After a bipartisan accord, the US Congress overhauled the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), with legislation to give the EPA greater powers to regulate about 100 hazardous chemicals. This is the first major statutory update to US environmental law that’s been passed in over 25 years. On a 403-12 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives on 24 May 2016 approved bipartisan legislation to amend the key provisions of the TSCA.

Under existing law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has succeeded in regulating only five toxic chemicals since 1976, prompting public health advocates to decry TSCA as broken. Part of the problem is that the law grants EPA only 90 days to decide whether a new chemical poses “unreasonable risk” before it can enter the market, and agency officials say they rarely get the toxicity data they need to make that call in time.

The compromise legislation will remove those procedural hurdles, require EPA to focus on “high priority” chemicals such as arsenic and asbestos, and give the agency new tools to collect data from companies. It also grandfathers in some existing state chemical safety laws, such as those enacted under California’s Proposition 65, but limits states’ authority to create their own restrictions on chemicals in the future. State pre-emption was a key point of contention between Democrats and Republicans during negotiations.

So how does the new TSCA law compare to the EU REACH program? REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substances) is a regulation of the European Union, adopted to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals. REACH also promotes alternative methods for the hazard assessment of substances to reduce the number of tests on animals. Under the REACH Regulation, companies are responsible for providing information on the hazards, risks and safe use of chemical substances that they manufacture or import.

One notable difference between  REACH and TOSCA is how they support downstream users in implementing their chemicals management programs. Regarding knowing chemicals in products, REACH provides clear direction that downstream users must communicate uses up to suppliers and know and publicly disclose (if requested) if their product contains substances of very high concern (SVHC). The TSCA  does essentially nothing to support downstream users in knowing chemicals in products and disclosing them to the public, and its requirements for upstream communication to suppliers on uses are uncertain.

Significantly, REACH requires companies to provide minimum data sets on the inherent hazards of chemicals. This data enables downstream users to evaluate and compare chemicals on their hazard characteristics. TSCA, while expanding the ability of the US EPA to require testing of chemicals, explicitly prohibits the agency from requiring minimum data sets.

While it is important to avoid the unnecessary testing of chemicals, it is also vital to have a data set on chemicals that enable their comparison on a common set of endpoints. The EPA needs the authority to establish a minimum data set on chemicals, although this may differ depending on the specific chemical.

On assessing the hazards of chemicals, the new  US law falls short of REACH and impedes harmonizing European and US requirements for chemical testing. Given that most US chemical companies sell into the European market, and therefore are already meeting those requirements, it is inefficient and wasteful to establish a totally separate testing regime in the US.

To support the use of inherently safer chemicals, REACH provides a clear and more streamlined process for identifying and restricting SVHCs. Over the course of seven years, the Regulation has identified 161 Candidate SVHCs, while over five years, the  US bill only requires the designation of 25 high priority chemicals and with new law extending that number to about 100 chemicals. Harmonization, consistency, and predictability are critical for downstream users, and these elements are all lacking in the new TSCA law.

 

The Locus EIM SaaS will streamline SJWC’s entire water compliance continuum from watershed to water treatment to water quality at its consumer’s tap

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 24 February 2015 — Locus Technologies, a leader in environmental and compliance enterprise management software, today announced that San Jose Water Company (SJWC), an investor-owned utility providing water service to a population of approximately one million people in the Santa Clara Valley, has selected Locus as its environmental information management system. SJWC is deploying the Locus EIM SaaS-based software to consolidate and manage its field data collection; water compliance and water quality data; and all its environmental compliance and environmental data. SJWC will also use the Locus EIM to manage its environmental permits for all its sites and facilities.

“Water quality and environmental compliance are critical business functions at San Jose Water Company,” said Francois Rodigari, Director of Water Quality and Environmental Services. “Locus and its EIM software are giving us, for the first time, the ability to consolidate and access critical information on data related to water quality and environmental compliance in a single repository based on a cloud platform. This comprehensive view of our water system will help us to comprehensively manage all data related to drinking water and environmental compliance, and as a result, bring higher efficiency to our organization.”

Locus EIM is a comprehensive and configurable software designed to manage mission-critical environmental and sustainability data to help organization organize, manage, report, and visualize sampling, analytical, and subsurface data for compliance and assurance reporting for a variety of vertical markets including water, gas and oil, power generating utilities, and food and beverage.

