posted on June 10, 2011 by North Shore Environmental Construction

NSEC cleans up oil spill from burning transformer

 

SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN — The wind came through. It was if somebody pushed me in the back.

Jim Phelps describes the moment the 100 mile an hour winds swept through King Court subdivision in Burlington.

He was caught outside with nowhere to go.

“Stuff was flying. I grabbed a hold of the post of the gazebo, squatted down and put my head down,” he said.

He says he could hear popping and snapping in his neighbor’s yards.

“Something blew up on one of the poles, I saw a big glow,” said Phelps’ neighbor Greg Skrundez.

“The transformer exploded, so we had a fire in our backyard so the car was the least of our problems,” Skrundez said.

His house was directly in the path of the winds. In his front yard, a tree uprooted, crushing his car. In the back, three toppled 35-foot pine trees and a burned out patch of grass from that fire ball.

The winds were so strong last night, just blocks away from Skrundez’s home, part of the roof of the gym at Karcher Middle School blew off.

Crews worked all morning, trying to secure a temporary roof. Today was the eighth grade dance, in the gym.

That gym is facing around $150,000 worth of repairs. Good news though, there were no reports of injuries as a result of the storm.

Filed Under: News
posted on June 7, 2011 by North Shore Environmental Construction

Fred Ringle attends MEA conference as guest speaker

May 2011- The Midwest Energy Association held its quarterly Environmental Management Summit May 11th through the 15th. The conference provided the opportunity to network with other environmental professionals and to become educated on new technologies and case studies in remediation services.
Operations Manager of NSEC Inc, Fred Ringle, was among one of the eighteen presenters asked to prepare a learning session for the three day event in Indianapolis. The power point presentation and booth provided by NSEC applied to the theme “Innovative Solutions to Complex Environmental Solutions”, focusing on remediation waste management alternatives.

Filed Under: News
posted on June 6, 2011 by North Shore Environmental Construction

NSEC finishes emergency mercury spill at Dubuque Water Pollution Control Plant

After a grueling 6-month clean-up, Iowa DNR and the US EPA approved closure for the emergency mercury spill response action at Dubuque Water Pollution Control Plant as closed for no further action today. The incident originally occurred September 23, 2010 when workers dissembling two old center pivot bearings in two trickling filter tanks spilled the mercury while removing the bearings over a large area of fractured 4”-6” granite in the former trickling filter tanks and outside the tanks to a lower staging area.
Its estimated NSEC recovered more than 1 gallon of elemental mercury during the clean up, much more than the September estimate of roughly two tablespoons. The elemental mercury recovered was a combination of historical and spilled mercury. The spill is believed to have been the largest on-site mercury chemical decontamination project completed in the United States.

Filed Under: News
posted on December 20, 2010 by North Shore Environmental Construction

NSEC on scene of a very large mercury spill in Dubuque, IA.

Article as posted on:  http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=305015

 

2-TABLESPOON MERCURY SPILL COULD BE COSTLY — MAYBE EVEN $1.5 MILLION

Looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, the city hunts for the toxin that dripped across two(2) 200-foot diameter tank filled with 9 feet of rock.

BY ANDY PIPER TH STAFF WRITER

nsec_photo_spill_2

The total cost and who will bear the burden for a mercury spill cleanup at Dubuque’s Water Pollution Control Plant has yet to be determined, but it could reach $1.5 million.

The cleaning process continues at the plant. The spill occurred Sept. 23 when workers deconstructing a long-dormant filtering system released the mercury while removing machinery. The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued three citations and fined the city $1,925.

“The feeling between the city and the contractor is to move forward and keep the project on schedule,” plant manager Jonathan Brown said. “Then we’ll go back to the contract documents and decide who is responsible for what.”

Project engineer Steve Sampson-Brown said all city contracts contain a dispute-resolution provision, and the city will seek reimbursement for the cleanup. Part of the cost is part of the original bid because the city planned to remove 30,000 tons of rock from the filtering tanks and transport it to the landfill for use in road construction.

Brown said the EPA has measurements for what it considers clean stone, and 90 percent of the stone from the plant is clean and has gone to the landfill. The remaining 10 percent will be pulled apart and tested in smaller groups.

“They test the air for the presence of mercury vapor and it will be tested in smaller and smaller amounts,” Brown said.

About 2 tablespoons of mercury dripped across a 200-foot diameter tank filled with 9 feet of rock.

