Environment and Sustainability Blog Posts from Resource Management Associates

We hear a lot about stormwater bmps and stormwater management these days, and they seem to be some of the most-used buzzwords in the environmental and development industries. So, the million dollar question is, what is stormwater management?

I just finished doing some training on environmental management system development, and once again I had to take time to explain what environmental aspects and impact are for. They're "EMS terms", but they kind of come out a bit confusing. Let's see if we can clear some of that up here.

I've written before a few times about TRI reporting - Toxic Release Inventory reporting as required under Federal regulations known as EPCRA (the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act), otherwise known as SARA Section 313 reporting.

A few days ago, I was watching one of those home building shows on television. This one was showcasing some type of home building trade show that was going on somewhere, and the feature they were highlighting was on steel frame construction for new homes, and "all the great features" of steel frame construction.

I did some Green-Star training this past week with a concrete company. In case you don't know, that's the NRMCA Green-Star certification program for ready-mixed concrete plants. It went great, and I'm always happy to show another concrete company how this program will help them. I've yet to work with a company that once they have a Green-Star program underway, think anything but that it's a great thing for their company.

Concrete is one of the most versatile, durable building materials known to man - made from natural, basic materials of sand, stone, limestone cement, water. Concrete producers don't like to think there is anything hazardous or toxic within concrete, and they're right. There really isn't anything in concrete that could interact in a negative way with the environment under nearly all applications of concrete. So there really isn't anything to worry about.

I recently came back from a national trade association, where (as always) there was quite a bit of discussion about sustainability. It seems to be a pretty hot topic today.

Currently, the Federal Clean Water Act (CWA) gives the USEPA the authority to regulate all discharges to surface waters of the United States. Got that? Surface waters. Things like oceans, bays, rivers, streams, creeks, marshes, wetlands (that's right, no water needed), and some other more dubious "waters of the US" such as intermittent streams. But, all on the surface of the landscape - surface waters.

A few weeks back, I posted about jobsite washout, asking who you thought was responsible. I also posted the link to the blog posting in Linkedin, and received a lot of responses.

I regularly get a number of searches to my website for "concrete plant oil spill plan". I'm not entirely sure what is being searched for (at least in the minds of those doing the searches), but I think I have a very good understanding of what this means.