Aurora Cooperative - Harvard Poppe Site - Executive Summary

| Accident History | Chemicals | Emergency Response | Registration | Source | Executive Summary |

The Aurora Cooperative Elevator Company's accidental release prevention policy involves a unified approach that integrates technologies, procedures, and management practices.  The Aurora Cooperative emergency response plan involves the response services available in the community.  Aurora Cooperative bulk Anhydrous Ammonia facilities have been strategically located to provide a local retail facility for this form of affordable nitrogen fertilizer for agriculture.  This location in Harvard, Ne. is used for Storage of up to 50 nurse tanks which have a maximum capacity of 1,275 gallons (6,375 lbs) each.  These tanks are normally stored during the summer and winter months, and are in use in the spring and fall of the year.  This facility is normally unmanned, although the office located at 108 North Adams is normally manned during business hours.  The offsite consequence analysis includes consideration of two anhydrous ammonia release scenarios, identified as "worst case release" and "alte 
rnative scenario".  The first Scenario is defined by EPA, which states that the "owner or operator shall assume that the...maximum  quantity of the largest vessel...is released as a gas over a 10 minute period", due to an unspecified failure.  The alternative release scenario is defined as "more likely to occur than the worst case scenario".  Atmospheric dispersion modeling has to be performed to determine the distance traveled by the anhydrous ammonia released before it's concentration decreases to a "non-toxic" level.  For this purpose, Aurora Cooperative has chosen to use RMP-Comp Version 1.06 to determine the distance to the toxic endpoint (.14 mg/l or 200 ppm) and to determine the population affected by a potential release by using maps extracted from Landview III software.  The worst case release scenario for the Aurora Cooperative - Poppe Storage site in Harvard involves failure of one of the two 1,500 gallon pressurized storage vessels while it contains 85% (maximum allowed cap 
acity) of it's capacity.  The alternative release scenario is based on the failure of  a one inch liquid valve, assuming the excess flow valve in the storage vessel takes one minutes to close.
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