Brown compared the spill to slowly shaking a teaspoon of salt over a bushel basket of pebbles.

“It’s not quite the needle in the haystack analogy, but it is very close,” he said. “It is a very involved process. Initially, regulators considered the whole tank contaminated, and it took a considerable amount of negotiation to reduce the amount of contaminated stone.”

Brown said the mercury was used as a sealant in trickling filters manufactured in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Through the years, those things have been redesigned, but there is still mercury in old trickling filters across the country,” Brown said.

Brown said the filter tanks are being converted into water-storage units as part of the plant’s conversion to anaerobic digestion. The tanks hold about 3 million gallons each and that capacity holds excess water for treatment during heavy rains when the stormwater system infiltrates the sanitary sewer system. The city has been cited for releasing untreated wastewater during those rain events.

“We will be able to eliminate about 90 to 95 percent of our recent effluent violations by using these tanks,” Brown said. “At the time, it seemed like a good idea.”

* The city is contesting one of the three citations. It reads: “Prior to permitting employees to start demolition operations, when the presence of any hazardous substances was apparent or suspected, testing and purging was not performed and the hazard eliminated before demolition was started. This violation carries a proposed penalty of $1,375.

“We feel in the contract between the city and the contractor there is a written plan in place for each part or the process,” Brown said. “We did have a plan in place and it was a matter of the contractor’s workers moving the trickling filters out of sequence.”

* The second citation reads: “The written emergency plan was not kept at the workplace and made available for employee review.”

There is no proposed penalty for this violation.

“We didn’t have an emergency plan for mercury,” Brown said. “We haven’t used that equipment for 30 years and, quite frankly, I didn’t think of it. I don’t know how I can be any more brutal to myself than that.”

* The third citation reads: “The employer’s hazard communication program did not include methods the employer will use to inform the other employer(s) of any precautionary measures that need to be taken to protect employees during the workplace’s normal operating conditions and in foreseeable emergencies.” This violation carries a proposed penalty of $550.

“In the contract documents there are several references to asbestos, chlorine and mercury, so from a practical standpoint we were doing it, but it was not written down in the overarching documents,” Brown said. “The underground storage removal is all spelled out in the contract.”

– end of article –

 

Notes from Keith Hitzke, President of NSEC:

Mercury Spill Clean-up at the Pollution Control Plant, Dubuque Iowa 1/4/2011 fromKeith Hitzke on Vimeo.

The Elemental Mercury spill was much larger than initially reported of two tablespoons.  On September 23, 2010, Clean Harbors provided emergency response mercury spill clean-up services at the Pollution Control wastewater plant in Dubuque Iowa.  After several days of spill clean-up by Clean Harbors,  NSEC was contracted by Miron Construction to take control of the spill and develop a work plan for review and approval by the Iowa DNR and EPA Region 7 to complete the mercury spill response clean-up.  The spill’s involve two(2), 200’ diameter concrete trickling filter tanks with estimated 15,000 tons of 2”-6” fractured stone per tank.  The amount of elemental mercury spilled is undetermined but much greater than initially reported (2 tablespoons) to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.  The spill occurred during the removal of two large mercury filled bearings from the center columns of the trickling filters by a local contractor.  The elemental mercury was also spilled outside the tanks.

NSEC is currently working to recover the elemental mercury with a chemical process designed and constructed by NSEC. The project is expected to be completed in March of 2011. It is currently undetermined as to the actual amount of elemental was spill during the bearing dismantlement.  Keith Hitzke, principal response manager for NSEC is providing the lead on-site management for the duration of the project.

Filed Under: News
posted on September 9, 2010 by North Shore Environmental Construction

Capital Drive pipeline spill

Check out this exciting video of North Shore Environmental Construction working on the Capital Drive Pipeline Spill this summer:

 

Capital Drive pipeline spill 2010 By North Shore Environmental Construction, An Environmenal Construction Company from Keith Hitzke on Vimeo.

Filed Under: News
posted on May 24, 2010 by North Shore Environmental Construction

North Shore now offers Hurricane Industrial Vacuum 828

North Shore now offers a new industrial vacuum,  trailer mounted machine capable of removing hazardous waste sediment, sludge, heavy solids, soil, slurries and liquids for a wide variety of industrial cleaning, remediation or emergency response spill clean-up projects.

