A company wanted Pollution Prevention Plans and SPCC plans for nine of their many facilities. Most of the facilities had automotive and vehicle repair facilities, barracks, meeting halls and offices. In addition, each facility had storage tanks, flammable storage cabinets, grounds maintenance equipment. I developed plans for each of the 9 facilities that provided a prescriptive plan for meeting compliance with environmental regulations and to reduce waste disposal costs. The plans were used as a basis to create a model plan that could be used throughout their facilities.
Category: Compliance
Chemical Information and Hazards Collection
A company wanted to develop a book that would have the chemical properties and handling requirements for over 5,000 chemicals. Much of this data had to be searched and extracted from pubic sources. The data was in varying formats and quality. I wrote extraction routines to extract the data. Once the data was extracted, it had to be verified and transferred to a database. I created a database to compile the data from all the sources, which allowed the tracking of missing data.
Brownfield Cleanup
A prior landfill was to be used for the development of a large combined cycle power plant. A Budget of 2.5 MM was allocated for the initial investigation and cleanup of the site. The first step was to set a grid to identify the hot spots on the site that required further investigation. This was done by setting up a grid and perform core samples of each grid.
A Brownfield cleanup plan was submitted to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Once it was approved the remediation of the site began. The total cost for the initial remediation was $700,000 a savings of over $1.5 MM.
Fire in Abatement Containment
A fire occurred on the 9th floor in an asbestos abatement area of a twenty-story office building. The decontamination chamber was destroyed and the polyethylene barriers melted. The smoke from the fire rose to the upper floors and the water putting out the fire traveled to the basement. This created a need to survey the extent of the asbestos contamination and a design and specification for cleaning up the building. The entire building was shut down for this investigation.
For the areas above the fire where smoke had risen, the survey of this building included collection of settled soot on top of papers in offices. These results were compared to settled dust in areas not affected by the soot. The soot showed it contained asbestos and therefore all contents affected by the soot had to be cleaned or disposed.
The areas below the fire were more easily identified in areas of water damaged materials. While the materials were still wet, these areas were cleaned up and containment barriers were installed.
Boiler Conversion to Improve Reliability
There were two pulverized coal fired, water tube steam boilers that were converted to fuel oil in the early 1970’s. It was decided to convert these boilers to gas & oil firing to reduce sulfur emissions and improve reliability. Each boiler had the capacity to produce 120,000 lbs. of superheated steam per hour. The burner wall was completely rebuilt and a 1200 foot long high pressure gas line had to be designed and installed to fee the boilers. I was the project manager for this conversion of these boilers to natural gas and oil firing.
Roof Vent Overflow
A manufacturing company had filter press that had too much back pressure and occasionally when the filters were back washed the vents spilled materials on to the roof. The company was not able isolate this to a specific product or process. The spillage onto the roof caused rusting to the sheet metal. All other parts of the process were performing according to design conditions. I designed a trough to collect any spillage from the vents and piped them to the process sewer.
Asbestos Database Structure
In the mid 1980’s to comply with the AHERA regulations, a large southern school district with over 100 individual schools had to manage the inspection and control of the asbestos containing materials. They needed to know the type of material, exact location, its condition and whether it was removed.
A database program was used to manages this information. I was the principle author of the database program. I set up the databases and designed the sorts and printouts. Despite the advancements in computer and software technology, the original program and database still provide the same function. While there have been modifications to the user interface, the school district is still using the original database structure and report function today..
Asbestos Abatement Investigation
A security worker in 2012 brought an action against a renovation contractor in who removed asbestos containing fire proofing materials in a portion of the building that they did not have access to. The project took place in the early 1980’s when the asbestos regulations were in their infancy.
I discovered there was a boiler replacement project with a different contractor that occurred around the same time of the renovation to the office building. The fireproofing in the office building was removed under containment conditions. The boiler room insulation was removed as an open demolition project. The boiler and associated equipment had was insulated. At the time of construction of the boiler room the thermal insulation was an asbestos containing material.
Oleum Tank Cleanout
An Oleum tank required repairs during a summer shutdown. Oleum is a solution of various compositions of sulfur trioxide in sulfuric acid which is not corrosive to carbon steel. The tank had to be emptied and cleaned before repairs could be made. Once the concentration of sulfuric acid drops below 100% sulfuric acid, it becomes very corrosive to the carbon steel tank. The air space above the Oleum is also corrosive on a hot humid day. I had the bolted cover removed and then the oleum emptied. I then had soda ash to the tank and flooded it with water. As a result, the tank was emptied and cleaned without further damage to the existing tank.
Chemical Plant Survey
A large chemical plant had to be surveyed for asbestos. In a typical survey for asbestos in a building or a school, one would simply identify the suspect materials and note the location and condition and take samples of homogeneous areas to develop an asbestos survey and management plan. A chemical manufacturing plant is something quite different. A plant with a long history has gone through continuous development. The asbestos and non-asbestos materials in many cases are very similar in texture and color. We therefore, using the drawings and dates of the installation of the equipment and collected samples of each homogeneous area. Once the samples were analyzed, we went back and only assessed the materials that came back positive for asbestos.