An independent environmental audit of Columbus Department of Pubic Utilities (DPU) was completed in August of 2007 by Gresham Smith and Partners.  The Division Sewerage and Drainage and the Division of Power and Water (electricity and drinking water) were audited. The Sierra Club requested from Columbus DPU and from the Ohio EPA that this audit be released to the public. Initially, the City rejected our request.

The Sierra Club met with the Ohio EPA in February 2009. We requested a copy of the audit and asked whether they knew of compliance work being performed. Ohio EPA Legal Section was represented in the meeting. They said they knew about the audit from correspondence, but had not gotten a copy from the City to know of the content.

Columbus released the audit report in April 2009. The audit findings cover air, water and solid and hazardous waste infractions. The findings include violations of 83 laws, regulations and codes. The most serious areas are lack of permits, lack of training and missing documentation required by law. 

In June 2009 the Columbus Public Utilities Regulatory Compliance Section met with the Sierra Club to answer our request for information on progress made over the last two years and to show us milestone spreadsheets for when items would be completed.  We found that to date, the Department has only partially complied, and dates of completion remain open.

A serious concern is that work to correct violations found in the audit is often hired out to consulting firms. This can greatly increase the cost over the City personnel doing the work. It can end up with work being duplicated. According to knowledgeable sources, outsourcing can double, triple or even quadruple the cost. This is particularly problematic in a time of economic crisis when the city is cutting services for lack of funds. Other disadvantages of outsourcing are: City engineers end up managing the consultants; the City becomes less familiar with its own facilities; the City ends up with fewer knowledgeable employees; the Divisions may lose initiative and inertia for ongoing work; and shifting responsibility becomes a habit. The injection of consulting firms in regular tasks complicates the matter of what city staff (including plant managers and Columbus regulatory compliance) should be doing. There is a revolving door between consulting firms and city utilities staff.

The Sierra Club supports a more aggressive approach for DPU in addressing violations, since two years have gone by and the audit calls for getting into compliance immediately. The audit points out a severe disconnect between City management and operating facilities.

The audit lists 189 “findings” in their pie chart. The Sierra Club found that 83 of these were violations of the law. The latter are the most important for the City to remediate. There were 418 items of note listed in the City’s spread sheet.

Many of the 189 findings could be easily corrected and should not take years.  DPU also is taking credit for having addressed violations when, in a number of the 189 cases, they have “addressed” the problems by noting that they will be corrected in some future time. Lack of follow-up is creating a serious problem.

While the City claims they have corrected 75% of the violations, their answers to the audit show that this is too high. The fact that regulatory agencies make little of no routine inspections of the DPU sites may have lead to the large number of violations in the Gresham audit.  The Ohio EPA acknowledges a lack of regular RCRA (solid waste disposal) inspections.

The Sierra Club has also asked the City for documents on large areas of the audit that were left out of the Gresham Smith and Partners study because they were worked on by other consultants or agencies. These “carve outs” were determined by order of the DPU Director. Missing information includes stormwater issues, process safety management, air pollution permits, the up-ground reservoir project and consent decree compliance. The two consent decrees are orders by the Ohio EPA for Columbus to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act on its sanitary sewer overflows, combined sewer overflows and sewage treatment plant bypasses. The consent decrees were prompted by legal action of the Sierra Club. The Gresham study was not a comprehensive audit of DPU.

Summary: Ohio EPA needs to do more inspections, and levy the fines called for in the Clean Water Act.

Most importantly, Columbus City Council needs to be involved.

• Council needs to check budget alternatives carefully. The Gresham audit cost about $500,000, while Columbus had bids for $30-50,000. Council needs to have a good understanding as to why DPU is not taking lower bids.

• Council needs to insist on milestones and deadlines for corrective work.

• Council needs to mandate that outsourcing be minimized or curtailed.

Quotes from Columbus Utilities Audit

From the Department Wide Comprehensive Audit Report, August 2007.

“The following factors represent the likely root cause of most of the audit findings:

• Inadequately defined roles and responsibilities for monitoring and ensuring day-to-day compliance with environmental regulations at the facility level

• Limited documentation of applicable regulatory requirements to individual facilities

• Inconsistent and undocumented facility-specific compliance procedures

• Lack of communication of regulatory requirements to front-line employees

• Unstructured or non-existent record keeping methodology

Although the Department should focus on resolving the findings and inconclusive determinations identified through this comprehensive environmental audit, the Department should also focus on eliminating the contributing factors. This additional effort will reduce the likelihood of recurring environmental compliance concerns and facilitate the Department’s progress towards achieving absolute environmental compliance.”

Below are examples of audit findings not yet completed after two years. Most of these violations are found at multiple facilities in DPU.

• A lack of hazardous waste determinations and characterizations (assigned to outside consultant)

• A lack of RCRA (solid waste disposal ) recordkeeping at facilities including manifests and land ban forms (prohibits some chemicals from going into landfills)

• Air emission sources never identified or quantified as to amount of air discharge to the environment, including paint booths, fuel dispensing facilities, parts washers, boilers and generators

• No records of backflow protection for drinking water entering facilities

• A lack of current spill plans at Division of Power and Water and Division of Sewerage and Drainage facilities (assigned to outside consultant)

• Spill at Summitview tank still shows as being not cleaned up since discovered in the audit

• Lack of secondary containment for drums violates MS4 (storm water) Permit and City code

• Lack of spill plan area inspections for facilities

• Sediment silt fences not being maintained in construction at the Southerly facility"