93    HOW TO WRITE SAMPLING PLANS FOR REGULATORY
COMPLIANCE
John W. Donley, President
Donley Environmental Management, Inc.
Stafford, Virginia 22554
INTRODUCTION
Environmental investigations are a business expense. Whether they are conducted by consultants
for an industrial facility or by graduate students under a research grant, someone must pay the bills.
Like all business expenses, the total cost is less important than the relationship between the costs and
the benefits.
Unfortunately, for environmental sampling this relationship is not easily quantified. The benefits
include such intangibles as enhanced corporate image and reduced liability. As a result, most facilities
concentrate on minimizing costs. But many feel they have little control over the activities that
ultimately determine the costs when sampling is conducted in response to regulatory requirements.
In reality, the facility can gain a great deal of control over the process. The amount of control will
depend somewhat on the nature of the investigation. It will depend on restrictions inherent in the
regulations that control the process, as well as internal policies of the regulatory authority that
enforces the program. It will even vary between individual regulators. Ultimately, however, the
amount of control given the facility will depend on how aggressive the facility is in pursuing control.
Sampling plans are one of the most effective tools available to the facility for gaining the necessary
control over environmental investigations and for reducing costs. They can ensure the sampling effort
will gather the maximum amount of information for the money. Used properly, an effective sampling
plan will minimize the possibility that the regulatory authority will require that the facility repeat
major portions of the sampling activities. Most importantly, sampling plans set the stage for future
remediation and play a significant role in determining the approach and ultimate costs.
UNDERSTANDING REGULATORS
Sampling plans gain control for the facility through the regulatory review process. The goal is to
demonstrate to the regulatory authority that the facility is competent and reliable and the proposed
approach can meet the regulatory objectives. To accomplish this, the facility must first understand the
conditions under which the regulatory agency operates.
A regulatory agency's authority is established by law. Environmental laws set goals for industry to
attain and they charge the regulatory agency with developing and enforcing regulations for implementing the law. It is the regulations that establish the conditions under which an environmental
investigation will be required.
Regulations typically establish boundaries for environmental investigations. They set upper and
lower limits, but usually do not prescribe how these limits are to be achieved. Further, they often
contain provisions for exceptions to these limits when the regulated facility can demonstrate that such
exceptions are prudent. The details are found, not in the regulations, but in volumes of guidance
manuals that invariably evolve to "interpret" the regulations.
For example, in 40 CFR, Part 267, Subpart F, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established a requirement for ground-water monitoring around certain land-based hazardous waste management units. The regulation requires that sample collection and handling procedures be adequate to
provide data to meet certain performance standards, such as identifying the quality, quantity, and
direction of ground-water flow. It does not, however, prescribe how samples are to be collected or
managed prior to analysis. These procedures are described in EPA's RCRA Ground-Water Monitoring Technical Enforcement Guidance Document? among others.
44th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, © 1990 Lewis Publishers, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan 48118.
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