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 Icicle Seafoods

Plant Address Petersburg, Alaska

NPDES Permit # AKG520303

Date of Visit Saturday, August 14, 2010 People Contacted Patrick S. Wilson, Plant Manager Paul Walters, Productio n and Fleet Manager Mike Clutter, Corporate Environmental Compliance Director.

Seafood processed Salmon, halibut, cod, crab (various species)

Products Canned salmon

Frozen crab

Others as listed in Table 1 Waste products processed Salmon heads, viscera, trimmings, and other processing

waste. Byproducts Pet food grade salmon oil

Fish Meal Range of annual production vol ume [Confidential Business Information (CBI), removed from this report] Months of operation February - November Salmon season (May/June through September) Discharge type Grind and discharge via permitted outfall Website http://www.icicleseafoods.com/

Background According to the Icicle website, the plant in Petersburg is the oldest operating seafood processing plant in Alaska. Operations be gan in 1926. The plant operates February through November, processing fish listed in Table 1. From June through early September they can pink salmon. Other products are fresh and frozen fin fish and crab. They also process a special form of spring herring roe (r oe on kelp), which is frozen and shipped to Japan.

Table 1: Fish processe d at Icicle, Petersburg

Month Seafood Processed February King and Tanner Crab March Herring, Halibut, Bl ack Cod, and King Crab April Herring, Halibut, and Black Cod May Herring Roe on Kelp; Halibut; Black Cod; Herring June Dungeness Crab and Salmon (gillnet, seine , troll)2 July Salmon (seiner, gillnet, troll), Dungeness Crab August Salmon (seiner, gillnet, troll), Dungeness Crab September - November Halibut, Black C od (Long line), Dungeness Crab (limited) December – January Closed

Meal plant. In addition to processing seafood, Icicle produces fish oil and fish meal from a byproducts plant. In the mid 1970s, Icicle ope rated byproducts plants in both Petersburg and Seward. At that time, Icicle harvested herring for their roe. After the roe were stripped, the fish bodies were discarded as waste. The bypr oducts plants processed these waste herring into fish meal. Roe stripping ended in the early 1990s and the meal plant

was shut down in the late 1990s. It was re built 4 years ago and now operates during the salmon season (early July through the end of August). [CBI, removed from this report.] The byproducts plant does not have extr a capacity during th e salmon season.

Products from the byproducts plant are fish oi l and fishmeal. The fish meal is used in aquaculture. [CBI, removed from this report. ] It can’t be used for human food with out additional refining. In the past, Ic icle burned the o il in boilers.

Other products. During salmon season there is a lull in producing other fish because the

halibut and cod fishermen fish for salmon.. Hali but is shipped via Alaska Air or the ferry system. Most halibut is sold fresh and all c od is frozen. Halibut heads are used for bait

with 100% utilization.

Water supply. Icicle uses about 1 MGD of city water for the canning retorts. When all three canneries in Petersburg were operating, th e city reservoir went dry. The city built a

new reservoir that can accommodate the three canneries, but only one (I cicle) operated in 2010. Icicle uses seawater for fluming and for live crab tanks, and for hosing docks. They operate three large condensers ( Figure 1 ). Until last year the condensers used oncethrough fresh water; they now use a closed cycle glycol system.

Icicle adds chlorine to the city water used in the cannery retorts and checks the chlorine

concentration for each retort batch. Icicle is not required to monitor the chlorine concentration in the plant discharge bu t extensive testing by Icicle has found no detectable amount of chlorine. Until recently, Icicle used seawater in the egg room, but now uses chlorinated city water to reduce th e probability of bacterial contamination.

Icicle plans to upgrade the sump on the cannery side in 2012.

Comments on EPA’s Non-Remote Alas ka Seafood Processing Project. Mike Clutter expressed concern about EPA’s planned economic impact analysis. He noted that seafood processing is a very competitive business a nd some information is confidential. Among the changes since EPA’s 1980 analysis is th at there is now only one cannery in Petersburg (the Ocean Beauty cannery did not operate in 2010, but could operate again). In the past, Petersburg produced millions of pounds of little salad shrimp. It now produces no shrimp.3 Tour. The plant is divided into a cold stor age side (for producing fresh and frozen products), the cannery side, an egg room, a nd the reduction (meal) plant. Cold storage side operations started in 1926. They freeze some pink salmon and process fresh coho, sockeye, chum and king salmon. Eggs remove d from the salmon in cold storage side operations are pumped to the egg room for further processing.

Fish arrive in plas tic or metal totes ( Figure 2 ) or are pumped out of tender holds with the fish transfer pipe ( Figure 3 ).

The dock is built on wooden pilings. The dock wa s recently rebuilt and given a concrete surface ( Figure 4 ). Formerly, some totes leaked blood through the dock and into the

harbor. Now the water that collects on the dock (including any tote leak age) is directed to a sump and then pumped to Icicle’s permitted outfall in the middle of the harbor. In addition, an oil/water separator was installed be fore the sump to collect any oil that might leak from the hydraulic lines used on cranes and other material moving equipment. All

stormwater runoff is routed to the oil/water separators and the separators are regularly inspected. If an oil sheen is de tected, the source of the leak is identified and the leak is stopped so no oil will flow into the bay.

