Even other government agencies aren’t exempt from OSHA’s strict regulations — on October 6, the department issued 13 total citations to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a subset of the Department of the Interior. The specific citations were issued to those government employees working at the Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery, but this is not the first time that the Fish and Wildlife Service has been cited.
The hatchery did not follow proper guidelines about working in enclosed spaces, specifically the tanks and pits on-site. The Fish and Wildlife Service failed to investigate those tanks and pits to check their safety against OSHA’s confined space hazards, did not post warning signs near dangerous areas, and provided insufficient training to employees about workplace chemicals and asbestos, among other violations.
OSHA does not assess fines for national agencies, but the investigation is otherwise similar to those conducted on private businesses. Eleven of the safety hazards they identified were serious, one was a repeated violation, and the thirteenth was an other-than-serious citation. EHS Today reports that the aggregate cost of these fines would have been over $70,000.
