Tier Penalties

The statute also imposes a lower tier penalty on false statements to a governor in connection with a request to defer the deadline for submitting a management plan, but the statute only permitted deferrals until May 9, 1989 and the statute of limitations on such violations has long passed. 

Private non-profit schools are accorded the lower tier penalties even though they do not meet the statutory definition of a LEA. Employees of LEAs do not qualify for the lower tier penalties, but the ERP excuses them from penalties for first-time violations that are not egregious or willful.  

Press Release. EPA. EPA Settlement Will Bring Newark Schools into Compliance With Asbestos Regulations (Jan. 1,2005), available at http //yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/ Cafbebb41895f4a9852572a000657b5c/cblb852al9abe3fl852570dl0053d046 OpenDocument. 

Contractors who fail to obtain proper accreditation are also subject to lower tier penalties if they inspect for ACM or design, conduct or employ individuals to conduct response actions for friable ACM in a school, public, or commercial building. Contractors who are federal employees do not qualify for these lower tier penalties.The lower tier penalties for contractors were enacted in 1990 by the Asbestos School Hazard Abatement Reauthorization Act of 1989, which amended AHERA. This amendment postdates and supersedes discussions in the preamble to the final AHERA ruie oo and in the AHERA ERP that say that only LEAs are eUgible for the lower tier penalties. 

---

The Act provides a two-tier penalty system for AHERA violations. The lower tier carries maximum daily penalties of 7,500 for violations as of January 13, 2009, which is one-fifth of the penalties for other TSCA violations.That tier is reserved for enumerated violations by LEAs, and contractors who fail to obtain accreditation. The higher tier carries maximum daily penalties as of January 13,2009 of 37,500, and appHes the penalty provisions in TSCA 16 to all other asbestos-related TSCA violations. The statute also provides for citizens suits, citizens petitions, and injunctive rehef. 

AHERA violations in general are violations of TSCA 15, which provides in part that it is unlawful to fail or refuse to comply with. .. any requirement of subchapter II of this chapter or any rule promulgated or order issued under subchapter II of this chapter. All violations of TSCA 15 are subject to the current per day maximum penalty of 37,500. Exceptions are that a LEA is not liable for these higher tier penalties under any circumstances, j-gj.. tain violations by contractors are penalized at the lower tier. 

All higher tier penalties are in the same category for the nature of the violation, and so the nature can be disregarded when calculating the gravity based penalties. The AHERA ERR classifies each violation into suigeneris circumstance levels and extent categories. Both upward and downward adjustments maybe made, consistent with the adjustments available to LEAs. 

Please note that layers and tiers are two different concepts. Tiers mean the physical separation of subsystems—each subsystem runs on a different hardware or the same hardware but in different processes. In a multitiered system, the interaction between the subsystems is accomplished through remote procedure calls (RPCs). Any RPC involves network overhead and therefore has a performance penalty whether the remote procedure is on a separate hardware or on the same physical hardware but in a different process. Layers, on the other hand, are logical separations of the subsystems. Each layer can run on a different physical tier, or all layers can run on a single tier. The purpose of physical tiers is to leverage distributed hardware resources or to reuse a piece of software that is deployed on a different hardware that your system wants to leverage. The purpose of layered software architecture is to separate the system into highly cohesive and loosely coupled modules (see Chapter 2 for software development principles). 

Tier 2 Liability costs of penalties and fines arising from regulatory noncompliance and personal injury and property damage settlements, future liabilities... 

Financial penalties Differential/tiered co-payments Out-of-pocket payments... 

The lower tier of penalties is used for designated violations by an LEA and by contractors. The LEA violations that qualify for the lower tier are ... 

OSHA is proposing two willful violations with penalties of 140,000 and five serious safety violations with 33,000 in penalties against the general contractor. The willful violations are for the company s failure to adequately erect and brace framework to support loads and to adequately brace tiered shoring. The agency defines a willful violation as one committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health. 

---