WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced three enforcement actions for violations of the Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule (RRP) and other lead rules. The RRP rule requires the use of lead-safe work practices to ensure that common renovation activities like sanding, cutting and demolition, which can create hazardous lead dust, are conducted properly by trained and certified contractors or individuals. EPA finalized the RRP rule in 2008 and the rule took effect on April 22, 2010.
“Exposure to lead can cause serious health problems and affects our most vulnerable population, our children,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “By taking action to enforce lead rules we are protecting people’s health and ensuring that businesses that follow the rules have a level playing field.”
On March 21, 2012, Colin Wentworth, a rental property owner who was responsible for building operation and maintenance, agreed to pay $10,000 to resolve violations of the RRP rule. The complaint alleged that Mr. Wentworth’s workers violated the rule by improperly using power equipment to remove paint from the exterior surface of an 1850’s apartment building he owns in Rockland, Maine. The complaint also alleged that the workers had not received any training under the rule and that Mr. Wentworth had failed to apply for firm certification with the EPA. Because the lead dust had not been properly contained, residents were potentially exposed and the dust could have also contaminated the ground surrounding the apartment building. Two of the four units in the building were rented to recipients of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Section 8 vouchers and there were at least four children under the age of 18, including one under the age of six, living in the units. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also responded to the alleged violations.
On March 20, 2012, Valiant Home Remodelers, a New Jersey window and siding company, agreed to pay $1,500 to resolve violations from failing to follow the RRP rule during a window and siding replacement project at a home in Edison, N.J. Valiant Home Remodelers failed to contain renovation dust, contain waste, and train workers on lead-safe work practices.
On February 21, 2012, Johnson Sash and Door, a home repair company located in Omaha, Neb., agreed to pay a $5,558 penalty for failing to provide the owners or occupants of housing built prior to 1978 with an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet or to obtain a written acknowledgment prior to commencement of renovation activities at five homes. The complaint also alleged that Johnson failed to obtain initial certification prior to performing renovations at these residences.
As required by the law, a company or individual’s ability to pay a penalty is evaluated and penalties are adjusted accordingly.
These recent actions are part of EPA’s effort to ensure that contractors and individuals follow the RRP requirements and other lead rules to protect people’s health from exposure to lead. Lead exposure can cause a range of health effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities to seizures and death, putting young children at the greatest risk because their nervous systems are still developing.
Friday, April 6, 2012
EPA Fines Violators of the Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
EPA Increases Lead Paint Rule Enforcement
During an NAHB-sponsored webinar for the rule, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Don Lott said his agency will be taking more enforcement actions in 2012 for the rule than it did in 2011. Last year, the EPA took three enforcement actions in the 38 states where it oversees RRP enforcement; 12 states enforce the rule on their own, including Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.
The agency's highest priority is ensuring companies are using the proper lead-safe work practices, Lott said, as well as ensuring companies are following proper training and recordkeeping guidelines. Lott, associate director of the EPA’s Waste and Chemical Enforcement Division, noted that his agency is weighting violations more heavily when human health is put directly at risk.
The EPA is employing several enforcement strategies, but it is relying primarily on tips reported via its hotline, (800) 424-5323, and compliance website to seek violators. Lott said that, on average, the EPA receives 400 tips and complaints per month reporting uncertified firms and unsafe lead work practices. Those tips have led to about 1,000 compliance inspections of job sites to date, and, as a result, it was found that 60 percent of contractors on those job sites were uncertified.
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Thursday, December 1, 2011
Anthony Home Improvements Name Remodeler of the Year by Housing Zone
Remodeler of the Year: Anthony Home Improvements
Adaptability and a willingness to find a market make Anthony Home Improvements Remodeler of the Year
In its half-century in business, Anthony Home Improvements has had many identities from a plumbing business that grew into five states to a long history of working as a partner with major retailers from Sears to Home Depot.
