[All] Fw: Storage Lagoons, climate change and design constraints.

Thu Oct 7 23:43:32 EDT 2010

FYI

--- On Thu, 10/7/10, Louisette Lanteigne <butterflybluelu at rogers.com> wrote:

From: Louisette Lanteigne <butterflybluelu at rogers.com>
Subject: Storage Lagoons, climate change and design constraints.
To: "Dave Schultz" <dschultz at grandriver.ca>
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 11:42 PM

Dear Mr. SchultzPlease relay this information to the Lake Erie Source Water Protection Committee members.

In light of the tragedy unfolding in Hungary, concern is growing about the long term security associated with storage lagoons. In our area they are used for effluent around farmlands, industrial and sewage etc. With the anticipated increases in precipitation associated with climate change, fluid levels could easily go beyond design constraints of existing lagoons. 

I am also concerned with increased acid rain which will will cause dissolution and 
alteration in cement. When sulfurous, sulfuric, and nitric acids in polluted air 
react with the calcite in marble and limestone, the calcite dissolves creating roughened surfaces and the 
removal of material. If there are measures we can take to adequately assess lagoons to avoid these risks, I would like that to be included within the Source Water Protection regulations. 

In conclusion, I have attached an article which illustrates how vulnerable the US is to issues related to climate change and current lagoon design constraints. 

Thank you kindly for your time.

Louisette Lanteigne
700 Star Flower Ave.
Waterloo Ontario
N2V 2L2
____________________________________________________________
Lagoons Bursting Out: At The Intersection Of Climate Change And Inadquate Design
                     by John Laumer, Philadelphia 

Image credit: NOAA Atlas 14, Vol 2 (2004) (pdf file)

Wastewater or sludge storage lagoons are designed, in part, based on 
statistical probability of annual precipitation and evaporation amounts.
  The data behind these estimates generally don't take into account 
contemporary or projected weather extremes associated with man-induced 
climate change. There is powerful anecdotal evidence of the risk such 
storage lagoons can pose, as the poor villagers of Hungary could easily 
tell us about if we were in direct communication.  Accuweather mentioned
 this risk in today's news.

As reported by Accuweather.com According
 to meteorologists at AccuWeather.com, data show that late-spring and 
summer rainfall in some areas of central Europe from Poland to southern 
Hungary and Serbia was more than 200 percent of normal.

If rainfall were as high at the disaster site, walls
 holding back the sludge may have been weakened, even contributing to 
the breach that released the spill.  What 
happened with the aluminum ore processing lagoon in Hungary may be a 
symptom of a much larger scale risk coming.  Really the same added risk 
is posed by coal ash lagoons in the USA if they were designed for less 
rainfall and more evaporation than are or will be experienced due to 
radical weather extremes.

Caveats.

This particular risk, of lagoons designed for drier times, is not so 
much a problem with gold or uranium or other mining lagoons throughout 
much of the American West because the climate extreme concern there, 
presently,  is drought and natural dryness (as pictured above).

Some wastewater or sludge lagoons pose added danger because of 
non-climate related factors: due to bad design in the first place, poor 
construction or maintenance practices, pressure from management to cut 
corners on materials or size to save money, and over use beyond design 
capacity (over filling with waste water and/or sludge).

This is a slow bullet that can be dodged.

Looking at climate risk in general, it seems to me that the risk of over
 wet lagoons bursting is more of a clear and present danger than sea 
level rise.   Yet there are engineering solutions on the ground for this
 risk. Basic inspections and engineering reviews are the starting point.
  (USEPA did just this for  existing coal ash settling lagoons.)

More examples.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of anaerobic lagoons in use at 
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in the USA alone.  I 
recently read about one dairy operation for 10,000 dairy cows being 
opened.  The trend is for more concentration at this scale. ONe cow puts
 out as much excrement as around 14 people.  You can't spread manure in 
the winter.  Hence, a burst lagoon for such a mega-dairy in the upper 
Midwest would loose as much crap as a small city would accumulate over 3
 months. 

A ruptured human sewerage settling lagoon could be even more 
dangerous, spreading disease organisms across downstream villages and 
into water supplies.  Numerous small communities utilize sewerage 
settling lagoons as the primary method of treatment and some even accept
 industrial waste water. 

First steps for risk mitigation.

Now would be the time to do some overlay planning: mapping out areas 
where large wastewater and sludge lagoons exist or are likely to be 
permitted along with the likelihood of increased precipitation and/or 
decreased evaporation.  

Instead of waiting for people to be up to their armpits in corrosive 
red mining waste or pathogen-filled poop, some basic risk management 
studies should be performed based on a re-examination of engineering 
design tables and consideration of where radically changed weather 
extremes could add risk.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20101007/afe848e0/attachment.html>