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Message: From everything I've read it appears that this spill passed through their wastewater treatment plant. Some combination of employee error and/or equipment failure (e.g., valve or coupling failure or hose rupture) occurred resulting in the release of roughly 1/3 of volume of a large tanker rail car. The offloading areas typically have drains that flow to the treatment plant. However, the treatment plant is not designed to effectively treat such a large slug of colloidal solids which won't settle without a high dose of chemical coagulants and won't biodegrade since the solids are organic polymers. So a large portion passed right through the treatment plant and the operators couldn't do much to prevent it. I saw some claim that 70% was removed which might be an optimistic guess or could be based on suspended solids concentrations going in and out of the plant. The polymer solids may not be a serious human health threat but we don't know what else might have been in this formulation and how much passed through the plant. They probably should have designed the offloading area drains with the capability to capture and hold such a spill but may not have been required to do so. Something I imagine they will implement in the future. Replies to this post No replies yet |
