The Insider
USFilter Gets 10 More Years in N.C.
The city of Hickory, N.C., in conjunction with the city of Conover and Catawba County have awarded USFilter Operating Services Inc. a 10-year contract renewal for continued operations, maintenance, management and marketing services at the Regional Compost Facility (RCF) located in Hickory. The new contract will save the sludge consortium more than $1 million in operating costs.
The $13-million renewal also includes a one-year design-build component that will enable the consortium to increase the RCF's capacity by 35 percent. USFilter will install a new USFilter solid bowl decanter centrifuge system. According to the manufacturer, this new dewatering technology will substantially increase composting capacity and also extend the RCF's capacity life by seven to eight years, enabling the facility to meet future projected biosolids growth from the consortium communities.
"We are pleased to offer and install the upgraded dewatering technology that will result in critical technical benefits at very high capital cost recovery from operational savings," said Tim Muirhead, USFilter's vice president of biosolids market development. "These facility improvements will stabilize biosolids management for the consortium and enable us to continue providing high-quality services for years to come."
USFilter has partnered with the consortium since 1994, when it designed and built odor control systems at the RCF. The company has been awarded renewal contracts since the original four-year agreement, and the project staff is celebrating more than seven years with no lost-time accidents.
AWWA Urges Public Disclosure Protection
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) is calling upon the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Congress and the States to ensure that water system vulnerability assessments are fully protected from public disclosure. AWWA has also urged that the Bioterrorism Preparedness Bill (H.R. 3448) be adequately funded in order to effectively assess and upgrade America's drinking water systems.
Legislation approved on May 22, 2002, by the U.S. House of Representatives, requires water utilities to prepare vulnerability assessments to identify how they might be attacked by terrorists. Those assessments must be provided to EPA and may be requested by Congress. Federal officials may not disclose the contents of vulnerability assessments to unauthorized individuals, but states may request a copy and the assessments are not protected by many state sunshine laws.
"We have long known that water utilities are critical to the nation's security. Congress has recognized that as well in the bioterrorism bill. Now, though, it is essential that additional steps be taken to ensure absolute protection for the utility vulnerability assessments that are required to be provided to EPA," said Tom Curtis, deputy executive director of AWWA. "The next step is for states to ensure that vulnerability assessments are afforded complete protection under state and local sunshine laws," Curtis continued. "Then Congress needs to make sure that the protection provisions of the federal law are strictly enforced. Finally, Congress should make sure that funding is available to develop these assessments on the ambitious schedule it has required."
AWWA's 4,500 water utility members serve 80 percent of the U.S. population -- about 8,000 utilities would be required to prepare assessments under the new law. AWWA estimates that $450 million is needed to conduct vulnerability assessments in those utilities, and an additional $1.6 billion will be needed to immediately restrict access to water treatment plants and other property through better fences, locks, alarms, etc. This does not include the cost of capital-intensive security upgrades that may be identified as a result of the assessment process.
"Although the potential for an attack on a water system may be remote, we know utilities aren't invincible. We need to err on the side of protecting public health and safety," said Curtis. "That means doing these assessments carefully and also protecting them from inappropriate disclosure. These assessments could potentially be dangerous if in the wrong hands. It comes down to an issue of national security."
Calgon Carbon Receives Engineering Award
Calgon Carbon Corp. has received the California Water Environment Association's coveted Engineering Achievement of the Year Award for the Phoenix odor control systems that it supplied to the city of Oakland, Calif.
The three Phoenix systems supplied are used to control odors from the influent pump station at the city's East Bay Municipal District main wastewater treatment plant. East Bay Municipal District was also named as an award winner, along with Black & Veatch, the project's consulting engineer and GSE Construction, the general contractor responsible for installing the systems.
Commenting on the award, Charles Fluharty, director of marketing of Calgon Carbon Corp.'s Engineered Solution Group, said, "We are extremely pleased that the California WEA recognized all of the parties involved in the design and installation of this innovative odor control system. We are even more pleased that the customer continues to be very satisfied with the performance of the systems."
