Velda Farms Dairies, Miami, Florida - Executive Summary |
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Velda Farms Dairies 501 N.E. 181 Street Miami, FL 33162 Risk Management Plan Executive Summary Velda Farms Dairies conducts its operations to prevent possible releases or harm to its products, employees and to the surrounding area and residents. This is done by on-going employee training, equipment operation and maintenance, preventative maintenance and by on-going interaction with the Fire Department. This plant produces milk and milk-related products, such as chocolate milk, for general consumption. As part of the process operations and milk storage, a refrigeration system using anhydrous ammonia is used. The capacity of the refrigeration system is 17,000 lbs. of ammonia. A Worst Case Release scenario was developed using the RMP requirements and the EPA Off-Site Consequence Analysis Guidance for ammonia. This is a very conservative estimate, and does not include mitigation equipment installed in the refrigeration system. In this scenario, the offsite impact area is esti mated to be up to 1.5 miles away from the plant. As this is a refrigeration system both with automatic shutoff valves and is capable of having several areas of the system isolated to contain a minimum of 60 % of the total ammonia capacity, this worst case event is unlikely. An alternative scenario was developed to include plant operating procedures and the effect of the automatic shutoff valves. The scenario considered is a broken pipe, with the system operating procedures implemented to isolate at least 60 % of the ammonia in the system, and including the automatic shutoff valves to mitigate the release. The result is an estimated release of up to 3800 lbs. of ammonia. Again using the OGCA Guidance, this scenario resulted in an offsite impact area of 0.06 miles, or 320 ft. This plant maintains a high degree of preventative maintenance and operations training and review to maintain the integrity of the refrigeration system to prevent accidental releases. There have been n o reportable ammonia releases in the last five years. Emergency response training in the plant includes training of maintenance personnel on emergency shutdown procedures, maintaining respiratory training and inspection of emergency equipment , as well as on-going interaction and cross training with the local fire department. |