Where the methodology was proven.
In late 2025, Rick Barron of 25 Fathoms took on a compliance engagement at a 14-site North Carolina waste operator. Three landfills, four transfer stations, two MRFs, a CDLF, and four LCID sites. The NCDEQ book, cover to cover. One inspector who didn't ask twice.
The first week was a discovery exercise that turned into an excavation. Permits in SharePoint folders nobody had opened since 2022. Renewal dates in a single Outlook calendar owned by a compliance lead two months from retirement. Inspection findings in an email thread three replies deep. A master Excel tracker last edited eleven months earlier, with "(Rick's copy)" in the filename.
Over the engagement, Rick rebuilt the operator's filing process from the ground up. Every permit logged, dated, and verified against the issuing agency. Filing SOPs codified per facility type. Renewal alerts moved off one person's calendar and onto a system that survives turnover. The methodology was proven against real DEQ requirements, audit timelines that don't slide, and a decade of accumulated filing chaos. That methodology is what PermitStack productizes.
What we kept, what we threw out.
Halfway through, it was clear that the spreadsheet plus alerts approach had a ceiling. Excel breaks past 200 permits. Outlook calendars don't have audit trails. SharePoint search gave up around 2020. We needed software. The market gave us two options:
- A $200K EHS platform built for safety incidents and bolted onto compliance, configured by a Big Four consultant over twelve months.
- A generic compliance SaaS designed for tech-startup SOC 2 audits, which had never heard of MSWLF.
Neither fit. So PermitStack exists as a third option. Specialist enough to know that MSWLF, CDLF, and LCID are different problems. Modern enough to live next to the tools you actually use.
Why now.
Two things changed in the last 18 months. State DEQs got faster at electronic filing and slower at giving warnings on missed deadlines. And the people who held the institutional filing knowledge at mid-size operators are aging out, retiring, or getting hired away. The window where you could run a 14-site operation on one person's memory closed quietly.
PermitStack is the product that should have existed for operators running 10 to 25 sites. The NC engagement is where the methodology was proven. The Cincinnati metro cohort is the first paid-pilot rollout.
14-site NC engagement
Field-tested in production at a real 14-site North Carolina waste operator. Methodology verified against NCDEQ requirements and live inspection cycles.
Not a retrofit
Designed from the ground up for waste compliance. Data model, defaults, vocabulary, and reg sets all start at the facility, not at a generic incident.
Your docs stay yours
SharePoint sync and Teams notifications. Azure AD SSO is on the roadmap. We don't ask you to migrate your document library out from under your DLP.