North Shores’s new Hurricane 828 stainless steel super vacuum is capable of removing heavy solids in wet or dry mode has a 5600 cfm blower capable of 28” Hg.  The 325 HP John Deere engine produces the power needed to get the job done.

This unit is one of a kind with a stainless steel cyclone contaminant collection chamber for handling many types of hazardous wastes including corrosive waste or PCB contaminated material.  The Hurricane unit is equipped with two large air exchange HEPA filtration chambers for maximum dust emission controls.

The versatility of off loading the material into a drum, cubic yard box, roll-off, tote, or dump-truck makes waste handling very versatile depending on the contaminant.

North Shore provides specialty services when it comes to working with hazardous material handling, removal and disposal, this new Hurricane industrial vacuum provides North Shore another tool in the box to remove solids, sludges and contaminated soil when conventional excavating equipment can’t be used to get the job done right.

Filed Under: News
posted on April 9, 2010 by North Shore Environmental Construction

North Shore Environmental Featured in WDNR EPA Semi-Annual Report

North Shore Environmental was featured in the WDNR and EPA semi-annual report section talking about PCB clean-up facts.
For the full article, go to: http://dnr.wi.gov/org/aw/rr/archives/pubs/rr870.pdf

wdnr_pg_14_NSEC

Filed Under: News
posted on May 12, 2009 by North Shore Environmental Construction

Investigation begins on cause of chemical plant fire

Investigation begins on cause of chemical plant fire

By Linda Spice, Journal Sentinel, Inc

Posted: May 13, 2009

Agents from the State Fire Marshal’s office will begin their investigation Wednesday morning into the cause of a plant fire that burned at Columbus Chemical Industries.

The fire, which began about 8 p.m. Monday and burned into Tuesday, caused the evacuation of hundreds of homes, road closures, and a call out of up to 175 emergency personnel at the peak of operations.

Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls said investigators are expected to make their first entry into the building at N4335 Temkin Road.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency along with public health officials have determined that the air and water are safe outside the perimeter of the plant. The EPA, however, will continue to test wells in the area for the next few weeks to assure that water remains safe, according to sheriff’s officials.

Columbus Chemical has hired a contractor, Northshore Environmental, of Germantown, to provide environmental cleanup. BT Squared, with headquarters in Madison, will assist in operations and provide quad-gas monitoring inside and outside the hot zone. They will also be testing water wells as another precaution.

Sheriff’s officials noted in a release that “the citizens from this area deserve a huge thanks for their cooperation and patience.”

Filed Under: News
posted on May 11, 2009 by North Shore Environmental Construction

Spill Cleanup Highlight – Columbus Chemical Industries Fire

On Monday evening, May 11, 2009, a fire started in Building 4 at the Columbus Chemical Industries facility on Temkin Road in Columbus, located in central Wisconsin. Shortly after fire suppression efforts began, there was an explosion. Due to this explosion and the presence of multiple chemicals in the building, fire officials decided to halt further suppression, move back from the facility and establish an exclusionary zone around the plant.

The Dodge County sheriff set up a unified command that included representatives from numerous fire departments, Wisconsin Emergency Management, the DNR, U.S. EPA, the 54th Civil Support Team of the Army National Guard and state and local health agencies. Unified command called for the evacuation of nearby residences and businesses, a shelter-in-place advisory for the downwind community, closure of State Highways 151 and 73, and perimeter air monitoring.

Heavy rain helped bring the fire under control during the overnight hours on May 14. Columbus Chemical Industries and their insurers retained a team of consultants and chemists to concurrently conduct the fire investigation and clean-up the fire debris. Runoff from the fire was found to be acidic so berms were constructed to create a containment pond. Water that accumulated in the containment pond underwent pre-treatment on-site and then was shipped via vacuum truck for disposal. Fire investigators determined that the most likely cause was electrical.

Continuing chemical reactions in the fire debris required in-situ neutralization prior to containerization and removal. The DNR, with support from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (WDHS) and EPA, supervised the cleanup of the site. Containerization of all fire debris was completed on May 31. Demolition of the impacted buildings commenced shortly thereafter. The Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, located in Arkansas, conducted on-site and perimeter air monitoring during the cleanup and building demolition. A bottled water advisory that started on May 13 remained in place until June 11, 2009. Evaluation and remediation of soil and groundwater contaminated during the fire is ongoing.