Add in businesses that focus on lead paint training, aging-in-place bath remodels and raising the professionalism of the industry, and it’s clear that second-generation CEO Stephen Klein, CAPS — and his parents before him — isn’t satisfied with running the average remodeling firm.
It’s that ability and willingness to constantly change and recognize an evolving market that makes Anthony Home Improvements stand out as the Professional Remodeler Remodeler of the Year.
Getting the lead out
In the last five years, Anthony Home Improvements has expanded from its core business installing kitchens and bathrooms for Home Depot under the Housecrafters name to add their own bathroom division and provide lead paint training.
The biggest impact has come from Kachina Lead Paint Solutions, a company Klein founded in 2006 to train remodelers to comply with the EPA’s Lead Repair and Renovation Program regulations.
Last year, the company trained more than 40,000 people in almost every state in the country, making Kachina one of the largest lead trainers in the United States. Numbers are down this year, but the company continues to be profitable through selling lead paint pamphlets, equipment and other supplies.
Kachina is just one example of Klein seeing a coming trend and grabbing on to it, says vice president of marketing Paul Toub, who has known him since 1976, working for the company in the 1970s and returning for a second stint in 2001.
“Stephen saw something and he embraced it,” Toub says. “We were trying to spread the word early on and for a couple of years the phones didn’t ring, then last year we had what we still refer to as the ‘lead paint tsunami.’”
The company also recently signed a deal with software company improveit!360 to have Kachina’s intellectual property and forms integrated into their software so contractors will be able to automate their paperwork.
Through Kachina, Klein and the company became involved with LeadSafeAmerica.org, a nonprofit that they’ve helped fund dedicated to assisting parents of children who have been lead poisoned.
“When Stephen believe in something, he’s willing to put money on the table,” Toub says. “It’s certainly profits we’re looking for, but Stephen also wants to give back. He wants to do good.”
Survival through evolution
Stephen Klein has been around the home improvement business since he used to help out his father Irving, a plumber, as a child. He’s seen plenty of ups and downs in that time, but one thing he’s learned during more than 50 years in remodeling is that you can never be satisfied with the status quo.
“Everybody wants to take the safe road,” Klein says. “Especially in today’s world, as dangerous as someone might think it is to expand into areas outside their comfort zone, I think it’s very dangerous to sit still and think everything is going to stay the same.”
Klein says his father, who passed away in 2001, was much more conservative than him. (He still recalls the time his father yelled at him for spending $500 on a website in the mid-1990s. “He said I was just pissing money away. He was right at the time.”)
Still, Irving was never afraid to try branch out the business, either.
“He was always looking for different deals and I think that entrepreneurial bug got to me,” Klein says. “He used to always say we’re businessmen that happen to be in the trade, not tradesmen that happen to be in business.”
From it’s founding in 1954, the company went through several incarnations from plumber to bathroom remodeler to a failed partnership in 1969 that left Irving Klein to essentially start over in 1970. That was when Stephen — then a student at Drexel University — came into the business full-time, along with his brother. Within eight years, the family had built what was then Anthony, The Family Plumber into a company with 130 employees and 77 trucks in five states.
By the early 1980s, Anthony had teamed-up with Sears, delivering plumbing and other home improvement services through the retail giant. The partnership was an immediate success, with Anthony eventually growing to be one of the company’s largest service providers — a development that turned out to be a mixed blessing as the Sears business dominated Anthony Home Improvements’ output.
In November 2001, Anthony Home Improvements received a customer service award from Sears — along with the news that Sears was changing its business model and the work that had been such a big part of the company was going away.
Toub, who had just returned to the company, remembers thinking that his job might not be around much longer. Instead, Klein came to him and said, “Let’s put our heads together and figure out who’s going to replace the Sears business.”
Throughout the transition, Klein’s positive attitude kept the employees’ spirits up, Toub says.
