Post date: Sep 01, 2014 5:0:0 AM
Chronic Toxicity Test Failure Shuts Down Pall Cleanup
Pall had to shut down its 1,4-dioxane cleanup for nearly two weeks because of a failure in the September Chronic Toxicity test.
The test checks if the discharge of treated purgewater is harmful to aquatic organisms.
This is first test that failed of the few conducted since monthly chronic Toxicity testing was required in the April 2002 permit.
Results from effluent samples taken September 9th, 12th, and 15th, 2002, showed test results of 1.29 TUc, which is above the permitted level of 1.0 TUc.
Pall received the test results on October 8 and contacted the DEQ. Pall shut down all of the purge and treat systems around noon on October 10th.
The DEQ gave Pall a waiver to resume the discharge early on October 23rd with extra conditions.
The suspected cause of the failure is elevated salt levels resulting from sodium bisulfite which is added post-treatment to neutralize hydrogen peroxide used in the treatment system.
The DEQ chose not to immediately notify the local governments and public about this situation, instead included emails relating to the incident in the normal monthly repository submittal, which arrived the week of October 21th.
SRSW asserts that the public should immediately be notified of such upsets as part of our Right to Know.
Had we been informed about the shutdown earlier, we could have gathered "baseline" flow data for the tributary without any discharges taking place. Such an analysis should have been done before the original discharge began in 1997, and because the DEQ didn't think of it, or tell the public in time, we missed another opportunity to find out how much of the discharge is leaking back into the ground from the tributary.