Calgon Carbon offers services and solutions for making air and water safer and cleaner and for purifying food, beverage and industrial process streams.
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA., the corporation employs approximately 1,000 people and serves more than 4,000 customers around the world through four business platforms: Carbon, Service, Engineered Solutions and Consumer Health.
Calgon Carbon offers a variety of technology solutions and services to address all purification, separation, recovery and synthesis needs.
Agilent Unveils New Method to Analyze Herbicides in Water
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced May 20, 2002 the availability of a new chromatography method developed in the United Kingdom (UK) for analyzing acidic herbicides in groundwater and potable water. The liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) method uses atmospheric pressure electrospray ionization, which eliminates the derivatization step found in previous methods and achieves low levels of detection with only small sample volumes (50 µL in validation tests). Derivatization involves use of potentially hazardous chemicals and adds time to each analysis. The new method meets all performance requirements (standard deviation, bias and total error) set by the UK's Drinking Water Inspectorate.
The Prescribed Concentration or Value (PCV) for a single herbicide in drinking water in the UK is set at 0.1 µg/L. The method is capable of detecting to much lower levels: 0.01 to 0.02 µg/L in laboratory tests analyzing 19 acidic herbicides and one amide herbicide.
The system used for the method included an Agilent 1100 Series LC/MS quadrupole coupled to an Agilent 1100 Series LC system with quaternary pump, autosampler, thermostated column compartment and vacuum degasser. A diode array detector (in line ahead of the mass spectrometer) was used as a troubleshooting tool. The atmospheric pressure electrospray ionization source was used in negative ion mode.
Standard analytical methods for these herbicides in water matrices involve either liquid-liquid extraction or solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by derivatization using diazomethane or pentafluorobenzyl bromide and analysis by gas chromatography (GC) or GC/MS.
Flowtronex Hopes to Improve Municipal Pump Station Production
In an effort to enhance the quality, speed and cost-effectiveness of municipal pump station assembly, officials at Flowtronex will begin implementing Operation Trident, which will raise the bar on municipal pump station production. The philosophy behind the three-pronged initiative is to rewrite the rules on industry standards of providing the most economical stations on time, on budget and with excellence. The program already has proven a success with a recent $1.2 million bid awarded to Flowtronex by the Kentucky Public Utilities Department.
"Flowtronex recently won the Logan-Todd Kentucky bid because our team members are willing to rewrite the rules when it comes to manufacturing better, more economical pump stations produced with greater speed," stated Emil Gram, Flowtronex president. "The prefabricated pump station industry is already fiercely competitive and Flowtronex is willing to take the competition to a whole new level with Operation Trident. With this new program we believe we can raise the bar on modular pump station manufacturers for municipalities across the country."
In the Kentucky counties of Logan and Todd, Flowtronex's Operation Trident is playing a vital role in helping the infrastructure move forward at an unprecedented rate. The area being developed will include home and business construction and will be designed to create the potential for future growth as a fully functional municipality within the next few years. Flowtronex will provide 17 modular pump stations with three variations of size and speed.
CEP Now Distributes Safety-Vac
Safety-Vac, LLC recently announced its exclusive partnership agreement with Complete Environmental Products (CEP). CEP will become an exclusive distributor for the Safety-Vac line of vacuum-based spill response and recovery systems. Under the terms of the agreement, CEP Inc. acquires the exclusive rights to sell and lease these systems to all industries and businesses throughout the western and southwestern United States.
"We are very pleased to have established this new business partnership," explained Chad Clay, president of CEP Inc. "Safety-Vac is the only supplier to have patented a fully automated, spark-free, static-free process for liquid recovery of flammable and caustic materials. The product is a perfect complement to our current family of environmental products and services. We believe the system will literally save our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in reduced recovery and disposal costs."
