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Ogulei, David

From: Ogulei, David

Sent: Monday, September 21, 2015 8:30 AM

To: Genevieve Damico (damico.genevieve@epa.gov); Jane Woolums

Subject: Summary of 9/17 Veolia Call

Participants: David, Genevieve, Dennis Warchol, Dave Klarich 

Call Date (time): 9/17/15 (11:00 am). 

Summary: 

- We informed Veolia that our preliminary review of Veolia’s proposal has resulted in three preliminary 

categories all of which are dependent on Veolia’s submittal of its complete response to our previous 

proposal. 

- The three categories are discussed in detail below, and include: 

o Yes (with changes) – waste acceptance procedures, batching of wastes; 

o No (but willing to continue evaluating) – exemption for visually identifiable wastes, 

Administrator’s review period for additional exemptions; and 

o Defer (wait for Veolia’s complete response package) – treatment of non-detects. 

- Veolia stated that they believe we are on a positive track, and expressed optimism that consensus on the 

outstanding issues would be reached. 

- Veolia assured us that they would submit their complete response package by Sept. 22. 

Details: 

Yes (with changes) 

1. Waste acceptance procedures. We informed Veolia that: 

- We understand Veolia doesn’t want to analyze non-varying wastestreams every time they are 

received. 

- We are willing to revise the permit language to provide for a structured analytical protocol as 

proposed by Veolia. 

- We would not adopt Veolia’s proposed categorization of wastes into “suspect” vs “non-suspect” 

wastes because we believe certain “non-suspect” wastes that actually contain high levels of metals 

could slip through the cracks. 

- The revised analytical protocol would be based upon Veolia’s submission but with some 

improvements. For example, we said that we would require analysis of the first 5 shipments instead 

of the first 3 proposed by Veolia. And we would use the 95% upper confidence level concentration 

instead of the arithmetic mean plus two standard deviations. We also said that any subsequent 

measurement above the upper confidence level would be discrepant and would trigger sampling and 

analysis of the next five shipments. 

2. Batching of wastes. 

- We informed Veolia that we would be willing to grant Veolia’s requested changes to the batching 

procedures. 

- We would, however, clarify that only wastes for which there is sufficient information to quantify 

metal concentrations can be batched, mixed, treated or otherwise altered. 
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No (but continue to evaluate) 

3. Exemption for visually identifiable wastes. 

- Veolia stated that this proposed exemption for “visually identifiable” wastes is mostly taken from 

Heritage’s or Ross’ feedstream analysis plans. 

- We told Veolia that we are currently not inclined to grant Veolia’s request to exempt “visually 

identifiable” wastes but would be willing to further evaluate the request once we have received 

Veolia’s complete response package. 

- We said that some of the listed wastestreams can and should be sampled and analyzed; some of the 

waste descriptions are too broad and would need to be narrowed; and others are already exempted 

from sampling. 

- We told Veolia that instead of an exemption, we would consider a combination of sampling and 

other methods as described in EPA’s recently released waste analysis guidance. 

4. Approval from the Administrator to exempt additional waste. 

- Veolia has requested that all requests to exempt additional wastes after the permit is issued be 

approved/denied by the Administrator within 14 days of the request. The draft permit currently 

gives the Administrator up to 60 days. 

- We told Veolia that we cannot approve the requested 14-day timeframe as it would be impractical 

for us to implement. 

- We told Veolia that we would continue to evaluate the request to see if we can grant a different 

timeframe. 

Defer 

5. Treatment of non-detects 

- We told Veolia that we will make a decision on the treatment of non-detects after we receive 

Veolia’s complete response package.