineering, and environmental services throughout the mid-Atlantic region, and is a licensed P.E. in Virginia.
Resources and Recovery
Get started with these resources and recovery success studies; click to read, download, or share each:
Contact for assistance starting or refining your plan ahead of natural disasters and pandemics. We offer these services:
Planning for Natural Disaster Debris – help for communities to develop or revise a disaster debris management plan. Many aspects of disaster debris planning can be relevant to communities demolishing abandoned residential buildings and remediating properties.
Guidance about Planning for Natural Disaster Debris – much of the construction or demolition waste can be recovered and recycled. SCS Engineers designs and builds these facilities so we can help locate the nearest C&D debris recyclers as part of your plan.
Planning Financial Response and Recovery – the SCS Management Services™ team offers services to support financial planning and to quickly access budget and operational financial impacts. Eliminate concerns about the upcoming fiscal year expectations and anticipated medium-term impacts of pandemics and natural hazards on local government operations and revenue streams. Address issues such as:
In light of public concerns related to COVID-19, SCS Engineers has proactive measures and contingency plans in place to protect our employees and our clients, while continuing our work. SCS’s Health & Safety practice, in consultation with our executives, the Centers for Disease Control, and industry associations, endeavors to make the most responsible decisions as circumstances demand.
SCS will post updates here as needed, and is in regular and consistent communication with all employees and with our clients.
The environmental reporting season is just around the corner. Every year Ann O’Brien publishes a table to help you determine your reporting obligations. The table summarizes the most common types of environmental reports due to environmental regulatory agencies in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, along with respective due dates.
Table: environmental regulatory agencies in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin
The professional engineers and consultants at SCS Engineers can help you navigate the local, state, and federal reporting obligations and permitting for your business, in your region, and in your industry. Contact us at or find a professional like Ann, nearest you.
Ann O’Brien is a Project Manager with SCS Engineers with more than 30 years of experience in the printing industry. Ann’s experience includes air and water quality permitting, environmental recordkeeping, reporting and monitoring programs, hazardous waste management, employee EHS training, environmental compliance audits, and environmental site assessments and due diligence associated with real estate transactions and corporate acquisitions.
Thanks, Ann!
