The PEER team is serving as a District Environmental Coordinator (DEC) for the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration’s (MDOT SHA) Environmental Compliance Division (ECD). In this role, the team liaises between the ECD and SHA facilities to ensure all sites are compliant with state and federal environmental regulations. This initially requires establishing communication with facility staff, subsequently going onsite to perform facility inspections, and then following up with corrective actions, as required.
Facility inspections are performed on multiple types of SHA facilities, including primary maintenance facilities, salt storage barns, rest areas, and satellite shops each with site specific standards that needed to be met. The environmental regulations applied to each site are collated from multiple sources including the Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR), Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), and the Maryland General Discharge Permit (12-SW) for qualified sites.
Inspections focused on environmental compliance in areas such as the storage and/or disposal of hazardous waste, hazardous materials, universal waste, solid wastes, pesticide usage and storage, and scrap tires at SHA facilities and right of ways. Additionally, stormwater management practices, spill prevention and response plans, and onsite material storage are also inspected to minimize the possibility of pollution discharge from SHA facilities into local waters. Review of stormwater management features aims to ensure they continued to mitigate storm flow and minimize pollution in surface runoff as designed. The inspection of above ground storage tanks (chemical, oil, and salt) and vehicle storage areas is aimed at detecting any evidence of leaks and the presence of tools to quickly remediate the area if leaks or spills occurred.
The team visited and inspected approximately 30 SHA facilities ranging from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the western mountains in the course of this project. The staff members filled a valuable gap in ECD at a time of great transition within the division that allowed it to continue meeting its mandate of ensuring environmental compliance at SHA facilities.