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Plating operations are a huge headache. They have corrosive plating baths. They have to do some chemical processing on site to neutralize the corrosive chemical

by Animats 8mo ago

Plating operations are a huge headache. They have corrosive plating baths. They have to do some chemical processing on site to neutralize the corrosive chemicals and get them down to a neutral pH. Some years ago, a plating company in San Jose dumped a plating bath into the sewer system. This was so toxic that it killed the bacteria that reduce organic sludge at the sewerage plant. This knocked the whole plant offline, releasing untreated sewerage into the bay. The lower bay was toxic for a week. It's normally swimmable. San Jose was fined by the EPA. The plating company was heavily fined by San Jose. It's a good sewerage plant. The output is drinkable, and if you take the tour, you're offered some to drink. Some of the output is used for irrigation. In a severe drought emergency, water could be fed back into the water system. They've never had to do that, but in a big drought a few years ago, things got close to that point. San Jose, which is more of an industrial city than most people realize, still has plating companies. Here's an inspection report for one of them.[1] This one was releasing too much chromium. [1] https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/region9/water/pretreatment/files/Swift-IR.pdf https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/region9/water/pre...

djha-skin 8mo ago
[flagged]
- fragmede 8mo ago
  https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
- harimau777 8mo ago
  FWIW, I don't see anywhere that the parent post said that there shouldn't be plating plants in San Jose, just that they are dangerous.
  - Animats 8mo ago
    Yes. It's a miserable business. Look at the pictures from the inspection of a plating plant. Everything near the process is corroded and covered with crud. Such plants have to be regulated and inspected, to prevent them from becoming a hazard both to the neighborhood and downstream. Plants which do chemistry on an industrial scale tend to need their own waste processing, which gets the waste products down to a reasonably neutral form. Regulation is needed to prevent dumping it unprocessed. That's what the EPA really does.
    - someguydave 8mo ago
      ok but I'm willing to have occasionally poisoned water in exchange for an industrial society
      - ceejayoz 8mo ago
        You know you can have clean water and industrial society, right?
- ceejayoz 8mo ago
  > He wants this problem to happen to other people… I think he wants them not to dump the chemicals straight down the sewer?
nine_k 8mo ago
Nuclear power plants have secondary and tertiary overflow reservoirs, intended to capture any uncontrolled dangerous outflow if things go wrong. I wonder if chemical plants have something similar, a way to contain an uncontrolled outflow of toxic stuff if the normal flow of neutralization fails. BTW this likely means quite a bit of land used up by such a reservoir which is ideally never needed, but must be present.
- Animats 8mo ago
  Yes. In Silicon Valley, if you go to Bedwell Bayfront Park, which is behind Meta/Facebook HQ, there is, on the bay side, a small sewerage treatment plant. There's a fenced concrete-lined pond, usually empty. That is a sewerage overflow containment pond. It's next to a hiking trail, so it's easily visible to the public. That whole park, by the way, is a recycled garbage dump. So is the bay side park behind Google HQ. Wastewater plants have other ponds and tanks which are part of the process, and they're usually full, with liquid moving in and out, accompanied by stirring, air, and chemical injection. A big empty one is a backup system. Real engineering.[1] [1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-09/documents/lagoon-pond-treatment-2011.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-09/documents/la...
  - mikestorrent 8mo ago
    Does the area smell, or is that all captured somehow? I've been to the plant in my city many years ago and it only smelled in certain buildings.
    - rconti 8mo ago
      Well, the concrete pond is usually empty. But yeah, the site kinda smells like methane. Hard to say if it's from the dump (which of course has vents), or from the sewage treatment plant. The sewage treatment plant is always burning.. something. Maybe methane escaping from the dump? Maybe from the wastewater? I'm not sure. Anyway, it's not bad-- I run around there all the time. It's just when the wind blows a certain way. I live a half mile from it and you absolutely do not ever smell it outside of the park.
fsckboy 8mo ago
a plating company in San Jose dumped a plating bath into the sewer system. This was so toxic that it killed the bacteria that reduce organic sludge at the sewerage plant. This knocked the whole plant offline, releasing untreated sewerage into the bay. The lower bay was toxic for a week toxic because of chemicals and toxic because of the release of untreated sewage (bacteria) are sufficiently different that I thought I'd point out that you kind of mix them here. Also, toxic because of high concentrations (e.g. pH) that will dilute vs toxic cumulative forever chemicals are different orders of magnitude altogether. This incident you describe seems like a one-off and fairly benign compared to long term patterns that lead to superfund sites. Till this company dumped that batch, they weren't dumping batches, i.e. the system was working. I'm not up on the latest, not a civil engineer or public health authority, but it is generally recommended in many seaside places not to swim at the beach after rainstorms. the influx of large volumes of water into the sewage treatment systems means that they overflow and raw sewage is released. These systems are being improved all the time, but it's a known problem and civilization hasn't collapsed. Some natural creatures like sewage outflow. When Boston moved their outflow pipe from the inner harbor to deeper water in Cape Cod bay, the lobster population collapsed. Maybe we should have called it the lobster poopulation.
- Merovius 8mo ago
  > it's a known problem and civilization hasn't collapsed. Waiting for civilizational collapse to justify regulation seems like an unhelpful standard TBH. In fact, I would argue that it's one of the main problems we are having right now: that we know our current trajectory will lead to civilizational collapse, but aren't willing to change course.

