Agrimark Faarmers Coop Loudonvville - Executive Summary |
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Agrimark is a farmer owned co-op providing services and products to our customers for use in production agriculture. One of these products is anhydrous ammonia which provides a low cost,easy to handle source of nitrogen for corn and wheat production. Our facility has a 30000,gallon storage tank,which is considered full at 85%, from which we transfer ammonia to smaller tanks for sale to our customers. Agrimark has not had any injuries or accidental release of product on record for the past 5 years. With our on going safety and maintenance programs and continued safe handling practices our plan is to keep this number at 0. Local fire deptments and other emergency response people receive periotic updates on the facility and proper response measures for an ammonia release. Using epa guidelines, a major release of product would be the result of a rupture in the main storage tank resulting in a complete dispersal of product in ten minutes or less. This could affect an area of a 2.0 mile radius around the release site. Wind direction and speed would have a large affect on the down range evacuation scenario. Upon notification the Branch Mgr. is responsible to contact the proper emergency response people per our emergency action plan. Plant personel have also been instructed to seek safe haven. A more likely scenairio would be that a transfer hose may rupture during a transfer of product. In most cases built in excess flow valves would shut the sudden discharge of product off minimizing any release of ammonia vapor. If these shutoffs failed personel with proper safety equipment could be called upon to manually shut off the ammonia at the main supply tank . This scenairio would result in an area of only .3 mile radius being affected. With our current programs in place and current safety record we anticipate no major changes at this time. |