Safety-Vac vacuum-based recovery units using diesel and LP engines have been in use since 1997. More than 110 of the Safety-Vac systems are in use throughout the United States and Canada.
The patented system integrates a combination of regenerative blowers and high-powered LP, battery or diesel engines that enable spills to be recovered from either wet or dry surfaces. Liquid spill recovery can be performed at a rate of one gallon per second, providing a tremendous reduction in operations downtime and at lower cost than using either traditional particle sorbent based or large Vac truck recovery methods. Safety-Vac systems are available in cart-mounted, truck-mounted and trailer-mounted versions.
ACHMM Conference will Feature Water-Accident Demonstration
Louisville, Ky. will be the host for this years conference of the 2002 Academy of Certified Hazardous Materials Managers (ACHMM), hosted by ACHMM's Kentuckiana Chapter, in cooperation with the University of Kansas. The conference, with more than a thousand attendees expected, will be held Sept. 29 through Oct. 2 at the historic Galt House Hotel. Exhibit hours will be from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.
As a result of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, environmental health and safety professionals nationwide are in the limelight and are being called upon to deal with the aftermath. This year's conference program places special emphasis on homeland security, emergency preparedness and response, crisis communication, contingency planning, facility security and recovery.
In addition to environmental health and safety professionals, the conference is geared towards corporate policy decision makers, plant managers, directors of health and safety, Hazmat transportation managers and specialists, emergency responders, consultants, government representatives, environmental scientists and engineers, industrial hygienists and buyers and purchasing agents.
Keynote speaker (Monday, Sept. 30, 8:30 to10 a.m.) will be Dr. Peter M. Sandman, a nationally recognized risk communication speaker and consultant. Dr. Sandman's address is entitled, "Outrage, Panic, Denial: How Should Environmental Professionals Deal with the Non-technical Half of Risk?"
Dr. Ronald Atlas will speak on bioterrorism and biosurveillance on Wednesday, Oct. 2,
9 to 9:45 a.m. Dr. Atlas is president of the American Society of Microbiology and has testified frequently before House and Senate committees. He also appears regularly on CNN 'The Point,' with Greta Van Susteren and has been interviewed frequently by New York and Washington media.
A plenary panel (Tuesday Oct. 1, 8 to 10 a.m.) on disaster preparedness and prevention will focus on terrorism and major disasters, as well as coordination of community resources to ensure facility preparedness and security.
Three distinguished panelists comprise the panel. Rene A. Henry is a crisis communications counselor who served from 1996 to 2001 as director of communications and government relations for the Mid-Atlantic states region of EPA. James Belke is a chemical engineer with the EPA who will outline brief case studies of several chemical accidents investigated by the agency. Steve Williams, CHMM, will discuss auditing preparedness for chemical/biological threats or incidents.
Keynote luncheon speaker (Tuesday, Oct. 1, 12:15 to 2 p.m.) will be Prabhakar Patil, chief engineer for Ford Motor Company's hybrid electric program. The closing plenary session (Wednesday, Oct. 2, 11 to noon) will feature the Hon. Marianne L. Horinko, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
The conference will also feature a number of technical sessions, including environmental management systems, pollution prevention and waste.
One of the highlights of the conference is an emergency response scenario (ERS) that will be conducted on Wednesday, Oct. 2. The Ohio River is a source of drinking water for more than three million people in six states and home to 150 species of fish. In Louisville, the river is the northern boundary of the city and state.
The scenario is dramatic - a river accident results in 55-gallon drums of flammable liquid to be dropped into the water. Some of the drums remain intact, others are damaged and their contents spill into the river. One drum hits a pleasure boat. The boat catches fire and victims have to swim to safety. The current also pushes some of the drums into the Louisville Waterfront Marina, where flammable liquid floating on the water must be contained.