Eventually, after discussions with several other national and regional chains, Anthony signed on with Home Depot. Several former Sears employees had moved over to the home improvement retailer, and their knowledge of the work Anthony had done at Sears helped the company land the contract for three stores in the Philadelphia area.
“We showed them the success of what we could do and it grew,” Klein says. “It went from us begging for more stores to them coming to me asking us to take over more stores.”
Today, Anthony Home Improvements/Housecrafters installs for 59 Home Depot stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. That relationship has its challenges, but it has also been incredibly beneficial for the company.
“The benefit is they give you volume,” says production manager John Sammartino, who joined the company nine years ago when the Home Depot relationship began. “They keep you steady throughout the years.”
The disadvantage, both Klein and Sammartino say, is that the company (like most retailers) has a lot of turnover, so expectations and relationships are constantly changing.
“Politics is a critical part of managing that relationship,” Klein says. “It’s a luxury we can’t afford to lose our temper.”
Home Depot — once seen by many as the biggest threat to remodelers — has greatly improved how they manage their home improvement projects over the last decade, demanding increased professionalism and quality. That has made Anthony a better company, Klein says.
Anthony Home Improvements is constantly audited for paperwork compliance and for permits. They can be mystery-shopped and Home Depot can listen to their phone calls at any time.
“It’s not easy to be chosen as a service provider for them anymore,” Klein says. “They’re looking for the best.”
Learning the hard lesson
The Home Depot relationship has been very rewarding for Anthony, but the earlier Sears experience also has taught Klein that the company can’t put all its eggs in one basket.
That’s why the company has continued to look for new opportunities, whether it be lead paint training through Kachina or aging in place remodeling through Anthony Home Improvements new DBA, 1 Call Bath Solutions.
That part of the business is an attempt to not only drive business that is separate from Home Depot, but also meet the growing demand for aging-in-place remodeling. Klein has been interested in the specialty since watching the mobility issues his parents had in their final years. He earned his CAPS from NAHB, which only further convinced him of the need.
The aging baby boomer market makes it a natural area for expansion, Toub says.
“We will grow that business because it’s a need and somebody’s got to service it,” he says.
A potential partnership with another organization (“a household name,” Klein says) should also help grow the business quickly.
Most recently, Klein launched the National Association of Professionally Accredited Contractors this year. Contractors who join NAPAC are able to buy legal contracts and other materials to make sure they keep their business operating within the law. The legal services are provided by D.S. Berenson, Klein’s attorney and friend.
“We were looking around and knew their had to be a way to get out to home improvement contractors in America and teach them to be better contractors,” Klein says. “We weren’t satisfied with what was out there.”
The group has an advisory board made up of several well-known remodelers, consultants and service providers in the industry, including Jack Zurlini, the former Washington state assistant attorney general — now in private practice — who filed the legal actions that caused several large window companies to close their doors.
“NAPAC is all about how do we elevate this industry,” Klein says.
A family company
In the end, any company’s success comes down to its employees. Anthony Home Improvements’ employees say the company’s family focus is what makes it such a good company for which to work.
“People say the grass is always greener on the other side,” says controller Colleen O’Hanlon, a 21-year employee. “I feel like I’m on the green grass.”
That attitude starts with Klein, says sales manager Mike Pelone.
“He’s the one everyday who’s really fostering that family attitude,” Pelone says. “I believe that really shows in our work back to the customers.”
Klein is always looking for the next opportunity, O’Hanlon says.
“His brain is constantly working,” she says. “He’s always thinking about new avenues we can go down — what can we do as a company to not just grow financially, but also to help other people.”
Because everyone trusts Klein to make the right decisions for the company and the employees, they haven’t worried when bumps have come along the way over the years.
“We obviously got hit a few years ago with everything that was changing,” O’Hanlon says. “I think it says a lot that nobody jumped ship. Everybody stuck it out.”
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Lead Case Targets Disney Attractions
M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e is getting s-u-e-d over l-e-a-d.