The Columbus Chemical Industries fire presented numerous challenges and threats to public health and the environment. These threats were quickly identified and successfully mitigated. Two key factors in the effective response and successful cleanup included: 1) the early establishment of a unified command; nearly 20 agencies – state, federal and local – worked closely and cooperatively; and 2) the full support and cooperation of the responsible party – Columbus Chemical Industries.

 

Filed Under: News
posted on November 7, 1998 by North Shore Environmental Construction

Investigators zero in on cause of blast at mercury plant Lithium batteries

Investigators zero in on cause of blast at mercury plant
Lithium batteries apparently were put in furnace

HELENA D. GEIER Special to the Journal Sentinel  
Published: November 8, 1998
Lithium batteries mistakenly put inside an oven with other materials are the likely cause of an explosion Oct. 14 at the Mercury Waste Solutions plant, according to a state Department of Natural Resources official. Meanwhile, the company is continuing to clean up after the blast and hopes to reopen this week.

After a seal on a recovery equipment door blasted open, the plant was evacuated and the DNR recommended that the plant be shut down until the results of an investigation are known, said Tim Kennedy, waste management specialist with the DNR.

“The company said it was their belief that lithium was mistakenly placed in a load, and that’s what exploded,” Kennedy said. “(The batteries) shouldn’t have been in there. It does look like that’s what caused the explosion.”

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is conducting an investigation, Kennedy said.

The plant, which has been open since 1996, separates waste from household, medical and industrial products that contain mercury.

Ovens are used to “cook” the waste, and the captured mercury is recycled, according to a statement released by the firm.

The firm hired a private contractor to do an initial decontamination to bring down the mercury levels at the plant and continued cleanup of the site after workers were allowed back in, Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he and other DNR officials have had several meetings with company representatives and have received data from the firm regarding the incident.

The firm has been cooperative, he said.

Kennedy said he had made requests for more specific data.

“The company is looking at the mistakes that were made and what they need to do to correct that in the future,” he said. “They haven’t been retorting since the incident. We recommended that they not operate. We need to get a good idea of what the cause was and ensure that they have taken steps for prevention.”

Besides asking for immediate changes in procedures at the plant, the DNR is requesting the firm do an audit of operations to make sure they’re operating safely.

“That’s above and beyond the code but we feel it’s necessary to ensure they are operating safely,” Kennedy said.

The DNR has also asked that the firm do continuous monitoring of the air outside the plant and will be following up on its ongoing testing, Kennedy said.

The Racine County Health Department has provided data from monitoring meters operating outside the plant the day of the explosion.

David Maack, of the department’s Emergency Management division, said he notified the DNR of the incident because he wanted to be assured that there would not be any health concerns as a result of mercury being released into the air.

The readings from those meters “weren’t any readings that caused concern for an off-site release,” Maack said, noting that if there were any concern that particles were drifting away from the plant, the surrounding area would have been evacuated.

Maack said he also asked the DNR to take soil samples because had there been an airborne release of mercury vapor it would settle on the ground. The results of those tests are not yet available.

While the DNR continues to investigate, company officials hope to reopen the plant this week. It is not yet known whether the DNR will take any enforcement action, Kennedy said.

Included in the investigation is the review of two fires that occurred at the plant on Aug. 30 and July 30.

“The fact that there have been three fires in the past three months makes you concerned. You wonder if there’s a pattern,” Kennedy said. “We’re looking at the issues that led to those as well as this incident. We requested them to look at their operation and the changes to be made.”

He said company and fire department reports indicate that the fires may have been caused by the failure of a valve in a piece of equipment that allows air into an oven.

“The valve failed, and that failure caused the plant’s collection system to get clogged up,” Kennedy said. “And similar to a wood stove, if there were a plug in the chimney, the smoke has to go back out the front,” meaning back into the plant, Kennedy said.

The firm has made some changes to address that problem, including putting in place plans to reroute the venting of one furnace to another should a similar incident occur, Kennedy said.

The Union Grove plant handles the majority of the company’s mercury recycling processing. The local facility, one of five operated by the Mankato, Minn., based company, occupies 25,000 square feet and employs 18 people from the community.

In addition to batteries, some of the everyday products the company processes for recycling are fluorescent and high-intensity lamps, thermometers and thermostats.

Mercury Waste Solutions provides services to public utilities, electrical contractors, hazardous waste management companies and chemical manufacturers throughout the country.

 
Copyright 1998 Journal Sentinel Inc

Filed Under: News
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