“Our mission is to help organization, such as San Jose Water Company, to achieve their environmental stewardship goals by providing them the software tools to control the management of all data points of their water quality and compliance management,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “Our EIM water quality management cloud-based software for surface water, drinking water, groundwater, and wastewater provides our customers with a highly scalable and a feature rich application that gives water utilities strong analytical power, streamlined field sampling capabilities, mobile collection, and analysis as well as compliance management. We are pleased San Jose Water Company will be utilizing EIM to ensure that their customers are provided with the highest water quality possible.”

 

ABOUT SAN JOSE WATER
San Jose Water Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of SJW Corp. and founded in 1866, is an investor-owned water company headquartered in Silicon Valley and is one of the largest and most technically sophisticated urban water system in the United States. SJWC serves over 1 million people in the San Jose metropolitan area comprising about 138 square miles. The utility ensures its buyers with high quality, life sustaining water, with an emphasis on exceptional customer service.

According to recent calculations by Bloomberg News, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) is unlikely to meet its March 2015 deadline to complete the filtering of cancer-causing radioactive isotopes at its wrecked nuclear plant in Fukushima.

Tepco’s President, Naomi Hirose, made a commitment to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September of last year to remedy the contamination of groundwater their plant has caused. Bloomberg estimates suggested that filtering out the isotope strontium, which has been linked to leukemia, from the stored water will take more time than they have left with the set deadline.

Spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida stated earlier this month that Tepco can, “only say we’ll make efforts to achieve that target” of reaching their goal of decontamination before the deadlines that are less than a year away.

The prolonging of the cleanup process has other implications as well, including an extension on a South Korean ban on Japanese seafood imports, and an increased demand in the U.S. for an international takeover of the cleanup process. While the implications of not completing the cleanup on time have not yet been discussed, Tepco is continually seeking ways to remedy the after effects of the March 11, 2011 accident.

The levels of toxic waters are continually rising at a rate of 400,000 liters per day, and as of July 29, the site was said to have more than 373,000,000 liters of radioactive water still needing treatment. With numerous failed attempts at reducing the amount of irradiated water released, Tepco’s ability to reach the deadline is looking incredibly bleak, but Yoshida reassures, “we are doing everything we can do.”

Years later we are once again being reminded of the Fukushima crisis and the magnitude of its effects. Just as it was discussed in the aftermath of the incident, the assistance of a cloud-based, centralized data management system could help to take action on the cleanup. With today’s technology it is possible to store relevant data in a system that is accessible to all stakeholders, supplies a way to continuously monitor and analyze levels of isotopes, and offers opportunities to make better decisions and improve safety at nuclear power plants.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 8 July 2014  — As part of its environmental sustainability program, Grain Processing Corporation (GPC) has selected Locus Technologies’ (Locus’) software platform to manage a variety of environmental policies for two of its corn wet-milling facilities. GPC manufactures, distributes, and markets high quality, customer-specified food, pharmaceutical, and industrial grade products.

GPC will use Locus to identify, track, and respond to all environmental media affected by the operations of two of its facilities: one located in Muscatine, Iowa, and the other in Washington, Indiana. Both of these facilities have numerous air emission sources, wastewater treatment facilities, and both Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) and Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) requirements. With the assistance of Locus’ web-based software, GPC can manage all of its processes, such as tracking permit requirements and meeting recordkeeping and reporting deadlines, in one central, user-friendly platform.

“When we were searching for a software management system, we needed it to be able to manage all processes for our two facilities, with the expansion option of up to 20 additional locations with differing recordkeeping, schedules, and reporting needs,” said Mick Durham, Director of Environmental Services at GPC. “Locus met these specifications, and will allow us to manage our environmental data so that we can improve our environmental compliance and ensure that our company’s business practices remain sustainable in the long term.”

“Our recent success in deploying our software to several customers in food and agricultural industries proves its versatile nature: Locus’ software goes beyond mission-critical compliance activities and provides a system for broader sustainability and resource management that ultimately leads to operating cost reduction,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus Technologies. “Locus provides a simple, integrated system, similar to ERP that manages all environmental, energy, water, and other sustainability needs under a single portal infrastructure and single sign-on online.”

