After being prohibited from discharge to the Wixom Wastewater Treatment Plant since August 1, Tribar Technologies has been given conditional approval to resume wastewater discharge.
The city had issued a cease and desist order prohibiting discharge after it says improperly treated wastewater was released by Tribar Plant #5 to the WWTP. Wixom says that initial concerns were that that discharge might contain hexavalent chromium that is part of Plant #5’s production process.
“Fortunately, other processes at Tribar and the WWTP served to contain the hexavalent chromium prior to discharge from the WWTP as testing results, conducted at the time of the incident and after, indicated the WWTP discharge was compliant with regulatory guidelines,” the city says.
Wixom and other regulatory agencies have investigated how the incident occurred, and the city says all parties have worked toward “developing and implementing process improvements at Tribar to address the cause of this serious incident, prevent a reoccurrence and as a requirement to resume discharge to the WWTP.”
The city says required process improvements include the following:
- A requirement that at least two operators with wastewater treatment experience must be working whenever the Tribar is generating and processing wastewater;
- Three additional probes to monitor compliance with the IPP requirements;
- The addition of an automatic WWTP shutoff valve to stop discharge to the WWTP and recirculate wastewater through the onsite Tribar treatment system in the event the probes determine non-compliance with IPP requirements;
- The automatic WWTP discharge shutoff valve and controls are located in a locked steel cage;
- Only Tribar senior management team members will have the code required to resume discharge to the WWTP after the automatic WWTP discharge shutoff valve is activated;
- Comprehensive documentation of existing and new process controls/processes and associated training of Tribar staff in order to maintain ongoing compliance.
After revisions and an onsite review of these process improvements, the City of Wixom has issued a letter to Tribar with conditional approval to discharge to the WWTP subject to these process improvements.
“The process improvements that are required at Tribar Plant #5 address the non-compliance issues which led to the Cease and Desist order issued on August 1, and both the City and Tribar will actively monitor for ongoing compliance,” says Wixom City Manager Steve Brown. “Given these process improvements, we have issued a conditional approval for discharge to the Wixom Wastewater Treatment Plant for Tribar Plant #5.”
Tribar also issued a statement after getting approval.
“We want to thank the city for their close collaboration through this process and are pleased we have been able to resume normal operations,” the company says. “As we have said from the beginning, we take our commitment to the community and the environment seriously. We are thankful our systems worked as intended. However, we are continuing to improve our internal systems and controls so something like this cannot happen in the future.”
