Quality

surprise! it's the EPA!

By Jason Burroughs

More in the Fall 2009 issue

Recently, two men from Bionetics, an EPA contractor, paid DieselGreen Fuels an unannounced visit.
They asked to see samples of my biodiesel, thinking I was a producer. I explained that I was only a distributor, but they still wanted samples. After calling the EPA to confirm they were for real, I gave them samples from our tank and explained what we do.
To summarize, at DieselGreen we collect oil from almost 200 restaurants and provide it to biodiesel producers. These producers turn it into biodiesel for us (a relationship referred to as "tolling"), which we then we sell as B100 to end users to power their vehicles.
Because of the difficult licensing in our state, we have also had to establish a relationship with a licensed renderer who aggregates yellow grease from all over and sells it for animal feed and biodiesel feedstock. They literally just take temporary custody of the oil on its way to the producer, in exchange for a fee.
Most recently, we have applied for that license ourselves, and hope to streamline the process.
Back at our office, the investigators wanted lots of product transfer documents (PTDs). They asked for PTDs from our restaurants to us for the oil collection (we only have handwritten driver records, which were acceptable); PTD's from us to the rendering company we sell the oil to; and PTD's from the biodiesel producer we buy B100 from.
Next, they took a sample of biodiesel and tested it on the spot using an X-ray machine of some kind.
This determined its sulfur content was 5.2ppm (it is required to be below 15ppm).
They then took another sample to test for methanol content, flash point, and acid number back at their lab. They knew little about biodiesel, but were just following orders.
In addition to all this, they asked me about our conversion of vehicles to run on vegetable oil. They requested invoices to customers for doing conversions, receipts of buying conversion kits and automated   SVO fuel system controllers, and anything else I had on those products.
I could have said no. I could have contacted a lawyer.
But I'm in this as a business, not to hide what I'm doing. I gave them everything they asked for and then some.
We talked for quite a while about the grey area of using vegetable oil as a fuel. The IRS, for example, officially takes road taxes for SVO, while the EPA officially says it's not a permissible road fuel.
Oddly, they asked me NOTHING about our involvement in using vegetable oil as a fuel, but focused entirely on the conversion business.
The investigators had reviewed our company website and had googled my name thoroughly enough to find things I've written on these topics, so of course I had to wonder what was the inspiration for the investigation.
They said they didn't know. I called their supervisor at the EPA, Ross Ruske.
Ruske said he "couldn't recall" the source. I pressed him, and let him know I would just file a Freedom of Information Act inquiry to find out.
I also said I suspected it was a complaint by a competitor. Finally, he asked, "Why take the time and expense to file a FOIA request when you already know the answer?"
So there it is. The competitor apparently called the EPA to tell them that we were doing things they wouldn't approve of, and the EPA showed up on my doorstep.
The good news is that we had an answer for everything they threw at us. I had every document, every rule, every little shred of information to show that we are doing it all above board.
Not incidentally, we stopped doing conversions at the beginning of this year, when one of the partners split off to do that himself. So I even had the legal document splitting that part of the business off.
The men from Bionetics were really nice guys, and after I explained the trouble we had with our competitor (sending a spy to try and rent a room from us and probing for confidential business information, filing false criminal charges against me, threatening to sue their customer for $8,000 for breaking their contract, etc.) they asked me for their address. They said they were going to make an unannounced visit to them, too!
So what's the moral of the story?
Be prepared for this.
Two weeks after we won a couple of accounts away from our competitor last year, we got a visit from the city's zoning board, the air quality, water quality, stormwater runoff, state environmental board, fire marshall, and city planner, literally within a week of each other. Each one said it was complaint driven.
Don't forget that you're one complaint away from an audit, a site visit, or even just a phone call from the authorities.

This article is adapted from the blog “Through the Sight Glass,” which you can find at www.biodieselsmarter.com/blog. Jason Burroughs is co-founder and owner of DieselGreen Fuels in Austin, TX.