Michigan’s top environmental regulatory agency says the Tribar Manufacturing plant overrode 460 waste treatment alarms in a 3-hour period on July 29, telling them that something was wrong with the system.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) says its investigation shows that the Wixsom plating operation’s “14,923-gallon rinse waste holding tank that contained about 10,000 gallons of chromic acid etch material with approximately 5% total chromium was emptied on the evening of Friday, July 29, and entered the sanitary sewer as a slug discharge.”
The revelation came this week as EGLE Water Resources Division (WRD) served Tribar with multiple violation notices and “initiated accelerated enforcement related to issues involving the unauthorized release of a plating solution containing hexavalent chromium the weekend of July 29.”
In an August 9 letter from EGLE to Tribar labeled “Second Violation Notice – Egregious,” the agency asks Tribar’s Dan Dressler, Vice President of Operations, to answer numerous questions, including “Please explain how the operator overrode the waste treatment alarms 460 times between the programmable logic controller time stamp of 4:59 p.m. to 7:46 p.m. on Friday, July 29, 2022” and also to “Please explain what happens when an alarm is overridden in relation to the on-site waste treatment system starting from Tank A through the GAC treatment system.”
EGLE’s Air Quality Division also issued separate notices related to a July 21 inspection, which was prior to and not directly related to the release.
The WRD cited Tribar for violations, including:
- Failing to immediately notify EGLE immediately after discovering the discharge as required under the law and their industrial user discharge permit.
- Sending an unauthorized discharge of pollutants to the wastewater treatment facility that resulted in interference to the treatment process, violating pretreatment rules in the Michigan Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA).
- Failure to maintain a properly updated Pollution Incident Prevention Plan (PIPP) and failing to certify compliance with NREPA rules regarding spillage of oil and polluting materials.
“WRD gave the company until Aug. 20 to respond in writing to the violation notices, including responses to a series of questions designed to determine exactly what happened, and when, that led up to the release,” EGLE says in a statement. “Repeated requests by EGLE investigators for this critical information have not been adequately addressed by Tribar.”
Due to the seriousness of the violations, EGLE says it has initiated accelerated enforcement, which will initiate an administrative consent order process and seek full cost recovery from Tribar.
The AQD violations include:
- Metal treatment tanks not being properly controlled, which may have allowed unauthorized emissions of nickel and total chrome.
- Failure to keep proper records that would document compliance with air permit conditions for various processes.
“The AQD notices include multiple instances of records not being kept as required in the company’s air permits,” the EGLE statement says. “Because records were not kept as required, the company could not show compliance with several pollutants, including volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants, how much of certain chemicals were used in certain time frames, and the information to show control equipment on the coating line was operating properly. The notices also include violations for not properly operating equipment to minimize and control emissions of nickel and total chrome.”
The company has until Aug. 30 to submit explanations of how the violations occurred and what actions are being taken to resolve them.
EGLE says that through its Environmental Investigation Section, it continues to probe the circumstance surrounding the release. The EIS has both civil and criminal authority over violations of environmental and public health laws.
