How long have you been at Shamrock? How long in your current role?
I have been here since 2001, and I have been in the same role the entire time as Director of Health, Safety and Environment.
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
I have the responsibility of defining and promoting the health and safety aspects and benefits of our programs at Shamrock to our employees. I also handle our environmental permitting, such as obtaining, procuring and managing environmental permits, all of which are important to doing business and complying with environmental regulations. In addition to these aspects, I work to ensure compliance with the Department of Transportation’s regulations in safely transporting hazardous waste and materials. The most rewarding part of my job is knowing that at the end of the day, I help prevent and reduce the number of accidents, which in turn helps reduce risks to our employees and the company.
How would you explain your job to someone outside of your field?
My job is to recognize the health, safety and environmental hazards and risks, evaluate those concerns and find controls for those risks. I study rules and regulations that apply to Shamrock’s business and help guide management and employees. I help formulate the means and methods for us to facilitate compliance with rules and regulations, but I am also tasked with communicating the importance and benefit of these regulations to our employees. I educate senior and mid-level managers on what health and safety requirements are, as well as workers as to why certain procedures are so important.
Why is health and safety training and coaching so important?
In order to implement health and safety programs, you have to understand both why they’re in place and how to act upon them. Most importantly, you must have a formal method to communicate the importance of health and safety to employees to maintain consistency. As well as training, you must coach employees to maintain compliance to these procedures. Think about your employees as athletes: you can train an athlete on the rules and regulations of the sport, but you need to watch them play, correct bad behaviors and encourage good ones to get them to the professional level.
What type of health and safety training does Shamrock provide to employees?
At Shamrock, we provide an initial 40-hour OSHA HAZWOPER training (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response), as well as Department of Transportation HazMat training and EPA RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) training. We also provide used oil, universal waste, job-specific training and other necessary training.
How frequent is the training?
At Shamrock, we provide an initial 40-hour HAZWOPER training, along with annual 8-hour refresher courses. We hold DOT HazMat training every three years, and used oil, universal waste and job-specific training annually.
Why is Shamrock a leader in health and safety training?
Shamrock is a leader in health and safety training because we structure our training towards the needs of and work we do for our customers. At Shamrock, we value the hands-on aspect of training; we use a mix of both self-directed and instructor-led online training, as well as in-person hands-on training. All our trainers have years of experience and education on the subject matter.
What is emergency preparedness?
Emergency preparedness is evaluating the risk of accidental spills, releases or other mishaps; identifying the appropriate responses; verifying the availability of personnel and equipment resources; and contracting with a qualified provider in advance of any such mishap.
How does emergency preparedness give customers peace of mind?
By understanding their risk, being prepared and knowing that they have a trained and qualified contractor available, customers can rest assured that in the event of a mishap they will have a responsive remedy available to them.
Why is Shamrock a leader in emergency preparedness?
Shamrock is a leader in emergency preparedness because of our long-term experience in the industry and the breadth of responses we’ve been called upon to address, including anthrax, hurricane cleanup, tire fires, tank truck rollovers, plant fires, explosions and other workplace disasters. We’ve responded to large oil spill clean ups for pipeline companies in Guilford County, N.C. and Ohio, as well as a coal ash spill for a utility company in North Carolina.
Shamrock is also a United States Coast Guard certified OSRO (Oil Spill Removal Organization) capable of responding to oil spills near waterways. We pioneered the COVID-19 cleaning procedures of industrial facilities in March 2020, designing our program around CDC and OSHA guidelines when COVID complications and long-term effects were still unknown.
What is centralized waste treatment?
Centralized waste treatment (CWT) is a categorial pre-treatment standard under the Clean Water Act of 1972. Shamrock is a permitted CWT facility in Greensboro, N.C., Richmond, V.A., Lakeland, F.L. and Tampa, F.L. CWT facilities accept industrial wastewaters from different industries and treat it in accordance with relevant permitting in an environmentally responsible manner.
At Shamrock, we pretreat the wastewater to meet permit limits, then discharge treated wastewaters to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW). POTWs complete the final treatment steps to wastewater before it is released to the environment. At Shamrock, we consider ourselves stewards of the environment and a benefit to industry. We treat wastewater to improve it to standards and then discharge it to POTWs and water reclamation facilities where it is then treated for reclamation, makeup water and re-use water for agriculture or other industries. POTWs complete the final treatment steps to wastewater before it is released to the environment, adding additional assurance to our customers.
How does Shamrock’s CWT benefit regulators, industries, communities and customers?
Regulators have the goal of protecting communities, and we have an advanced wastewater treatment system with state-of-the-art equipment and a strong commitment to compliance and environmental protection. Using state-of-the-art equipment to treat wastewaters benefits the community and our clients. We provide industries with an environmentally responsible outlet for the wastewaters derived from their manufacturing and production processes. Without a responsible outlet, these wastewaters could end up disposed of in other manners. At Shamrock, we treat wastewater in excess of what the regulatory standards require. We are audited and meet high client standards, including being a CHWMEG-approved facility and compliant with ISN, Avetta and other evaluation mechanisms.
Why is Shamrock a leader in CWT?
At Shamrock, we use state-of-the-art physical, chemical and filtration processes to effectively manage industrial wastewaters in excess of regulatory standards. We believe in an open and cooperative relationship with our regulators that makes Shamrock a leader in the field. We are in the compliance business; companies wouldn’t be coming to Shamrock if they didn’t have a desired need to comply.
How does Shamrock manage rapidly changing regulations and keep customers informed and safe?
We maintain a highly qualified staff of engineers, scientists and compliance specialists that monitor regulatory trends, continually evaluate our treatment systems and services we offer and modify those to address customer needs or regulatory changes in a proactive manner. There are lots of moving parts behind the scenes at Shamrock, with different levels of regulations from OSHA, the EPA and the states and communities in which we operate.
What is the difference between hazardous waste, hazardous materials, hazardous substances and non-hazardous industrial waste?
Hazardous wastes are defined in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations. They include listed and characteristic wastes that are defined as hazardous per EPA and state regulations.
Hazardous materials typically refer to materials regulated in transportation. They include materials that might cause harm to the public or to the environment if mishandled during transport, as defined in DOT regulations. For example, petroleum contact water (PCW) is water that has fuel in it. While it doesn’t reach the level of hazardous waste, it can be highly flammable, and is handled as a hazardous material.
Hazardous substances are an EPA list of chemicals and materials that may cause harm to the environment. Discharges of these chemicals in air, water, soil and the environment may be regulated. For example, amine is an industrial chemical that has lots of uses, but it typically does not meet the definition of a hazardous waste or material. While many of these amines may or may not meet the definition of a hazardous waste, they may be a hazardous substance and present a risk to the environment and/or safety and health of employees if not handled correctly. We have the experience, processes, people and equipment needed to properly manage these materials.
Non-hazardous industrial waste is anything that does not meet the previous definitions, is typically from a commercial or industrial source, and may have adverse characteristics that present environmental or public health hazards if not properly managed. For example, manufacturing byproducts, oily wastewater, food flavoring in an industrial state, paint byproducts and food product all may be categorized as non-hazardous industrial waste.