 

ABOUT GRAIN PROCESSING CORPORATION
Founded in 1943, GPC is a privately owned company with a solid history of innovation and a vision for continued success in the future. Its mission is to manufacture, distribute and market customer-specified food, pharmaceutical and industrial-grade products of uncompromising quality. GPC’s substantial investment in the finest people, facilities, technology and customer support services reflects the seriousness of that commitment to quality. For more information about Grain Processing Corporation, visit www.grainprocessing.com.

Locus’ software recognized for its configurable architecture, flexible implementation, and water and waste water management capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 17 April 2014 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, has been recognized as one of the top 13 global environmental health and safety (EH&S) management software suppliers in the report “Green Quadrant® EH&S Software, April 2014.” This report by Verdantix, an independent analyst firm who provide data, analysis and advice in the areas of energy, environment and sustainability, reveals that Locus offers a lower cost, user-configurable Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that meets the needs of multiple industries by allowing for the incorporation of firm-specific functionality.

“The new platform, recently released by Locus Technologies, is designed to put power in the hands of users,” said Jordan Nadian, Verdantix Analyst. “This reflects broader trends in software development, where non-technical business analysts get to design small-scale apps. It also reflects a product strategy designed to side-step the significant costs and risks of developing detailed feature sets for industry-specific processes.”

The Verdantix report also acknowledges Locus for its strengths in data capture, data security, hazardous waste management and water and waste water quality management. Locus’ software reflects its more than 17 years of experience in the market and incorporated feedback from its impressive customer list. A major differentiator for Locus is that the company is a passionate advocate of single instance, multi-tenant architecture. “The supplier has developed an architecture which successfully separates the technology platform (workflow tools, master data management, integration, etc.) from specific EH&S business processes such as air emissions management or chemical inventories,” said Nadian.

The report recognizes a widespread movement toward offering integrated EH&S solutions as hosted software services. It acknowledges significant challenges with the implementation and maintenance of older and disconnected software applications installed on customers’ infrastructures. While there was no separation between true SaaS and traditional on-premises software providers in the report, Locus was identified as one of the top three leading SaaS vendors.

“With new regulations, risks, and business improvement opportunities arising so frequently today, companies’ EH&S management and reporting requirements are constantly expanding,” said Neno Duplan, President & CEO of Locus. “At Locus, we strive to offer our customers a cost-effective, integrated software platform that can mold to fit their business-specific processes now, and evolve along with their changing needs in the future.”

EH&S domain content in the Locus SaaS platform is configurable by business analysts or domain experts with no underlying code change and is not hard-coded for any specific solution. The separation of domain from software framework makes it easy for Locus customers to enjoy the rolling upgrade program without incurring costly upgrades associated with traditional on-premises software installations. Locus’ framework is coded to render and process configuration at runtime, and supports any domain and customer-specific content. The platform is fully wizard-driven via a graphical configuration workbench.

ABOUT VERDANTIX

Verdantix is an independent analyst firm, providing authoritative data, analysis and advice to help clients resolve their energy, environment and sustainability challenges. Through global primary research and deep domain expertise, they provide clients with strategic advice, revenue generating services, best practice frameworks, industry connections and competitive advantage.

For further information, please visit www.verdantix.com.

Combining the NEI RETS-REMP with the EPRI Groundwater Protection Workshop solidified a theme to unify efforts as utilities gain experience implementing protection programs.

Companies can use Locus’ cloud-based EIM software to streamline their DMR process, reduce costs, and mitigate risk

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 20 May 2013 — In response to industry and customer demands to streamline Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) reporting under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program, Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, has expanded its award-winning Environmental Information Management (EIM) software to automate the generation of DMR reports.

Locus’ EIM DMR solves the problem of expensive, labor-intensive manual report generation by completely automating the process. The NPDES requires that permit holders report self-monitored pollution results with a DMR. These reports are often due monthly, and collecting and reporting information such as analytical chemistry of pollutants, flow velocity, total maximum daily load, and other parameters make generating DMRs a time-consuming process. For companies that have to report on 100 or 1,000 facilities, manually producing a DMR also becomes a major operational expense.

