What Happens After a Chemical Spill? (Besides Everyone Pointing Fingers)

A field guide to the unglamorous, heavily regulated process of cleaning up a mess nobody wanted. Q&As include:

1. Something has spilled. What’s the first call?
2. Does somebody official show up eventually?
3. What are the federal and state reporting requirements?
4. What happens while the paperwork is being generated?
5. When does the finger-pointing begin?
6. What happens after the extent of the spill is known?
7. Where does contaminated material go once it’s removed?
8. What actually happens at the TSDF?
9. What is the e-Manifest?
10. How long does it take from containment to disposal?
11. What’s the single biggest mistake companies make?
12. Where can you get comprehensive advice and help dealing with chemical spill emergencies?

Something has spilled. What’s the first call?

Not to the lawyer. Not to the insurance broker. Not to—God help you—the press.

The first call is to whomever is trained to stop the leaking, dripping, or otherwise migrating substance from becoming a bigger leaking, dripping, migrating substance. This is called containment, and it’s the single, least photogenic, but most important 30 minutes of the entire episode.

Sandbags, booms, absorbent socks, a valve turned the right direction for once. It’s all unglamorous. But everything that happens afterward—including the inevitable finger-pointing—depends on how well this part goes.

Does somebody official show up eventually?

Actually, several somebodies. Depending on what spilled, where it spilled, and how much spilled, you can expect a rotating cast that includes your local fire department’s hazmat unit; your state environmental agency; the National Response Center (whom you’re federally obligated to call); and if you’re really having a bad week, your friends at OSHA.

What are the federal and state reporting requirements?

They are onerous and manifold.

Federal notification requirements are not a suggestion, and they are not generous. Under CERCLA and EPCRA, if the substance of a spill exceeds its “reportable quantity,” the person in charge of the facility must notify the National Response Center immediately upon having knowledge of the release. Not by end of business. Not the next morning. But “immediately,” a word that regulators use with startling literalness.

That initial call is typically followed within 30 days by a written follow-up notification to the State Emergency Response Commission and the Local Emergency Planning Committee under EPCRA Section 304(c), laying out what happened, what was released, and what you did about it.

Add to that whatever your state environmental agency requires, which varies enough from state to state that “check the federal rule and assume you’re covered” is the quotidian way to discover that you’re not.

And if the spill involved a workplace exposure or injury, OSHA also enters the picture, bringing its own recordkeeping and emergency response obligations, quite separate from the environmental reporting clock that’s already ticking in parallel.

Be behooved that each of these parties has a different form, a different deadline, and a genuine belief that their form is the most important one. So, it’s worth knowing exactly which & whose forms apply to your operation before disaster strikes. This is not a fun bedtime activity. But it beats learning it live, under a klieg light, from a man with a clipboard and no sense of humor.

Get expert advice and help.

What happens while the paperwork is being generated?

Ideally, somebody sensible is doing a site assessment. I.e., figuring out what has actually spilled, how much of it, where it’s traveled, and what it’s touched. This sounds simple. It rarely is.

Chemicals don’t politely remain where you left them. Instead, they run downhill, seep into soil, evaporate, react with concrete, or find the one crack in the containment berm that hasn’t been inspected since the Bears last won a Super Bowl. (N.B. For the sports-challenged, that would be 1986—40 years ago.)

Assessment involves sampling the affected soil, water, and air and submitting each to lab analysis. This determines everything that follows. Skip or shortcut this step and you will, with great reliability, pay for it twice: once in cleanup costs, and again when the regulator’s own sampling disagrees with yours.

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When does the finger-pointing begin?

Somewhere around the assessment phase. Consider:

• The operator will start wondering aloud whether the tank manufacturer’s gasket was defective.
• The manufacturer will start wondering aloud whether the operator’s maintenance schedule was aspirational.
• The insurance adjuster will start wondering, mostly to himself, whether anyone read the policy’s pollution exclusion clause.