Units from area fire departments, police agencies and emergency medical services will work with the U.S. Coast Guard, Waterfront Authority, EPA Region IV and the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection to handle the emergency.
Participants will first play out the simulation during a tabletop exercise. They'll later run the actual scenario, which will begin on the Great Lawn at Louisville's Waterfront Park.
The conference will also feature a number of special programs, networking opportunities, a job fair and facility tours.
For more information on the ACHMM conference, call 877.404.5823, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CDT, fax requests to 785.864.4871, e-mail kuce@ku.edu or log on to www.achmm.org.
Haested Selected as Licensed Trainer
Haestad Methods has been selected by Sandia National Laboratories to become a licensed trainer for the Risk Assessment Methodology for Water Utilities (RAM-W(SM)) training program.
Under an Interagency Agreement between EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia selected a small group of firms to provide RAM-W training to water utilities, consultants and other interested parties nationwide. In this highly competitive process, Haestad Methods was chosen based on its training capabilities, expertise in water security matters and reputation in the water resources industry.
Haestad Methods' instructors will be trained at Sandia's facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., over several weeks. After completing the program, the team will be licensed to train water utilities and water systems consultants on how to use RAM-W to conduct vulnerability assessments, develop emergency operations plans and upgrade their security systems. Haestad Methods will begin offering RAM-W training in May and June.
Funded by EPA, RAM-W was developed by Sandia National Laboratories and the AWWA Research Foundation. Coordination of the training program began after Congress approved EPA to support counter-terrorism activities at drinking water and wastewater utilities. This EPA support comes in the form of grant funds made available to qualified publicly owned facilities for up to $115,000.
Haestad Methods is certified by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and has instructed more professionals in the field of water resources than any other organization of its kind in the world. "Haestad Methods is highly recognized in the industry for providing extensive training to meet the rapidly increasing needs of the water resources community. "We are honored to add RAM-W training to our distinguished suite of courses," said Nicole Beckom, Director of Continuing Education for Haestad Methods.
For more information on registering for Haestad Methods' RAM-W training program, e-mail: training@haestad.com.
Trojan Technologies Acquires Germany's Ueberall
Trojan Technologies Inc. (TSE:TUV) of Canada announced on May 13, 2002 that it will acquire Ueberall GmbH, a company which specializes in providing ultraviolet technology for the treatment of marine drinking water.
The acquisition will expand and enhance Trojan's operations in Germany.
"This is an enormously important market for us," said Trojan President and CEO Allan Bulckaert. "We are committed to having a strong regional presence and giving our customers local access to solutions and support."
Trojan's existing operations, Trojan Technologies Deutschland GmbH, located in Schöllkrippen, will serve the municipal wastewater and municipal drinking water markets. The new operation, to be called Ueberall: A Trojan Technologies Company, will continue to be located in the town of Uetersen, near Hamburg and will focus on industrial-commercial opportunities, including the marine sector.
Established in 1967, Ueberall's core capcity, core capability, providing UV equipment for purifying drinking water aboard ships, will be leveraged in developing new growth markets, including UV disinfection systems for the treatment of ballast water and marine wastewater. Trojan is buying Ueberall for 1.2 million in cash.
"Our expertise will help strengthen and broaden Trojan's range of systems and services," said Peter Ueberall, founder of the Uetersen-based company. "I'm pleased that we are part of the Trojan family. This is my lifelong work, and there is no other company in the world I'd rather partner with."
Established in 1976, Trojan is a high technology environmental company operating internationally. It designs, manufactures and sells UV systems for municipal wastewater and drinking water facilities, as well as for the industrial, commercial and residential markets. The company also provides environmental contaminant treatment for the removal of chemicals from water.
The company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE:TUV). It has approximately 300 employees worldwide, and its head office is in London, Ontario, Canada.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2002 issue of Water & Wastewater Products, Volume 2, Number 4, page 10.
This article originally appeared in the 07/01/2002 issue of Environmental Protection.