Why? Because he is allegedly contaminating small, unsuspecting visitors to Disneyland, the “Happiest Place on Earth,” with the toxic substance.
‘Excessive Levels of Lead’
That is the allegation by the Mateel Environmental Justice Foundation, which has gone to court seeking to force the Disney company to post warning signs about the lead or to cover lead-laced surfaces throughout the 56-year-old theme park in Anaheim, CA.
The nonprofit filed suit in April against Walt Disney Parks & Resorts U.S. Inc., alleging that attractions and locations throughout the park are riddled with lead.
The suit, filed in California Superior Court - Orange County, alleges "excessive levels of lead in such commonly touched objects as the Sword in the Stone attraction," along with brass door knobs at Minnie’s House, stained-glass windows in a door at the entrance to a beauty salon in Cinderella’s Castle,” and other locations.
Injunction Sought
On Friday (Oct. 21), the group filed for an injunction seeking to compel the company to comply with the state’s toxic-chemical notification law. That motion is scheduled for a hearing Nov. 22.
“We are asking the court to force Disney to take steps that should have been taken when we first told them that children at Disneyland are in danger of illegal lead exposures," Mateel president William Verick said in a statement.
In 2010 and 2011, Mateel and the nonprofit Ecological Rights Foundation had individuals conduct "wipe testing" of various surfaces at Disneyland. An independent lab analyzed the test wipes using a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health protocol, Mateel said.
‘Dozens’ of Locations
“During several visits to Disneyland beginning in June 2010, we found accessible lead at exposures above California safety standards in dozens of objects throughout the park,” Mateel reported. “Under the law, consumers must be warned of lead exposures of more than 0.5 micrograms per day.”
Tested locations showed up to 1,300 micrograms of lead exposure, the group said.
Mateel says it sent two legal notices to Disney, alerting the company to California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (known as Prop 65), which requires “clear and reasonable” notification of consumers exposed to chemicals, including lead, known to cause cancer or reproductive harm.It says the company ignored the notices.
Disney: ‘Full Compliance’
Disney says it is not violating the law. “We have not seen the papers that we are told are being filed, so we cannot comment specifically,” a Disney spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times. “However, we believe that Disneyland Resort is in full compliance with the signage requirements.”
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) has previously successfully sued Disney over lead in its retail products. Last week, CEH joined Mateel and a third organization at a news briefing about the current suit.
Said CEH Research Director Caroline Cox: “It’s disappointing that a $38 billion company like Disney can’t be bothered to clean up their parks so they’re safe for children.”
Monday, October 24, 2011
National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week
Today, childhood lead poisoning is considered the most preventable environmental disease among young children, yet an estimated 250,000 U.S. children have elevated blood-lead levels. A simple blood test can prevent permanent damage that will last a lifetime. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is committed to eliminating this burden to public health.
National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW)
CDC and HHS share the goal of eliminating childhood lead poisoning in the United States. NLPPW occurs every year during the last full week in October (Senate. Resolution 199). During NLPPW, CDC aims to:
- Raise awareness about lead poisoning;
- Stress the importance of screening the highest risk children younger than 6 years of age (preferably by ages 1 and 2) if they have not been tested yet;
- Highlight partner’s efforts to prevent childhood lead poisoning; and
- Urge people to take steps to reduce lead exposure.
During NLPPW, many states and communities offer free blood-lead testing and conduct various education and awareness events. For more information about NLPPW activities in your area, please contact your state or local health department.
Every year, CDC, in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), develops posters in observance of National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW). The posters are free for downloading by states and communities. In addition, we have developed a NLPPW Campaign Toolkit to encourage information-sharing, collaboration, and promotion of NLPPW and lead poisoning prevention in general.
Monday, October 3, 2011
improveit! 360 and Kachina Lead Paint Solutions Partnership!
PRESS RELEASE
improveit! 360 and Kachina Lead Paint Solutions Announce Partnership to Help Remodelers Stay RRP Compliant; Avoid Fines
improveit! 360 integrates Kachina RRP compliance forms in its business management application for easy compliance with RRP federal/state laws and regulations.
