The Situation: On one hot sunny morning with mid day temperatures already climbing into the ‘80’s one of your front-end loader operators is making his normal rounds and stops by a local motel to service the dumpster. He stops his truck and gets out and opens the dumpster enclosure. When he does he notices that the motel’s kitchen is still leaving their used kitchen grease container within the confines of the dumpster enclosure. This time the 275 gallon grease container is fairly close to the dumpster, but the driver figures he can dump the container without striking the grease container, but it will be close.

The driver gets back into the truck and starts it up just as he receives a call on his cell phone. It’s his live-in girlfriend who wishes to continue last nights fight. The ensuing agreement distracts the driver long enough to cause him to catch a corner of the kitchen grease container spilling approximately 210 gallons (the container was approximately 75% full at the time of the incident) of used kitchen grease all over the asphalt.

The Questions:

What are the immediate actions of the driver?
Does the kitchen grease need to be cleaned up and if so, how?
Are the motel owner/operators incorrect by storing the grease in the dumpster enclosure? If so, what should have been done to correct it?
Will the used kitchen grease damage the asphalt?

Scenario #4:

The Situation: It is Monday in the middle of August and you are a consultant for a local power plant. This particular plant is of an older design in which it can produce power by burning oil, coal, natural gas or garbage. To burn garbage the refuse trucks have to collect the waste and bring it to the plant. At the plant the garbage is dumped on what is known as the “tipping floor” and then hand sorted. Some items, such as mattresses, appliances and the more sturdy items cannot be burned so they have to be removed from the trash. Its already 98 degrees outside when you receive the phone call from the power plant. Apparently one of the sorters found something that you need to see. You hate going out there particularly on a Monday, because most of the time the garbage was dumped on Friday and has sat there all weekend getting “ripe”. When you arrive and open your car door, you realize you were right; it is very ripe! Gagging, you try to down-play your feelings and go to find the supervisor. This particular work group uses a “working supervisor” plan in which the supervisor also sorts garbage. You find him shortly after your arrival and as he is walking over to you, you noticed that he takes off his filthy gloves and lights up a cigarette. With his cigarette in his mouth he sticks out his hand to shake for introductions. All that is going through your mind is where have his hands been. He runs through his story and apparently one of the workers as found a box with a radiation sign on it, except the box is empty.

The Questions:

What are your first actions?

What do you do if the radiation sign indicates a significant hazard?