Ed Thomas Water Treatment Plant - Executive Summary |
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The City of Burlington has implemented a comprehensive program to safely manage chlorine at the Ed Thomas WTP located at 149 East Ruffin St. in Burlington. There have been no chlorine related incidents at the Ed Thomas WTP in the last 5 years. At this site chlorine is used for the disinfection of municipal drinking water. In 1995, a process Safety Management (PSM) program was initiated with the assistance of Operations Excellence Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm. A PSM Implementation manual was developed for the Ed Thomas WTP. Key items in this manual were: 1) Written procedures for employee involvement, managemant of change, incident investigation, pre-startup reviews and self audits. 2) Specific chlorine safety information as required by the regulations Next, these additional steps were implemented to complete the PSM program: 1) Training on PSM and its key components including management of change, mechanical integrity and incident investigation. 2) Conducting Process Hazar ds Analyses for the chlorine handling process 3) Developed standard operating procedures for handling chlorine 4) Developed an initial Emergency Response Plan 5) Training in suport of the certification of operators. The Utilities Director, Chief Operator, and several plant operators will meet once per year to review and update procedures and to maintain compliance with all aspects of the PSM regulation. In addition to PSM compliance, the Ed Thomas WTP has implemented a number of programs to improve the safe handling of chlorine: 1) The chlorine delivery system has been upgraded to a vacuum process over the past 10 years. This process has proven to greatly reduce the potential for leaks by reducing the amount of equipment that is exposed to pressurized chlorine. 2) New equipment has been budgeted to either A) purchase automatic valve actuators which would automatically close chlorine cylinder valves in the case of a chlorine release, or B) move vacuum regulators so that they would be m ounted directly to the chlorine cylinder valves. This would eliminate all process piping that would be exposed to pressurized chlorine gas. The Ed Thomas WTP Emergency Response Plans have been significantly upgraded. In 1998, the ERP was revised to include offsite response and communication. Chlorine response drills have been routinely conducted with both small scale (plant exercises) and large scale (fire department and HAZMAT team) participation. The last drill was conducted on October 16, 1998. To further understand chlorine risks, Operations Excellence Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm was contracted to conduct "Offsite Consequences" Modeling Analysis, as required by EPA's Risk Management Program. Both a "Worst Case" and an "Alternate Case" chlorine release scenario was studied. The results showed that almost any size leak at the Ed Thomas WTP would result in some impact on neighboring facilities. As a result, the Ed Thomas WTP is in the planning and budgeting phase of conver ting the disinfection process from chlorine gas to one utilizing sodium hypochlorite bleach to eliminate offsite impacts. Our engineers have already designed the new facility. In addition to Process Safety Management, the Ed Thomas WTP participates in an active safety program. The City of Burlington Utility Department has had an active Safety Committee for six years. The committee meets monthly with representatives from each of the 7 divisions. The committee's duties include reviewing new safety procedures, accident investigations, safety surveys and planning the safety training calendar. Routine training is conducted for topics such as: Hazard Communications, Personal Protective Equipment, Lockout / Tagout, Confined Spaces, Fall Protection, etc. In the 4th quarter of 1997, Operations Excellence Consulting Inc., was contracted to review the entire utility safety program. The results showed that the organization has many strengths such as training and written procedures. A number of recommendations were made to further improve compliance and performance. Most of these recommendations have been addressed. As a result of our programs, the Ed Thomas WTP has had a strong safety record with no lost time accidents in the last 5 years. We plan to continue our emphasis on safety and to maintain or improve our safety performance. |