Category: Blog

IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE VALUE OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP IS MORE THAN JUST GETTING THE MOST FOR YOUR MONEY

The decision to undergo an environmental investigation and cleanup is an understandably tough one for drycleaners. It requires an outsized investment of time, money, and other resources that can put a small business under significant stress. But, in the long-term, deciding to address one’s environmental issues proactively can prove to be an incredibly business-savvy decision. An environmental cleanup not only removes contamination, but it also alleviates business stress, such as regulatory and legal liabilities while increasing the monetary value of your business investment.

WHO PAYS FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP?

The short answer to this question, if you’re a dry cleaner, is you. By law, the parties responsible for potential environmental issues are liable for costs to clean up the problem. An environmental cleanup project may be the most expensive thing you ever buy. Our firm has been cleaning up properties contaminated with Perc for nearly 25 years, and we have seen that the average price ranges from $1 to $1.25 million dollars. That’s a pretty big lift for anyone, especially a small to medium-sized dry cleaner. Even if you can afford it, that doesn’t mean you want to afford it.

This is where I will stop and pose a question for you to ponder throughout this article, where is the value for a business to clean up contamination?

DIGGING INTO DIFFERENT TYPES OF VALUES

Value can be a subjective concept and it means different things to different people. Even by definition, it has multiple meanings. Maybe value isn’t the first thing considered when evaluating environmental problems, but it fits into the conversation in a few important ways.

1. The word value can be used as a noun as in “This customer’s dress has great value”, or as a verb like “I value my customers very much”.
2. Value can also be used as a meaning for one’s moral or ethical beliefs, such as “I respect this employee’s values”.
3. Value can also be used when talking about monetary exchanges such as paying for an environmental cleanup. We typically would think of value as meaning that we have received an ample amount of goods or services in exchange for the money we’ve spent. In environmental cleanups, maximizing this type of value is mostly managed by choosing an experienced consultant to lead the project with competitive pricing for completion of the work.

Now that we’ve covered the different ways value can be used, I’ll apply them to environmental issues with a few examples. Then you’ll have to decide which ones mean the most to you, based on your individual needs and…values.

ELIMINATE YOUR REGULATORY RESPONSIBILITIES AND INCREASE YOUR PROPERTY VALUE

The most common driver for initiating an environmental cleanup is the fact that a federal or state regulatory agency is requiring that it be done. There may be other factors that arise during the process that are also motivating, such as an identified human exposure, but the number one value that the cleanup satisfies is getting the regulator off your back. This can be huge for some businesses, but what else do you get out of it? Very simply stated, you also get a cleaner piece of property. A clean and unencumbered plot of commercial property is an investment. We all know that. There are real estate investment companies out there whose sole business model is to buy and sell commercial properties based on its predicted future price or value. As such, even if the primary objective of performing an environmental cleanup has absolutely nothing to do with the potential sales price of your property, the reality is that the commercial viability of a property will increase as a result of the cleanup. As a matter of fact, if a property owner could shift their mindset to fully understand and quantify the potential gains associated with an environmentally clean property, it may be a good enough reason alone for initiating such a project. The average cost of a dry cleaner environmental cleanup is pretty hefty, as mentioned above, but there are plenty of smaller examples where the cost of cleanup could be paid for by the resulting increase in property value. In such a case, the regulatory closure would be just a bonus.

Thinking about selling your dry cleaning business? Read our blog How to Sell Your Dry Cleaning Business in 3 Steps

ELIMINATE YOUR LEGAL LIABILITY

Value can also be added to cleanup projects by the elimination of long-term liability associated with environmental contamination. Whether or not it is on your radar, any time there is contamination, there is risk and liability, which can take many forms. Just think of the many ways that you may become aware of contamination; there are unique forms of liability in each.

Let’s say that an adjacent property owner has decided to sell their property and has undergone the due diligence process and that they have identified environmental impacts emanating from your dry cleaning operations. You may now be exposed to several types of liability from this single situation.

