United Equity, Inc. - Delphos Fertilizer Facility - Executive Summary |
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United Equity, Inc. is a farmer owned cooperative, with facilities in Delphos, Spencerville and Kossuth, Ohio. Our company has 950,000 bushels of grain storage in Delphos and Spencerville, where we merchandise grain and sell feed and seed to local farmer stockholders. At our Delphos and Kossuth facilities, we have fertilizer plants where we merchandise seed, fertilizer and crop production chemicals and a custom application business. In this process, we blend dry,raw fertilizer materials to formulate end user product. We market anhydrous ammonia and liquid nitrogen. We have, on staff, experienced and accredited personnel to oversee the proper utilization of regulation and use of the various technology we offer the marketplace. In our fertilizer plants, we have available an emergency action plan that adresses various procedures to minimize hazards to human health and to the environment from fires, explosions, sudden and non-sudden releases of chemicals, spilled chemicals, tornadoe s, bomb threats, or other accidents occuring on the premises of United Equity, Inc. We have employee training sessions that highlight the various areas of the emergency action plan and encourage employees to become familiar with the entire publication and it's procedures. In regards to anhydrous ammonia, we have a training video that instructs the proper use of equipment and the proper responses in case of an emergency. Our staff, before the fall season and again before the spring fertilizer season inspects equipment to monitor hoses, excess flow valves and general condition of equipment to prevent problems in heavy use seasons. In the past five years, we have not had an accidental release. In the worst case scenario, I feel we would need a rupture of an approved thick wall vessel , which is highly unlikely, to cause a release of this magnitude. If this would happen, our emergency action plan outlines the proper procedures our staff will follow to notify the local fire depa rtment and the local LEPC in order to initiate offsite impact and start homesite evacuation if warranted. We have in the past invited our fire department and LEPC to training sessions with our employees and have sent our published emergency action plan books to these agencies to familiarize their personnel with operations and inventories. In regard to the alternative release scenario to excess flow valves and our monitoring of hose conditions greatly reduces the liklihood of an accidental release of the magnitude that warrant evacuation of neighboring homes. |