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Environment
Environmental Compliance
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The Environmental Compliance & Health teams establish Delta’s strategy, policies and systems to support compliance and implementation of best management practices to minimize environmental impacts and protect the health of our employees, customers and the communities we serve.
The programs serve as the environmental foundation of our sustainability efforts.
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The Environmental Compliance team provides subject matter expertise and program oversight for air quality, water quality, waste management and disposal, remediation of environmental contamination, emergency response and represents Delta in interactions with federal, state and local environmental agencies.
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The Environmental Health team provides expertise and program oversight for industrial hygiene/workplace exposure, chemical management, aircraft drinking water compliance and represents Delta in interactions with government agencies responsible for environmental, workplace health and safety and certain product regulation including, for example, OSHA, EPA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
As our operations continued to increase throughout 2022, approaching and, in some cases, surpassing 2019 levels, our environmental metrics remained relatively consistent. One exception was an increase in the number of environmental releases in 2022. When environmental releases occur, the Environmental team works across our operating divisions to ensure prompt notification, thorough response to minimize and mitigate any environmental impact and investigation with corrective actions to prevent recurrences.

Compliance Management

Delta continues to use three system tools to manage our environmental programs, reduce risk and minimize the impacts of our operations.
Delta’s Environmental Management System (EMS) outlines the overarching components of our environmental systems and processes and is modeled after the ISO 14001 framework. The EMS manages and tracks roles, responsibilities and procedures for compliance with regulations and implementation of best management practices on an airport-specific basis.
Delta’s Environmental Programs Manual (EPM) establishes Delta’s policies, expectations and management protocols for internal environmental compliance with federal, state and local regulations and best management practices that go beyond compliance. The EPM sets forth environmental training requirements for employees and provides the forms, tools and resources to demonstrate compliance and reduce risk.
Delta’s Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) is a web-based tool that tracks internal environmental tasks outlined in the EPM. EMIS provides proactive notifications to station task owners to stay ahead of compliance tasks and generates reports to validate task completion.

Progress

We measure environmental performance through a series of metrics, which include releases, violations, hazardous waste generation and air emissions. We evaluate results year-over-year to track progress.
Beginning in 2021, Delta tracks regulated air emissions from stationary sources beyond the emissions inventories required by the Clean Air Act and includes emissions from stationary sources at all domestic operations and chemical purchases system wide. As a result, 2021 and 2022 emissions are more comprehensive and not comparable to data reported in previous years. In 2022, decommissioning of equipment reduced our SO2 emissions.
1 Total releases includes any environmental spill or release of material with a volume five gallons or greater and any spill or release of material with a volume less than five gallons with direct impact to the environment (i.e. makes contact with soil, water, drain, etc.). 2 Notices of Violation include alleged environmental noncompliance from a governmental entity involving air, water (including drinking water), waste and chemical management requirements. They do not include alleged noise violations.
3 SO2 emissions reductions attributable to decommissioning of equipment.