Oklahoma Implements Its Own Lead Paint Law

Oklahoma has become the latest of 13 states that have been authorized to administer their own
lead paint laws in lieu of the federal EPA program. Fortunately, Oklahoma has incorporated all
lead-safe work practices from the EPA program, so no serious concerns for contractors are on the
horizon.
Oklahoma contractors will no longer be subject to EPA certification -- that role will now be taken
over by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The good news is that if you
are an existing Renovation Firm and/or a Certified Renovator certified by EPA, you do not have to
become certified by DEQ right now. Instead, existing Renovation Firms have until September 22,
2013 to simply register with DEQ by sending a letter stating their name and contact information
and providing a copy of their EPA certification. However, when an existing Renovation Firms’ EPA
certification expires, the firm must renew their certification with DEQ (not EPA).
EPA Certified Renovators can follow this same routine: they can keep their EPA certification for
now, but must take a refresher course approved by DEQ when their certification is up for renewal.

Laconia N.H. Company Fined for Failing to Notify Tenants about Lead Paint Hazards

(Boston, Mass. – July 16, 2013) – The owners and manager of 12 properties in Laconia,
N.H. have agreed to pay a fine of $2,400 and to do environmental improvements valued at
$21,600 to settle EPA claims that they failed to follow federal lead paint disclosure laws at
three properties.
EPA alleged in a complaint that Allen Enterprises Rental Properties, Lakeport Plaza, LLC,
and Open Arms Outreach, Inc. violated the federal Toxic Substance Control Act when they
failed to notify prospective tenants at rental units about potential lead-paint hazards in
housing they owned from 2009 to 2011 in Laconia, as required by then federal lead-based
paint disclosure rule.
According to the agreement with EPA’s New England office, the environmental project
involves replacing old windows, window trim, doors, door jambs and baseboards at a
building at 101-103 Church St. in Laconia, which was built in the early 1900s. The work must
be done within a year. Wipe sampling will be done when the work is completed to ensure
that no lead-based paint dust remains at the work site. This project will eliminate sources of
lead paint in the residential setting thereby protecting children from potential lead poisoning.
Exposure to lead paint is a serious health concern in New England due to the age of the
housing stock. Infants and young children are especially vulnerable to lead paint exposure,
which can cause lowered intelligence, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing,
reduced attention span, hyperactivity and behavior problems. Adults with high lead levels
can suffer difficulties during pregnancy, high blood pressure, nerve disorders, memory
problems and muscle and joint pain.
The purpose of the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act and the Lead-Based
Paint Disclosure Rule is to ensure that prospective tenants have enough information about
lead-based paint in general and known lead-based paint hazards in specific housing to make
an informed decision about whether to lease a particular property.

Groeller Painting Inc of St. Louis to Pay $23,000 Penalty for Failure to Use Lead Safe Work Practices and Notify Homeowners of Lead Risks

(Lenexa, Kan., March 12, 2013) - Groeller Painting Inc, of St. Louis, Mo., has agreed to pay a $23,000 civil penalty to settle allegations that it failed to use proper lead-safe work practices during the renovation of a pre-1978 multifamily unit property, in violation of the Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule (RRP). The company also failed to notify residents about lead-based paint risks before the company or its subcontractors performed renovation work at their homes.

According to an administrative consent agreement and final order filed by EPA Region 7 in Lenexa, Kan., Groeller or its subcontractors were legally required to use proper lead-safe work practices during the renovation and provide owners and occupants of the properties with an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet, known as the Renovate Right pamphlet, before starting renovations at the properties. The Renovate Right pamphlet helps homeowners and tenants understand the risks of lead-based paint, and how best to minimize these risks to protect themselves and their families.

The RRP rule requires that contractors that work on pre-1978 dwellings and child-occupied facilities are trained and certified to use lead-safe work practices. This ensures that common renovation and repair activities like sanding, cutting and replacing windows minimize the creation and dispersion of dangerous lead dust. EPA finalized the RRP rule in 2008 and the rule took effect on April 22, 2010.

This enforcement action addresses RRP Rule violations that could result in harm to human health. Lead exposure can cause a range of adverse health effects, from behavioral disorders and learning disabilities to seizures and death, putting young children at the greatest risk because their nervous systems are still developing.

N.H. Company Faces Penalty for Violating Lead Renovation Rule at Kittery, Maine Site

(Boston, Mass. – Feb. 25, 2013) – New Hampshire Plate Glass Corp., based in Portsmouth, N.H., faces a penalty of up to $90,750 for allegedly violating requirements designed to protect children from exposure to lead-based paint during painting and other renovation activities. The alleged violations occurred during a window renovation project performed by the company at the former Frisbee School in Kittery, Maine. The Kittery site was, at the time of the renovation, a child-occupied facility subject to EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule.   The violations were brought to EPA’s attention via an anonymous tip, after which EPA and Maine Dept. of Environmental Protection performed an inspection of the site in February 2012. Based on the inspection, EPA determined that the company had not complied with the required work practice requirements of the RRP Rule, including failure to assign a certified renovator to the work site; failure to cover ground with plastic sheeting; and failure to contain waste from the renovation activity.   EPA’s RRP Rule is designed to prevent exposure to lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. The rule requires individuals performing renovations for compensation at most pre-1978 housing and child-occupied facilities to be properly trained. There are certification and training requirements for individual renovators and firms performing renovations to ensure that safe work practices are followed during renovations. The rule became effective on April 22, 2010 and allows for the assessment of penalties that may reach up to a maximum of $37,500 per violation per day.   Infants and young children are especially vulnerable to lead paint exposure, which can cause developmental impairment, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity and behavioral problems. Adults with high lead levels can suffer difficulties during pregnancy, high blood pressure, nerve disorders, memory problems and muscle and joint pain.   Visit Kachina Lead Paint Solutions for more information about lead paint solutions, safety training, and more.

EPA Fines Violators of the Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule

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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.

EPA Increases Lead Paint Rule Enforcement

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has "begun stepping up its inspections and enforcement" of its Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule for lead paint, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

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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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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