1. First, you have a liability to investigate and clean up the contamination on their property. That’s to be expected. What may not be anticipated is the risk of additional liability that could be associated with trespass. In many states, the law says that if contamination from one property “trespasses” upon a second property owned by a different party, there can be a lawsuit. This is important because in a trespass suit the judge may award punitive damages in excess of the cost of performing the cleanup itself. I’m not an attorney and I can’t give legal advice as to the interpretation of trespass laws, but I’ve seen my clients forced to deal with this situation.
2. Another type of liability that happens at times as related to environmental contamination is the threat of bodily injury or even wrongful death lawsuits. It’s no secret that Perc has been identified by the EPA as a likely carcinogen. Even though many dry cleaners have worked around this solvent for many years, or even their whole lives, people who aren’t as familiar with Perc as dry cleaners can be substantially more skittish about having been exposed to it. This risk of liability is most realized when contamination has entered drinking water supplies or indoor air at offsite buildings through vapor intrusion.
3. Liability could even potentially come from your own employees. Studies have even shown that people exposed to Perc in the workplace are subject to increased risk of several types of cancer, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Typically, your successful OSHA monitoring practices should protect you from having this problem.

The intended purpose of mentioning all these potential liabilities is to highlight the fact that when an environmental cleanup is performed, these issues get brought to light, and then put to bed. The value that brings can be immeasurable.

BONUS: YOU BECOME AN ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARD

An obvious, but perhaps often overlooked value to performing an environmental cleanup is that by improving the environmental conditions of your little corner of the world, you are on the positive side of the environmental history. Our planet has seen its fair share of degradation through the last several centuries brought on by advancements in the industry. There was a time when the progress of civilization almost always meant the degradation of environmental quality. The industrial revolution in the US and Europe was a time of great strides in technological innovations that created a huge boost for humans and a huge hit to the environment.

Dry cleaning as we know it came around toward the end of the industrial revolution. For decades now, the trend has been toward reversing those negative effects and focus has been more on improving environmental conditions. There has been a shift in our values on that matter. There is good news because this shift in values toward more environmentally friendly industrial technologies doesn’t need to interfere with continued technological advancement. So, while “greener” industrial development marches on, the process of restoring those environmental damages that occurred in the past is in full swing. When you take care of your regulatory obligation to clean up a property, not only do you increase the value of your property and relieve those liabilities as discussed above, you also get to be a part of cleaning up of the planet. Even if that doesn’t resonate strongly with you personally, I’d hazard a guess that it does with a good portion of your customers.

Learn more about how an environmental cleanup can be good public relations for your dry cleaning business

That brings me to the last point of added value from an environmental cleanup – peace of mind. There can’t be a dollar amount assigned to the value of putting all of this behind you. I’m sure that everyone can relate to how issues perceived to be negative can linger and tap your energy day after day. Once the issue has been tackled and resolved, we always say to ourselves, “I wish I had taken care of that years ago”. The common wisdom that has been passed from generation to generation in almost every major philosophical discipline is, “Thinking is harder than doing”. When it is time for you to tackle your environmental issues and conduct a cleanup, please be sure to recognize that there are many ways for it to be valued for your business, your community, and last but not least your peace of mind.

Contact us to learn more about how you can get maximum value out of your environmental cleanup.

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As seen in Cleaner & Launderer

Environmental cleanups involve a great deal of creativity to make sure that the goals are met within acceptable timeframes, regulatory requirements, and of course, budget. The whole game plan is to reduce the amounts of contamination in the ground to levels that are deemed safe for human health and the environment should an exposure occur at some time in the future.

While a good environmental consulting firm will be able to tell you what kind of cleanup approach is most likely to be successful, they will base that opinion on their own past experience in similar situations and the published past experiences of their professional peers in the industry. Unfortunately, there is not an “off-the-shelf” approach that is guaranteed to work, so in many ways, a cleanup effort is a proverbial roll of the dice.

However, there are some consulting firms like ours who will stand behind their designs and guarantee results. Our ability to do this is due to several factors that help us hedge our bets when performing an environmental cleanup. If you follow these three rules of creating a successful cleanup plan, you can come out on top as well.

1. Experience Counts!

During my college pursuits, I had a professor who always used to say, “The best geologist is the one who has seen the most rocks”. I always took that to heart and mention it often to my peers. I’m sure it’s also true that the best cleaner is the one who has processed the most articles of clothing or textiles. Why? Because they are the ones who have experienced the most situations where challenges have come up that needed to be solved. They’re the ones who learned from each of those situations and tweaked their process to make sure that the occurrence of the same problem was minimized in the future. Each challenge is a learning opportunity, and those who have learned the most, are frequently the best.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a thousand more times that when you are choosing your environmental consultant to design and implement your environmental cleanup strategy, you need to find one who has a great depth of experience with dry cleaner sites. They are the ones who will understand the nuances of Perc contamination. They are the ones who have had to decipher the subtle differences between releases from dry cleaner operations and other kinds of processes. They’re the professionals who have seen the most cleanup challenges and solved them to get the job done and achieve regulatory closure.