This is all very human and mostly irrelevant to the cleanup, which proceeds regardless of whose fault it eventually turns out to be. Chemistry, refreshingly, doesn’t care about liability.

What happens after the extent of the spill is known?

So called “remediation,” which is the actual scooping up, pumping out, digging up, or otherwise physically separating the contaminant from the earth, water, or building it’s colonized. Methods vary widely by substance.

• A solvent spill on pavement might mean vacuum trucks and absorbent media.
• A spill that’s reached groundwater might mean monitoring wells and pump & treat systems for months or years.
• Contaminated soil often just gets excavated and hauled away. This might sound simple, and it can be if you know where the soil is legally allowed to go, which is not “wherever’s closest.” You’ll need to get expert advice.

Where does contaminated material go once it’s removed?

This is the part that most people never think about for a single second of their lives, which is precisely why it’s crucial to secure a competent partner when a spill occurs.

Removed waste has to be tested and classified under RCRA rules, which sorts waste into hazardous and non-hazardous categories. This is called “characterization.”

It must be transported from your site by a licensed hauler to a permitted treatment, storage, or disposal facility (TSDF). During its ride thereto, it also has to be manifested (i.e., electronically tracked from the moment it leaves your site to the moment it’s finally disposed of at the TSDF. (See e-Manifest Q.9.)

None of these steps are optional, and none of them forgive improvisation.

You are fully and unequivocally responsible for any hazardous waste you generate from the metaphorical “cradle to grave.” Legally, financially and…in the worst-case scenario…criminally.

What actually happens at the TSDF?

Depends on the waste.

• Some material is incinerated at high temperature until it’s no longer itself, chemically speaking.
• Some material is treated to neutralize its hazardous properties so that it can be safely landfilled.
• Some material is recycled because virgin material is expensive and a well-run facility hates wasting anything—including waste. E.g., redistilling solvents, recovering metals, reprocessing oils.

What is the e-Manifest?

The e-Manifest is a mandatory EPA electronic tracking system that proves where your waste went, who handled it, and that it arrived where it was supposed to.

Years later, when some regulator or plaintiff’s attorney wants to know whether your company’s waste ended up in a Superfund site, the e-Manifest is what stands between you and a very expensive afternoon.

Companies that treat manifesting as an afterthought are, in the fullness of time, generally sorry.

How long does it take from containment to disposal?

For a contained, well-understood spill of a known substance, you’re looking at days to a couple of weeks. For anything involving groundwater contamination, an unknown substance, or a site with a colorful industrial history, the honest answer is “longer than you’d like, possibly measured in seasons rather than weeks.” (Nobody likes this answer, which is exactly why it’s the correct one.)

What’s the single biggest mistake companies make?

Waiting to figure out who to call until the moment they need to do so.

A spill response plan drawn up calmly on a normal Tuesday with contact numbers, procedures, and an established relationship with a hazmat waste management company is infinitely preferable to one improvised at 2 a.m. by an affrighted plant manager Googling “emergency hazardous waste hauler near me” while standing in something that might be dissolving his footwear.

The former costs a modest retainer. The latter costs a fortune, a lecture from the EPA, and possibly a segment on the local news.

Where can you get comprehensive advice and help dealing with chemical spill emergencies?

The clock on federal notification starts running the exact moment a spill hits, and “immediately” doesn’t wait for you to leaf through a three-ring binder somebody pulled together in 2004.

Hazardous Waste Experts handles the whole sequence: containment, EPA/EPCRA reporting, site assessment, RCRA waste characterization, licensed transport, and disposal at a permitted TSDF—with manifests done right the first time.

One call, no scrambling, no midnight improvisation. Because the only thing worse than a spill is discovering that your response plan was theoretical. Get compliant, get covered, get Hazardous Waste Experts on retainer before you need them.

Contact us today. Or phone 425.414.3485.