Robert B. Balas

Principal

rbalas@irisenv.com

(510) 834-4747 ext. 17

As a Principal at Iris Environmental, Mr. Balas specializes in analyzing chemical fate and transport in the environment to determine potential impacts on human health. This includes expertise in environmental regulatory compliance audits, indoor and outdoor air emissions estimation and air dispersion modeling, subsurface transport, and exposure assessment. His work has included compliance report generation, air dispersion modeling, exposure assessment, developing software for air emissions estimation, and multipathway risk assessment.

REPRESENTATIVE PROJECT EXPERIENCE:

Provided technical and project management leadership for a state-of-the-art hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facility. He conducted a complete environmental regulatory compliance review, identifying areas of concern. He has provided strategic guidance on achieving complete regulatory compliance including guidance on meeting RCRA, Title V, Title III, Sara 313, AB 2588, and Proposition 65 requirements. Completed all aspects of work needed to meet permit conditions including air modeling work for the annual risk assessment, an ambient air monitoring program, calculation of criteria and toxic pollutant emissions due to volatilization, erosion, and vehicle traffic, all required reports and all record keeping requirements. The facility has not has a notice of violation since the compliance audit.

Provided air modeling and subsurface fate and transport expertise for the redevelopment of the former Pacific Refinery in Hercules, California that is undergoing dismantling and redevelopment into a 220-acre residential community in the northern portion of the San Francisco Bay. Appeared as expert witness before Bay Area Air Quality Management District Hearing Board to present innovative approach to achieve variance from Regulation 8, Rule 40. The Board ultimately granted the variance.

Conducted numerous indoor and outdoor air modeling analysis for Proposition 65 litigations associated with emissions from a wide variety of industrial facilities and consumer products including mining facilities, glass bottling facilities, battery manufacturing plants, chromium plating facilities, electrical circuit board manufacturing plants, waste-to-energy plants, metal parts manufacturing plants, dry cleaning facilities, glues, and printer cartridges.

Planned program flow for regulatory environmental management systems (EMS). Decisions on calculation methods, database access considerations, and logic flow were made. Based on the program flow, the complexity of the program, and the speed of execution, a programming platform was selected. The EMS integrated air emissions estimation, air dispersion modeling, exposure assessment, multipathway risk assessment, and compliance report generation. Dialog boxes were designed and implemented to facilitate user interface with the software.

EDUCATION:

M.Eng.S., Environmental Engineering, University of California at Berkeley. 1993.

M.S., Energy Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley. 1992.

A.B., Physics, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. 1982.
 

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