Thanks to Locus’ new software offering, once arranged in EIM, companies can generate DMRs within minutes in the approved formats, using validated data. Companies can set up EIM for all permitted facilities and realize immediate cost and time savings during each reporting period. Relevant data are directly uploaded to the system, reviewed and validated, then reported in the proper formats.

“NPDES DMR reporting and other water-quality management issues represent a potentially huge area of risk and cost for businesses. Automating generation, quality control, and submittal of DMRs should be part of the environmental strategy of any organization, just like reducing one’s water or energy usage already is,” said Mr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “Leaders who establish water-quality transparency for their companies before others do, and who formulate specific and measurable targets with respect to water footprint reduction, can turn this into a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Locus software can help them carve out those increased operational efficiencies.”

Locus’ SaaS EIM enables companies to manage and organize all their water-quality data on a larger and more comprehensive scale using cloud-based computing and storage, replacing spreadsheets and the local, homegrown databases typically used to generate DMRs. Locus’ innovative enterprise software model also employs mashups—applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies—offering the potential to completely revolutionize the way a corporation manages its water data.

Over the last 15 years, Locus has focused on water-quality issues; the company has built a world-class team of experts with deep domain knowledge in the field. Locus’ EIM is successfully deployed at thousands of sites worldwide and contains organized water quality information at hundreds of thousands of locations. The DMR software complements Locus’ existing suite of cloud-based software.

Environmental Business Journal Recognizes Locus for Growth and Innovation for the Seventh Time

San Francisco, Calif., 21 January 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus) announced today that Environmental Business Journal® (EBJ) granted the company the award for Information Technology in the environmental and energy industry for the record-breaking seventh time.

Locus is one of 50 companies EBJ has honored for revenue growth, acquisitions, innovative project designs, technology applications, new practice areas, social contributions, and industry leadership in 2012. Locus was recognized for continuing to enhance its position in the energy, sustainability, and compliance software markets by growing its Fortune 100 and Department of Energy (DOE) customer lists, and also pursuing and achieving essential certifications and reports.

In 2012, Locus had its best year yet in terms of expanding its software offerings and diversifying its customer base across many new industries. Locus added two of the three world’s largest chemical companies to its list of customers this year, and also one of the largest companies in the agribusiness industry, expanding Locus’ impressive penetration in the food and biotech industries. Locus also welcomed two DOE research laboratories to its list of customers, and signed a contract with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply that opened the door to water quality management for water utilities.  In the private sector Locus signed numerous new customers including Kelly-Moore Paint Company, Jack Engle & Co. and the University of Texas at El Paso.

Other notable accomplishments for 2012 include a 100 percent renewal rate for Locus’ carbon verification services administered under the California AB 32 program, and several Locus staff members being certified as carbon offset verifiers by the California Air Resources Board. In order to assure its growing list of customers that they can trust Locus with their data, Locus pursued and obtained Service Organization Controls reports, both SOC 1 (SSAE 16) and SOC 2. Locus also became an approved contractor with the federal General Services Administration (GSA) for a range of services, and was recognized by Verdantix, one of the top industry analysts, as one of 12 leading environmental management software suppliers globally.

“In what is widely regarded as a stable market, a number of companies exceeded the norms of low single-digit growth with double-digit growth or ambitious ventures into new practice areas or technology development,” said Grant Ferrier, president of Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI, San Diego), publisher of Environmental Business Journal. “Locus continues to influence the industry with its forward-thinking product set and eye for customer needs.”

“We are very proud to be selected for the seventh time for the prestigious EBJ Information Technology award in environmental business,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “I believe our success is due to our cutting edge technology that has been tested in the Cloud longer than any other in our space, the domain knowledge of our team, and their dedication to the company’s mission to organize environmental, sustainability, energy and related compliance information in a single integrated enterprise software offered via the Cloud. I thank and congratulate the entire Locus team, and our customers who entrusted Locus to put their data in the Cloud, for making this award possible.”

The Environmental Business Journal is a business research publication that provides high-value strategic business intelligence to the environmental industry. The 2012 EBJ awards will be presented at a special ceremony at the Environmental Industry Summit XI in Coronado, Calif., March 6-8, 2013. The Environmental Industry Summit is an annual three-day event hosted by EBI Inc.

Enablon, IHS and SAP have emerged as key application providers for forward-thinking businesses looking beyond compliance for ways energy and resource conservation can make them more competitive.