by Animats 8mo ago

djha-skin 8mo ago

[flagged]

fragmede 8mo ago
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
harimau777 8mo ago
FWIW, I don't see anywhere that the parent post said that there shouldn't be plating plants in San Jose, just that they are dangerous.
- Animats 8mo ago
  Yes. It's a miserable business. Look at the pictures from the inspection of a plating plant. Everything near the process is corroded and covered with crud. Such plants have to be regulated and inspected, to prevent them from becoming a hazard both to the neighborhood and downstream. Plants which do chemistry on an industrial scale tend to need their own waste processing, which gets the waste products down to a reasonably neutral form. Regulation is needed to prevent dumping it unprocessed. That's what the EPA really does.
  - someguydave 8mo ago
    ok but I'm willing to have occasionally poisoned water in exchange for an industrial society
    - ceejayoz 8mo ago
      You know you can have clean water and industrial society, right?
ceejayoz 8mo ago
> He wants this problem to happen to other people… I think he wants them not to dump the chemicals straight down the sewer?

nine_k 8mo ago

Nuclear power plants have secondary and tertiary overflow reservoirs, intended to capture any uncontrolled dangerous outflow if things go wrong. I wonder if chemical plants have something similar, a way to contain an uncontrolled outflow of toxic stuff if the normal flow of neutralization fails. BTW this likely means quite a bit of land used up by such a reservoir which is ideally never needed, but must be present.

Animats 8mo ago
Yes. In Silicon Valley, if you go to Bedwell Bayfront Park, which is behind Meta/Facebook HQ, there is, on the bay side, a small sewerage treatment plant. There's a fenced concrete-lined pond, usually empty. That is a sewerage overflow containment pond. It's next to a hiking trail, so it's easily visible to the public. That whole park, by the way, is a recycled garbage dump. So is the bay side park behind Google HQ. Wastewater plants have other ponds and tanks which are part of the process, and they're usually full, with liquid moving in and out, accompanied by stirring, air, and chemical injection. A big empty one is a backup system. Real engineering.[1] [1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-09/documents/lagoon-pond-treatment-2011.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-09/documents/la...
- mikestorrent 8mo ago
  Does the area smell, or is that all captured somehow? I've been to the plant in my city many years ago and it only smelled in certain buildings.
  - rconti 8mo ago
    Well, the concrete pond is usually empty. But yeah, the site kinda smells like methane. Hard to say if it's from the dump (which of course has vents), or from the sewage treatment plant. The sewage treatment plant is always burning.. something. Maybe methane escaping from the dump? Maybe from the wastewater? I'm not sure. Anyway, it's not bad-- I run around there all the time. It's just when the wind blows a certain way. I live a half mile from it and you absolutely do not ever smell it outside of the park.

fsckboy 8mo ago

a plating company in San Jose dumped a plating bath into the sewer system. This was so toxic that it killed the bacteria that reduce organic sludge at the sewerage plant. This knocked the whole plant offline, releasing untreated sewerage into the bay. The lower bay was toxic for a week toxic because of chemicals and toxic because of the release of untreated sewage (bacteria) are sufficiently different that I thought I'd point out that you kind of mix them here. Also, toxic because of high concentrations (e.g. pH) that will dilute vs toxic cumulative forever chemicals are different orders of magnitude altogether. This incident you describe seems like a one-off and fairly benign compared to long term patterns that lead to superfund sites. Till this company dumped that batch, they weren't dumping batches, i.e. the system was working. I'm not up on the latest, not a civil engineer or public health authority, but it is generally recommended in many seaside places not to swim at the beach after rainstorms. the influx of large volumes of water into the sewage treatment systems means that they overflow and raw sewage is released. These systems are being improved all the time, but it's a known problem and civilization hasn't collapsed. Some natural creatures like sewage outflow. When Boston moved their outflow pipe from the inner harbor to deeper water in Cape Cod bay, the lobster population collapsed. Maybe we should have called it the lobster poopulation.

Merovius 8mo ago
> it's a known problem and civilization hasn't collapsed. Waiting for civilizational collapse to justify regulation seems like an unhelpful standard TBH. In fact, I would argue that it's one of the main problems we are having right now: that we know our current trajectory will lead to civilizational collapse, but aren't willing to change course.