Columbus, Ohio – October 3, 2011 – improveit! 360, the nation’s premier web-based business management application for remodelers and contractors, announced its partnership with Kachina Lead Paint Solutions. This alliance was formed to make it easier for home improvement businesses to comply with RRP regulations, receive expert help and maintain the use of the most updated RRP forms.
Kachina Lead Paint Solutions, nationally accredited by the EPA to provide resources and training in lead-safe practices in all 50 states, sought a partner to help home improvement companies gain access to guidance as well as the latest forms needed to be RRP compliant. With extremely busy schedules, it is easy for contractors and remodelers to miss regulations passed that affect the industry, and the steps to take to make sure those laws are followed. “We were looking for an effective way to extend our reach into home improvement companies to assist more remodelers to keep up with regulations, make it easy for them to get the forms they need to be compliant, and maintain these important documents in one place. Our answer was improveit! 360,” said Paul Toub, Vice President of Marketing for Kachina Lead Paint Solutions.
improveit! 360 offers home improvement companies a simple and streamlined approach to tracking and maintaining all mandatory lead paint compliance paperwork. improveit! 360 can easily track important compliance details such as:
-Which staff members are certified renovators;
-When RRP documents are received on a sale;
-When RRP compliance is required based on the age of the structure.
By integrating Kachina’s RRP forms into improveit! 360, remodelers can be confident that all RRP compliance documents and certifications will be organized and easily accessible, leaving them with one less item to worry about so they can focus more on their business. Customers can opt to use the premier support service, which gives them access to Kachina compliance experts to answer their questions, and the opportunity to receive discounts on additional items related to compliance, such as Renovate Right pamphlets.
Kachina’s RRP documents can be easily stored on the customer record within improveit! 360 so compliance information is centrally located and easily available should an audit occur.
“Our Business Management application already lowers the cost and time required to manage RRP compliance. Integrating Kachina’s forms and guidance takes compliance enforcement and tracking to a new level, not to mention helps to prevent costly fines, lawsuits, and headaches. As two companies that started by contractors for contractors, Kachina and improveit! 360 are looking out for the best interest of home remodelers.”
About improveit! 360
Developed by home improvement industry experts for remodelers and contractors, improveit! 360 is a total business management application designed to control chaos, accelerate growth, lower costs and improve operational efficiencies. With improveit! 360, home improvement companies are able to close more leads while reducing their marketing costs, automate communications, track every customer interaction from one centralized location, and get a 360o view of their operation for better decision-making. Built on the force.com platform, the application is remotely accessible via the web, highly secure, reliable and scalable. For more information and a free trial, visit http://www.improveit360.com or email info (at) improveit360 (dot) com. To see improveit! 360 in action, watch our webinars at http://www.improveit360.com/Webinars.
About Kachina Lead Paint Solutions
Kachina was founded as a one-stop resource for contractors to be in compliance with the lead paint laws from classroom training to real-world implementation. In addition to training over 40,000 contractors since October 2009, Kachina has developed a copyrighted version of the EPA’s Renovate Right Pamphlet. This allows contractors to be in compliance with the law while using the pamphlet as a marketing tool. Kachina also has all of the equipment and supplies contractors need to follow Lead Safe Work Practices. The company’s copyrighted forms ensure Lead Safe Business Practices and are widely used by contractors of all sizes. For more information, visit http://www.kachinaleadpaintsolutions.com or call 1-888-800-5224.
