SITE WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT – PLANNING & PROJECTS

Planning, team representation & continuity, innovation, and good regulatory relationships are keys to successful major modifications and transition of wastewater treatment systems in an integrated chemical plant over a ten-year period.The site faced a “full pipe” of changing process, regulatory and cost restrictions. These complex issues had to be resolved at a site that includes operations of five chemical company owners. The site handles more than three MGD of dry weather wastewater from very different sources including domestic sewage, bio-treatable industrial wastewater, and bio-recalcitrant RCRA hazardous and non-hazardous wastewater that is deepwell injected.Although changes are driven by process and regulatory needs, careful planning, innovation, and integration have allowed the >40M spent on wastewater revisions in the last decade to generate sufficient cost reduction so that the projects paid for themselves (>0 net present value). Sixteen separate projects, funded by six corporations, executed by dozens of contractors, were completed in the last decade with no loss of production and with no regulatory exceptions.The projects in the integrated plan included wastewater chemical and physical pretreatment facilities, chemical unit process modifications to insure treatability, rainwater diversion projects, hazardous and non-hazardous deepwell construction, and impoundment modification and closure.