Get a step-by-step process in “5 considerations when selecting an environmental consultant for dry cleaners”

2. Strategically Plan Investigation to Save Money During Remediation

Let’s face it; the subsurface environment is a bit of a black box. Geologists and environmental professionals are educated and trained to interpret a wide view of conditions beneath the ground from only a handful of data collection points and samples. The more data collected during investigation phases, the better conditions are understood and the greater the odds of a successful remediation later. Remember that the process is:

1. Investigate the nature and extent of contamination; and
2. Perform the cleanup.

If the full nature and extent of contamination is not really understood, the cleanup plan has almost no chance of success. Way too often, consultants with less experience think that just because they have the contaminant plume defined in all directions, they are finished with the investigation. There are a lot more data points that need to be explored to really understand the nature of the impacts, which will also allow for a good predictive cleanup approach to be prepared. These include, in part, the naturally occurring geochemistry of the soil and groundwater, actual measurements of porosity and permeability, the calculated rate of groundwater migration across the site, the organic content of soils, the infiltration rate of rainwater down through the soils and into the groundwater, etc. These data points are where the surprises usually come during cleanup if they haven’t yet been considered.

The trick to making sure that an environmental investigation is performed correctly is to collect information needed to design the cleanup approach and retrieve that data at the same time. If the focus of the investigation is to simply determine the extent of the contamination plume, then only part of the picture is being captured. Given that situation, a separate remedial planning phase of the investigation will then have to be undertaken to get this vital information, which will likely involve going back to areas where the previous sampling has already occurred. This adds cost to the project. Because of this point, there may be hesitation to approve the remedial planning investigation, leaving the consultant to design a cleanup approach without all the necessary information.

If performed appropriately, remedial planning investigation efforts can be added for as little as a 10% increase in costs. However, if something is overlooked during an investigation and a cleanup plan is inappropriately designed because of it, the extra effort could easily double the price of the cleanup itself. If you ask a remedial contractor what causes cleanup plans to fail, they will almost always say a lack of adequate investigation data. I always ask them that, and that’s what they always say. Spend the extra 10% on an investigation, it will save you money during remediation. Period.

Read more about remediation strategy best practices

3. Combine Remedial Technologies

Ideally, once a cleanup begins, it ends when the remedial objectives have been met and enough contamination has been removed. Sounds simple enough. Many times, cleanup projects start very well and appear to be heading toward closure (even under budget), but the cleanup appears to stop working. This is among the challenges requiring creativity to get the last bit of contamination out of the ground. Oh sure, the first 90 to 95 percent of the contamination is removed very quickly and effectively and this makes everyone happy. But as time passes, the effectiveness of the cleanup can dwindle making everyone unhappy. The levels of contamination may continue to slowly decrease, but never quite get to closure levels under a single approach. It’s not so much that it stopped working, as it is that it reached a point where it is no longer cost-effective to continue. This happens with a lot of good cleanup technologies. So, with the clock still ticking, the money still flowing into the project, and contamination removal rates slowing, there needs to be a shift in strategy to get the job completed.

With a multitude of remediation technologies available for use, it’s important to follow a logical, yet creative path to select the right combination from the very beginning. For example, let’s say technology A is used because the level of contamination is high, and it is expected to effectively reduce the level of impact to low, but not low enough. When the removal rate of technology A slows down to a crawl, we change to technology B to treat the remaining concentrations to a lower level and achieve closure. Usually, technology B can be performed at a lower unit rate cost than technology A and therefore, project costs can also be constrained. Clearly, cost considerations are very important, but for the purpose of this discussion, the point is that it should not be assumed that using one contaminant removal technology alone is the right approach.

Dealing with the stress and cost of environmental contamination issues is bad enough on its own. Paying attention to these three rules of cleanup planning will help you avoid a bad roll of the dice and let you double down on your bet for a successful project.

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As seen in Cleaner & Launderer

Jeff Carnahan, President at EnviroForensics
Jeff Carnahan, LPG, has 20+ years of environmental consulting and remediation experience. His technical expertise focuses on the investigation and interpretation of subsurface releases of hazardous substances for the purpose of evaluating and controlling the risk and cost implications. He has focused on being a partner with the dry cleaning industry for the past decade, and he’s a frequent contributor to the national dry cleaning publication Cleaner & Launderer. He is an industry leader in understanding that environmental risk includes not only cleanup costs, but also known and unknown third-party liability.