SERVICE TIP

Be Prepared for a Plant Air Environmental Inspection

• Housekeeping - All inspectors are influenced by the appearance of your site. If it is dusty, if there are fines on the road or if the vegetation is dusty they will suspect problems.
  

• Records - Keep your records current and accessible.

• Hours of operation

• Yards/hour

• Annual production

• Water Truck, road watering, road cleaning
  
  

• Permit Conditions - make sure that you meet all of the conditions in your permit or standard exemption or permit by rule.
  
  

• Maintenance - Keep a log on central collector maintenance, silo top maintenance and water fog ring maintenance.

• Make sure that the area on top of the silos is clean and free of cement and flyash spillage.

• Make sure that the silo overfill alarm is operational.

• Have spare bags or cartridges for the dust collectors on hand.

• Have spare nozzles for the water fog ring and make sure that all nozzles are operational and not clogged.
  
  

• Upset conditions - An upset condition (broken central collector or blown silo top unit) must be reported to the TNRCC and a record kept at the plant. 
  
  

• Be kind and polite but don’t volunteer information. The inspector may not say much in order to make you more nervous and to get you to talking in order to fill the silence. This leads to problems 9 times out of 10 and they know that it is a good way to find problems.
  

Remember a single problem in the plant may lead to several different violations. The inspector may also want to take a dust sample to compare it with dust found at neighbor’s houses to determine if you are causing nuisance.

Posted 1 January 2002