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Amy Wachs

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Amy Wachs is a partner in the St. Louis office of Husch Blackwell with over 25 years of experience in counseling businesses on health & safety and environmental regulations. She routinely counsels clients with ongoing OSHA inspections, accident investigations and OSHA citations, as well as providing detailed analyses of the applicability of the OSHA regulations to specific manufacturing and other situations.

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Coronavirus

Many business operations affected heavily by environmental regulations are considered “essential” and are up and running to ensure our country has the products and services it needs to respond to the COVID-19 emergency.  We are hearing that these businesses are straining under the pressure to maintain social distancing requirements, quarantine individuals exposed to the virus, sustain operations with reduced personnel, protect their personnel, and preserve their supply chain resources.  Although all companies understand the need to protect human health and the environment, it may be impossible to meet every deadline, take every reading, and make every inspection during this emergency.

Recognizing this reality, many Federal and state agencies are issuing enforcement relief and response policies providing guidance on how to respond if environmental or other regulatory requirements can’t be met.  Husch Blackwell has gathered Federal and state COVID-19 enforcement relief and response policies for environmental and motor carrier safety regulations.  A complete list of these policies is posted as a resource on our website.

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has proposed further amendments to clarify the new Prop 65 regulations that went into effect August 30, 2018, which focused on how to provide “clear and reasonable” warnings under Prop 65. Under the new regulations, manufacturers, producers, packagers, importers, suppliers, and distributors have primary responsibility for complying with Prop 65 requirements; and retail sellers have responsibility for placement and maintenance of consumer product exposure warnings only in limited situations. OEHHA’s latest proposed amendments clarify parties’ responsibilities along the often complex supply chain:

On December 6 2017, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) issued a notice indicating the approval of amendments to Proposition 65’s “clear and reasonable warnings” regulations. OEHHA issued these amendments to clarify and correct certain sections of the significant new regulations going into effect August 30, 2018 that will change how parties…

Today, OSHA published a new final rule on slip, trip and fall hazardsin general industry. The rule, which runs a stunning 518 pages in the Federal Register, is titled “Walking-Working Surfaces and Personal Protective Equipment (Fall Protection Systems).” The final rule takes effect January 17, 2017, ending a long-running rulemaking that last involved a proposed rule in 2010 and comments and hearing through 2011. By OSHA’s estimate, the rule will cover “112 million workers at seven million worksites.”

Hidden away in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (2015 Budget), signed by President Obama on November 2, 2015, is an obscure provision that will raise the maximum penalties for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations for the first time since 1990. The financial ramifications of the significantly higher penalties may change how employers evaluate whether to contest OSHA citations.

On July 31, 2013, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new rule, effective January 31, 2014, that provides some new clarity on how wipes that are contaminated with certain hazardous solvents must be managed under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the federal statute governing the disposal of solid and hazardous waste.