Contact
Traci Snyder
improveit! 360
Phone: 866-421-3360
Email: tsnyder@improveit360.com
Monday, September 19, 2011
Berenson LLP Gives an Understanding the Recent LRRP Changes
Understanding the Recent LRRP Changes
On October 4, 2011, the latest changes to the EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule (LRRP) go effective. Finalized last month, this latest round of changes continues to showcase the inability of the EPA to understand their own law or the industry to which the law applies. That said, here is a brief summary of the changes most relevant to the remodeling and home improvement industry:
Proposed Dust Wipe Sampling. The previously proposed change to LRRP that would have required a new dust wipe clearance test by a new specially licensed worker -- to be performed after the lead-safe work practices were completed -- has been cancelled. Despite claims by certain trade organizations that this was the result of their lobbying efforts, the fact is that this proposal was dead once the Congressional makeup changed last fall. A number of states had warned the EPA against enacting this “super cleaning” requirement as being unnecessary and unduly burdensome, even threatening to support a defunding of the EPA budget in regard to lead paint regulations.
The applicable statement from the EPA was as follows: "After carefully weighing all available science and considering the public comments, EPA has concluded that the current lead-safe work practices and clean up requirements will protect people from lead dust hazards and therefore it is not necessary to impose lead-dust testing or clearance requirements in the Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rule (LRRP).”
Lead Paint Lab Analysis. Certified Renovators, instead of conducting their own lead paint test, may submit a lead paint chip to an independent laboratory for analysis. The EPA will be providing details on how this may be accomplished, but in the real world this is unlikely to be of much use to the majority of the industry, given the increased cost, complexity, and time that such a procedure will require when compared to the test kits currently available.
What Is a Painted Surface? For a number of years our firm has sought to defend certain clients under EPA audit by asserting that the job(s) in question did not actually involve a “painted surface”. The concept was that the EPA had never defined what a “painted surface” was, and by its plain meaning that term should only apply to a surface that has paint on it (as opposed, for example, to a sink or tub or gutter, which are not generally painted). Apparently in an effort to close down this possible loophole, the new changes to LRRP now state that the term “painted surface” includes any “surface coating”, not just paint.
Unfortunately, the EPA has failed to explain what is meant by a “surface coating” and this is not as simple as it appears. Is an enameled surface on a gutter or downspout a surface coating? What about an enameled tub being pulled on a liner job? Adding further potential confusion into the mix, the EPA’s web page reported some time ago that the EPA would not consider the glaze on ceramic tile to be either a surface coating or a painted surface – and therefore ceramic tile is not subject to LRRP. Yet any tile manufacturer can tell you that glaze is either sprayed or painted on to a ceramic tile, not unlike the manner in which some types of enamel are applied.
Vertical Containment Systems. Vertical containment “or equivalent extra precautions” must be used as part of lead-safe work practices for exterior renovations that affect painted surfaces within 10 feet of the property line. The “or equivalent extra precautions” now means that a contractor is allowed to use almost any type of vertical containment system, from a commercial box structure to scaffolding to a make-shift plastic sheeting lean-to, so long as it contains the dust being created from the renovation. Moreover, as long as the floor containment is tightly sealed to the vertical containment, the floor containment can stop where it meets the vertical containment system, even if that is before the current 6-foot standard for interior floor containment or the 10-foot standard for exterior floor containment.
What to do if conditions are too windy to safely construct or maintain a vertical containment system? EPA helpfully advises the contractor to “reschedule the renovation for a more clement day”.
Of some note for contractors is the fact that the EPA has once again changed the content of the lead paint informational pamphlet, now known as “The Lead Safe Certified Guide to Renovate Right”. Having lost count as to how many times in the past four years the pamphlet has changed, we will simply note that page 10 has been rewritten to better explain what lead-dust testing is to the consumer. There should be no concern, however, about using up your existing stock of pamphlets before going to the newest version.
Finally, as an aside, we are often asked by window clients if second- and third-story window replacements mean that a projecting roof outside the window needs to be covered with plastic sheeting? The answer is no, LRRP does not require that roof surfaces be covered by plastic sheeting. Apparently it is OK for lead dust to sit on a roof, to then be blown around or washed onto a lawn.
Visit www.BerensonLLP.com or www.HomeImprovementLaw.com to learn more!
