The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been cracking the whip on lenient hazardous waste management programs at colleges and universities across the nation. With its College and University Initiative, which began on college campuses in the Northeast, the EPA has issued $8 million in penalties and fines. Despite this, the University has not been under the EPA’s watchful eye.

The EPA discovered in 1999 that numerous colleges and universities were not in compliance with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976. This law details how hazardous waste should be managed on college campuses, lending the EPA the ability to monitor hazardous waste from initial use to disposal.

The last inspection at any of the University campuses was in 2000, and all three – Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint - were free of citations.

The College and University Initiative was formed to ensure that higher education institutions were upholding their environmental standards as well as their responsibilities outlined in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.

In addition to the initiative, the EPA is also working on a proposal that would terminate environmental health and safety departments at large campuses, like the University, replacing them with a centralized waste-management area. By doing this, the task of identifying and labeling hazardous waste would be shifted from the laboratory faculty and students to personnel within the waste-management department.

Timothy Cullen, manager of Hazardous Materials and Remediation Services, says the University has been penalty-free since he came on board in June of 1995. In fact, Cullen said, “Our programs have strengthened.”

All of the environmental safety programs on the different campuses utilize the same protocol for waste management. Michael Lane, manager of Environmental Health and Safety on the Flint campus, said “an inventory of chemicals is required in laboratories to keep track of hazardous chemicals.”

“The Environmental Health and Safety Department is called to properly label and contain the waste, so that it is ready to be picked up by a licensed employee of the Drug and Lab Co.,” Lane said. Drug and Lab Co. is a hazardous waste-management disposal business that services all three University campuses.

At the University’s Dearborn campus, the secret to successful waste management is through education. “Our environmental programs have helped us to be aware,” said Robert Quattro, manager of laboratories in the Department of Natural Science.

With majors such as Environmental Science and Technology available, students and faculty are sensitive to environmental issues, making it easier to control the management of hazardous waste on campus.

Quattro said the clean slate that the University has with government environmental agencies cannot be credited to one department. “It’s an effort that everyone participates in,” Quattro said.

Terry Alexander, director of the Occupational Safety and Environmental Health Department on the Ann Arbor campus, agrees that teamwork and University support are essential to maintaining an environmentally sound campus.

“We’ve always taken a very proactive stance; we’ve always had a good relationship with the EPA and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality,” Alexander said.

Alexander said the proposed rule change by the EPA to form central waste-accumulation areas instead of utilizing environmental safety departments would change little at the University since OSEH has already “made it fairly easy for researchers to follow the rules.”

Alexander promotes peer education and student advocacy of environmental issues, which would aid in the continuing process of keeping the University safe. OSEH began the instructive process 10 years ago by forming T2000, a pollution prevention and waste management program.

While the University has maintained environmental safety standards, administration continues to improve upon current programs. “We’re always looking critically at ourselves; regulations are changing all the time and we have to keep up with them,” Cullen said.