1 Site Visit Report Alaska Seafood Processing Industry Petition Response

Lindsay Guzzo Environmental Engineer U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 10 Permits Division guzzo.lindsay@epa.gov

206-553-0268 Betsy Bicknell Senior Environmental Engineer Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) betsy.bicknell@erg.com

703-633-1612

Plant Name Ocean Beauty Seafood
Plant Address Kodiak, Alaska
NPDES Permit #
Date of Visit Wednesday, August 18, 2010 People Contacted Timothy J. Blott Plant Manager Joe Frazier, Director, Corporate Food Safety, QA, and Regulatory

Affairs

Seafood processed Bottom fish, all types
Salmon
Cod

Pollock
Crab

Products Frozen Whole (round) fish (H&G)

Fillets Roe (ikura and sujiko) Canned salmon (skinless/boneless) Range of annual production volume 50 to 55 million pounds per year Months of operation Year round Discharge type Screened solids are trucked to Kodiak Fishmeal Company Screened wastewater is discharged through NPDES permitted outfall, meets O&G and TSS limits.

Website http://www.oceanbeauty.com/

Ocean Beauty’s Kodiak plant operates 12 m onths per year. In January they process bottom fish and generally process whatever fi sh is in season. They produce frozen fillets and round fish (H&G), frozen crab sections , and fish roe. They also produce canned

salmon.

The frames from the fillet process are frozen and then used to produce a minced product. They also freeze and sell cod heads, milt, and roe.

Operations. Ocean Beauty has 700 feet of dock sp ace, including two unloading stations. Nine refrigerated seawater tanks on the dock receive fish pumped out of holds. Fish are moved into the plant using an elevator, and then conveyed across the plant. They operate two lines, a high volume line, and a low volume line.

Dungeness crab is cooked, brined, and frozen.2 Salmon for canning are processed in a mechani cal butchering line. The fish are filleted and skinned. The sockeye salmon frames go to a mincer.

Waste Management. Some waste from the butchering tables is placed directly into totes.
Most waste is sluiced into floor drains that are routed into one of two sumps. Wastewater from both sumps is pumped to rotosheer rota ry screens. Ocean Be auty has two screens

that alternate. Maintenance consists of changing the chain once/year. The Ocean Beauty managers considered the screens to be troub le free. The only difficu lty is when foreign material (e.g., a pan or broom handle) gets into the drains. This will back up the sewer line and they need to stop production until the line is cleared.

Waste from the rotary screens falls into a hopper and into a truck parked under the hopper. Ocean Beauty contracts with a truck th at works for them full time. It parks under the hopper until it is full and then takes off fo r the fishmeal plant. Ocean Beauty noted that there has never been a problem with meal plant capacity. It has always been able to take their waste. There is a back-up plan in the event the meal plant goes down, however. In this event, the waste would be trucked to a ramp at the Western Alaska dock and dumped into a barge. The barg e will haul the waste out to s ea for disposal in a designated dumping zone.

Ocean Beauty stated they strive to keep th e waste as whole as possible. The center feed rotary screens handle whole fish heads and othe r solids. The waste is wet, but dewatered.

The wastewater is sampled periodically by dipping sample bottles into the sumps. The samples are analyzed by Kodiak Seafood Laboratory.

Discussion. Tim Blott and Joe Frazier explained th at Ocean Beauty’s Kodiak plant has been screening the solids from its wastewater since the mid-1970s. At that time, they sent their waste to the old Biodry fishmeal plant. The Kodiak channel was in very bad shape. Kodiak was a 100 million pound per year shrimp processing center. Shrimp shells formed mats of waste that generate d hydrogen sulfide gas that bubbled to the surface. Joe Frazier

mentioned that because of similar crab shel l waste piles in Dutch Harbor they have a TMDL that requires 0.5 mm screen ing. He also noted that the diesel-powered generators required to operate seafood processing plants in Unalaska contri bute to air quality degradation. Unisea spent millions of dollars on Clean Air Act PSD/Title V permitting projects in Dutch Harbor.

In Kodiak, the city’s electric power is generated by hydroelectri c generating stations, wind turbines, and a back up diesel generator.