Maintenance Facility Redesign Significantly Reduces Risk of Pollutant Discharges

December 23, 2016

A multi-disciplinary Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) improvement team redesigned the Main Maintenance Facility in Craig, Colorado, to ensure that discharges from the facility are minimized and controlled.

This was achieved through smart design: having only two release points that enter an oil/sand separator prior to discharge from the site. This allows the maintenance facility to a significantly lower risk of discharges from the site.

Pollutant discharge coming out of pipe and going into water

Pollutant discharge

Prior to the redesign of the facility, there were eight different discharge points controlled by numerous best management practices. This older design was only minimally effective against the risk of inadvertent discharges of oil products, due to the amount of snowfall often experienced in Northwestern Colorado.

The facility's new, the improved design incorporates paving of key areas of the facility and raising grading on critical areas to a central concrete channel that discharges into two oil/sand separators. Because the main pollutants for this facility are oil and sediment, this design significantly reduces the risk of pollutants from discharging off-site.

In recognition of this important improvement effort, the team responsible for it received the 2016 CDOT Environmental Award in the Maintenance Category. CDOT's Environmental Awards foster an environmental ethic in all we do at CDOT by recognizing efforts that exemplify our commitment to environmental excellence.

Improvement team members who accomplished this are: