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will be hard to justify requiring these other facilities to make potentially costly <br />improvements. <br />For each of the four facilities, I will summarize the conditions I found and what <br />specific changes I recommend. <br />Wastewater Treatment Plant <br />The main storage room for chlorine and sulfur dioxide has an adequate leak <br />detection system, and this room is designed to direct escaped gases into a treatment <br />system (scrubber) located in an adjacent room. These are code requirements. <br />However, the UFC also calls for automatic sprinklers in a toxic gas storage room. <br />to prevent a fire in a nearby area from impinging upon the room; therefore, <br />sprinklers should be installed in this room. <br />Adjacent to this main storage is the gas filtering room, which appears to be the only <br />room without leak detection probes. The monitoring network should be expanded to <br />include this room, since chlorine and sulfur dioxide are piped into it and distributed <br />under vacuum or low pressure conditions. With regard to this monitoring network, <br />current code requires an alarm to set off both a visual nd audible warning to <br />someone, 24 hours a day. With the current system, only a local audible alarm <br />sounds. Given the plant's size, it is possible that no one would hear this alarm. <br />At the treatment plant, methane gas is collected from the tops of the large sewage <br />digester tanks and distributed and collected through a series of welded pipes. <br />Ultimately, this highly flammable gas feeds into the cogenerator unit, where it is <br />burned for energy recovery. There are long indoor runs of methane piping, but <br />only one leak detection unit, in the cogeneration room itself. A more extensive leak <br />detection system here, as well as in any other indoor areas through which methane <br />is piped, would reduce the chance of a leak causing an explosion or fire. In the <br />event of a release, this upgraded detection system would trip audible and visual <br />alarms and would notify plant personnel 24 hours a day, just like the chlorine /sulfur <br />dioxide system. All indoor areas through which methane is piped should also be <br />sprinklered; this is a higher priority than sprinklering the chlorine /sulfur dioxide <br />room, because of the immediate fire hazard that methane presents. <br />NOTE: The Uniform Fire Code does not specifically regulate flammable gases <br />(other than compressed gases like acetylene or LPG), so that the recommendations <br />in the above paragraph derive from code sections that apply to flammable liquids. <br />My inspection at the treatment plant also turned up other, less urgent code <br />noncompliance. All buildings housing hazardous materials need NFPA placards <br />MEMO -- CITY FACILITIES <br />p. 2 <br />