The main seafood byproduct sump is 15 feet acro ss. Material collected in the sump is pumped through hydroseive screens. Solids are ground then conveyed to the reduction plant. When the reduction pl ant is not operating, solids ar e pumped through a Kodiak grinder, Vaughn chopper with a 3/8” sieve pl ate, and discharged through the outfall. The outfall is located near the red buoy shown in Figure 5 . The discharge is about 120 feet from the shore. It attracts large numbers of seabirds (visible in the picture) and sea urchins. According to Icicle, the discharge poi nt is in a location with swift tides that provide excellent flushing so there is no z one of deposit of waste solids as documented by annual dive surveys.

Figure 6 shows the interior of a small building us ed for processing roe and miscellaneous

fish. Figure 7 shows a station where fish are sorted as they are unloaded from the boats. Employees sort fish by size and type and rem ove any non-fish materi al (e.g. seaweed).

The station is roofed to eliminate contaminati on from bird feces and to keep rainwater off of the employees. Fish unloaded with the fish transfer pump go through the dewatering box ( Figure 8). Refrigerated seawater is returned to the fishing boat or discharged through the outfall. Fish ar e sluiced in seawater ( Figures 9 and 10 ) to holding tanks. Temperature of the fish must be 33 - 34° F. Temperature is measured as the fish are

removed from the transfer belt.

Crab. A tank of live crab is shown in Figure 11 . Crab are butchered, cooked, and cooled. Alternatively, butchered crab is brine frozen, e ither whole or as sections. Frozen crab is packed into 25-pound boxes. Waste shells a nd guts are ground twice before discharge through the outfall.4 Cannery . Icicle operates five canning lin es feeding into nine retorts ( Figure 12). At the end of a canning cycle, the reto rts are opened and hot water fl ows into a recovery system.

The recovered hot water is filtered a nd then used as boiler feed water.

Recovery Plant. Solids from the hydrosieve are transf erred to the recovery plant by pipe and then conveyor belt ( Figures 13 and 14). The belt passes through a metal detector. If metal is detected, the belt stops and employees use a hand-held metal detector to find and then remove metal from the byproduct str eam. In the recovery plant, an employee removes non-fish material (seaweed, ear plugs, etc.) from the byproduct stream ( Figure

15 ). She wears an air-purifying respirator becau se of the smell (there are no toxic vapors). An inclined auger conveys the byproduc t stream to an Autio grinder.

The byproduct is ground ( Figure 16), heated, and passed th rough a tri-canter ( Figure 17) to separate the byproduct into solid, aqueous, and oil phases. The aqueous phase contains soluble proteins, salts, and other small mo lecules and is known as stickwater ( Figure 18 ).

The warm stickwater from the tricanter is returned to preheat the ground waste. The stickwater is usually piped to the ground fish hopper but due to a pump breakdown at the

time of the visit it was pumped through a hose.

The oil phase from the tricanter passes through a polishing centrifuge ( Figure 19 ) and is dispensed into SpaceKraft totes. [CBI, removed from this report.]

[CBI, removed from this report.] Figure 20 shows the fish meal as it came from the drier. It contained noticeable bone fragments. From the drier, the meal is pulverized in a hammermill, to break up the bone and other solids. The meal must meet specifications for oil, protein, ash, and moisture. If there is too much oil, the tricanter is adjusted so more oil is removed from the ground fish slurry. If the meal contains too much moisture, it will

mold and be unusable. From the hammermill the meal is processed in a crusher, then airblown into bags. There is no planned cooling step — the meal is cooled in bags[CBI, removed from this report.]

The recovery plant operates up to 24 hours per day at peak production. Excess byproducts can be stored in totes. [CBI, removed from this report.]

Icicle noted they cannot send all of their waste to the bypr oduct recovery plant. They need to dispose of seafood processing wast e by another means (currently the grind and discharge through their permitted outfall) because:

 Sometimes production is too low, not ge nerating enough for the meal plant to operate. Although it might be possible to freeze waste until the minimum amount is accumulated, freezing is expensive. For example, sometimes in the late season they process as little as two to five totes per day of black cod.

 Sometimes production is too high, exceedi ng the meal plant capacity and waste storage capacity so excess waste must be discharged; and

 The meal plant is not designed for crab waste or for fish heads with embedded hooks (e.g., cod heads caught with long lines ). Also, due to lack of production,5 there is not enough byproduct stream in th e spring and fall to produce meal. As a result, these wastes must be discharged.

Discussion . [CBI, removed from this report.]

Icicle expressed the following concerns about taking waste from another processor:

 contamination (foreign matter, like fish hooks);

 cost and logistics of transport

 freshness issues

o potential degradation of the end product

o Potential for odor complaints from the town – when the wind blows toward the town they may stop the r ecovery plant and this reduces their capacity.6 Figure 1. Condensers

Figure 2. Chum Salmon in Metal Tote7 Figure 3. Concrete Dock and Fish Transfer Pipe

Figure 4. Icicle Petersburg Dock8 Figure 5 Outfall Near Red Buoy

Figure 6. Egg Room9 Figure 7. Fish Sorting Station

Figure 8. Dewatering Box10 Figure 9. Fish Flume Empty

Figure 10. Fish Flume with Fish.11 Figure 11. Crabs

Figure 12. Canning Retorts12 Figure 13 Waste Transfer Lines

Figure 14. Conveying Waste Into the Meal Plant13 Figure 15. Sorting Waste

Figure 16. Ground Waste in Meal Plant14 Figure 17. Tricanter

Figure 18. Stickwater15 Figure 19. Fish Oil from Polisher

Figure 20. Fish Meal