OSHA cites airport for sewage violations. Inspection finds faults with safety equipment and procedures at new waste water plant.
Posted: Wednesday, August 12, 2015
By Mike Koshmrl
Wyoming regulators are proposing two citations to Jackson Hole Airport for workplace safety deficiencies at a new wastewater treatment plant that has been giving managers headaches.
Staffers from the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspected the airport’s plant in April. In a “citations and notification of penalty” document issued July 28, the agency identified five violations that were sorted into two citation categories.
“It is still an open case,” Wyoming OSHA spokeswoman Hayley McKee said Monday. “Really the only other piece of information that’s releasable at this time is that a complaint generated this.”
Because the case is still open, McKee said she couldn’t divulge the specifics of the complaint. Regardless of the outcome of the penalties, the complaint will become public record once the case is closed, she said.
Jackson Hole Airport Director Jim Elwood also was mum on what events led to the inspection.
“All we know is that OSHA arrived, they did their inspection,” Elwood said.
The first OSHA citation, which is still proposed and could be rectified, includes three violations labeled “serious.”
One violation included in the citation charges that the airport’s wastewater treatment plan was not evaluated for potentially hazardous gases. Another “serious” violation listed in the OSHA notice says that the airport did not provide medical evaluations for employees before they were required to use a respirator. Finally, the airport did not “fit test” employees who were required to use respirators to ensure their face pieces were tight.
Two “other-than-serious” violations are listed under Jackson Hole Airport’s second citation. The state agency faulted the airport for not having a respiratory protection program at the job site and for not effectively training its employees to use respirators.
Were the airport a private business it would have been hit with $3,150 in penalties, but instead the notice lists $0 in fines.
Jackson Hole Airport is administered by a board appointed by the town of Jackson and Teton County and sits on 533 acres of leased Grand Teton National Park property.
The airport is meeting with OSHA today for an “informal conference.” During the conference airport leaders will pursue dismissal of the citations, according to an email Elwood sent to staff Aug. 4.
In his message, Elwood also notified his employees of the OSHA inspection and its results.
“OSHA did not find any hazardous conditions in the [wastewater treatment plant],” Elwood wrote. “All of its feedback relates to the safety equipment and procedures the airport voluntarily implemented prior to the inspection.
“Based on OSHA’s initial findings, we have already taken proactive steps to abate three of the five items cited,” the director wrote to his staff. “We have plans in place to abate the remaining two, pending further feedback from OSHA.”
A $30,000 air safety monitoring system will soon be added to the airport’s wastewater facility, which cost $2.4 million to build and was completed just over a year ago.
“It has been in our budget prior to OSHA’s arrival,” Elwood said. “We had planned on doing that upgrade independent of OSHA’s visit.”
Apart from the OSHA inspection and citations, Jackson Hole Airport’s wastewater treatment plant has had other troubles. Solid waste has not been processing properly, and so two or three times a week sludge from the plant is being pumped into a tanker and disposed of at the Jackson Wastewater Treatment Plant in South Park. Airport managers have also secured help from the manufacturer to optimize the bioreactor-based treatment system and have taken preliminary steps in the event that litigation over underperformance is necessary.