Co-located Facilities: Untangling Environmental Compliance, Liability and Accountability Issues

When multiple operators, co-owners, co-operators and third-party contractors are all managing different engineered systems at the same location, extra care is needed to manage potential environmental issues that may arise The obligations facing facilities throughout the chemical process industries (CPI) related to state and federal environmental laws, regulations and permits continue to be both complex and significant. The operational and regulatory complexity is compounded for facilities that have multiple owners and operators inside a single fenceline. In fact, such scenarios can give rise to some of the most challenging issues that exist under environmental law. CPI companies that have multiple entities operating at their facilities must carefully consider different potential environmental scenarios that could arise, to evaluate how well their systems would function under the circumstances, and to ensure that their contractual arrangements with the other entities are clear and robust and that there are strong, well-tested understandings of how those arrangements are to be implemented, especially in the event of a significant incident.     The basic environmental law framework. Examining the primary federal and state…