Parish to DEQ: More public hearings needed on AAT permit

The Terrebonne Parish Council wants public hearings conducted on oily-waste recycler American Advanced Technologies’ air and solid waste permit applications with the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Councilman Johnny Pizzolatto sponsored a resolution – which passed – at last Wednesday’s council meeting asking the department to hold the hearings.

Air and solid waste discharges are produced as part of the recycling process performed at AAT, located on the Houma Navigation Canal in East Houma.

The company applied for the solid waste discharge permit with the Department of Environmental Quality in June 2007. The permit is needed because waste at the facility undergoing recycling passes through a shredder. The company also operates a refuse incinerator.

After touring AAT’s operations in January, the Department of Environmental Quality issued a report that included the following findings:

• AAT is operating without a solid waste permit, although the facility is characterized as a solid waste facility. However, Glenn Vice, part owner and chief financial officer of the company, told the Parish Council’s Public Services Committee on May 12 that the department told AAT it would not need a solid waste discharge permit when the company first began operating.

• AAT constructed and operated the incinerator before the company applied for a specified permit application.

• AAT did not produce records showing it tested the ash produced from the incinerator every month for the presence of toxic metals, although the company did perform the tests from March 2006 to October 2006. According to a previous air discharge permit issued to the company, AAT must test a sample of incinerator ash monthly to quantify toxic emissions. (In the report, AAT states that it has tested the ash, but the company had not furnished the department with test results as of March 3.)

The ash is boxed and taken by SWeeDee waste disposal company to the Ashland Solid Waste Pickup Station in Houma where it is mixed with other waste coming from Terrebonne Parish. The ash/waste mixture is then hauled to River Birch Landfill in Avondale.

At the Public Services Committee meeting, Vice said that AAT did not box the ash when the company first started operations, exposing the ash to the air.

Parish Council Clerk Paul Labat said at Wednesday’s meeting that he had called Soumaya Ghosn, a representative of the Department’s Public Participation Group. Ghosn said meetings could be held on the air and solid waste applications.

Other permit application

AAT currently has a treated wastewater discharge application permit with the department, also. Oily wastewater is another byproduct of the facility’s recycling process.

The permit would allow the company to discharge up to 80,000 gallons of the treated wastewater through Munson Slip into the Houma Navigation Canal, which intersects the Intracoastal Waterway at a point nearby.

The Houma Water Treatment Plant freshwater intake is located on the Intracoastal Waterway three miles north of AAT’s facility.

A public hearing was held March 11 in Houma on the wastewater discharge permit application, but AAT withdrew a provision from the application on the day of the hearing allowing the facility to store and process tri-ethylene glycol, which is used in automobile antifreeze and as a disinfectant.

Vice told the committee AAT removed the glycol from the permit because of changing market conditions.

“Effectively, we’ve taken something out,” Vice said.

“It’s considered a minor modification,” said Tim Champagne with STAT Waste Stream Services, who is designing AAT’s wastewater treatment facility. “We do not have to do (the permit) over.”

In response to questions from the Terrebonne Parish Council, the Department of Environmental Quality said that provisions in the permit still exist for processing the glycol.

“If the handling of TEG were added to the operation of AAT at a later date, additional public hearings would probably be called to address air and solid waste issues,” the department stated.

Several people have questioned the abruptness of AAT withdrawing the glycol provision.

“The permit has changed,” said Parish Councilwoman Teri Cavalier. “We were not aware until the night of the public meeting. There are hundreds of pages involved with the permit.”

“As citizens, if a business isn’t fail-proof, we have the right to question,” she said. “But you’re starting over. It’s human. Something could go wrong. The public needs time to look the new permit over.”

State Rep. Damon Baldone of Houma wrote a letter on April 30 to Cheryl Nolan, the Department of Environmental Quality’s assistant secretary of environmental services, underlining the desire of several people in the parish for a new public hearing on the water discharge permit.

In its responses, the Department of Environmental Quality stated that it has received few inquiries about holding a new public meeting on the altered water discharge permit.

The public comment period on the application ended May 20.

Nolan Bergeron, a former Terrebonne Parish councilman who is a member of the parish’s Coastal Zone Management Advisory Committee, said he was informed on April 18 by Nolan that a new public hearing would not be held on the water discharge permit.

Questions about the discharge

“We’re concerned having thousands of tons of oily waste coming into the parish,” Bergeron told the committee. “They’ll put it in the incinerator and burn it. It will discharge into the air. We don’t know what it is coming out of the stack.”

“Eighty-thousand gallons a day equates to many millions of gallons a year going out into the water source,” he said. “How do we know there won’t be an accident? Also, the air discharge permit still has the TEG in it. They didn’t say that treating TEG was permanent. They could change it by the stroke of a pen.”

In addition to Bergeron, AAT’s water discharge permit application is opposed by the parish’s Waterworks District No. 1, which does not want treated wastewater near the freshwater intake.

Waterworks District General Manager Stephen Hornsby stated in a letter to Ghosn that AAT’s water discharge permit application indicates the facility will pump substances with “effluent characteristics” into the canal at higher levels than allowed in drinking water.

Hornsby’s letter states that the critical area threatening water quality is five miles upstream from the water intake. The AAT facility is located three miles south of the water intake.

However, Hornsby asserts that tidal and weather conditions and Atchafalaya River levels cause a northward flow of water in the canal almost one-third of the time, placing the intake downstream from the AAT facility part of the time.

He goes on to write that the AAT facility is a significant potential source of contamination because its byproducts include contaminants regulated under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 and because a “sufficient likelihood” exists of releasing the contaminants at a level threatening the drinking water source.

Bergeron asked the parish council to pass a resolution backing the waterworks district position.

AAT’s view

AAT believes that applying strict restrictions on pollutants will run business away from Terrebonne Parish and that the company is being judged by a different standard.

“The state wouldn’t have allowed the water intake near a (polluted area),” Champagne told the committee. “It’s not the case it’s all contaminated. You can’t single out one source of a problem.”

“Have we considered existing impacts?” he said. “I’m here for industry in general. We follow DEQ regulations. We’ve extended invitations to the opposing party, but if you’re going to be closed-minded…”

“We will discharge clean water into the Houma Navigation Canal,” Vice said. “The water standards comply with all requirements.”

The discharge would have only 15 parts per million of oil and grease, he said.

“There are 135 water discharge permits in Terrebonne,” Vice said. “They must be renewed every five years. LA Ship (the large shipyard under construction at the Port of Terrebonne) will need a water discharge permit. Nobody here is for polluting the environment.”

Champagne said reports about AAT’s water discharge permit leave out the fact the wastewater will be treated before entering the canal.

In a letter written on March 31, AAT President Mike Broussard stated that the waste products the company receives are recycled as much as possible.

He states that applying a stricter pollution control standard within five miles of the water intake would adversely affect the area, which contains the majority of industry in Houma.

“[C]hanging the standards for industrial wastewater discharge in Terrebonne Parish will not only affect AAT’s water discharge permit,” he writes, “but will have effects on all current businesses and any future businesses that wish to come to Terrebonne Parish.”

The Terrebonne Parish Council is seeking more public input into American Advanced Technologies’ permit applications with the state Department of Environmental Quality. The Houma oily-waste recycler applied for a solid waste discharge permit the DEQ in June 2007. * Photo by MIKE BROSSETTE