The Situation: You are the Safety Director for a medium sized municipality. Part of the municipality that you serve is an electric utility, complete with power transmission and distribution service to 265 square-mile electric grid. One day, one of your Safety Officers, who serves this electric utility, comes into your office with a substation construction foreman. They inform you that at a particular substation the utility has had to make some expansions to cover the growing needs of the community. To do so they have to erect a control house at the substation to contain all the necessary breakers and electrical components necessary to run the grid. The control house must remain stable and considering that the substation is built on top of a former city landfill that has been closed for the past 35 years; pilings need to be installed. Each piling is 3 feet in diameter and must go down into the ground 30 feet. They did not see the necessity of pulling a permit to do this work because, “hey, it’s all city property. Since they have been drilling, however, the substation construction foreman’s men have been complaining of the foul odors and are concerned now for their health. However, this concern does not seem to apply to one who is actively collecting and subsequently selling on E-Bay; what he considers to be antique bottles that are being pulled up as part of the drilling process.

The Questions:

Is it permissible to disturb the clay cap without a permit?
Are there health issues involved and if so what can be done to protect the employees that are working on site?
If there are no health issues involved, why not?
What steps would you take to deal with the antique bottle situation?