NEWS UPDATES:
Posted 1/11/2011
To Rebecca: Thanks for noticing.
BLP Staff
Posted 11/15/10
BLP started up at about noon yesterday, and went down at about 11PM. We will be starting up today at about noon.
BLP Staff
Posted 11/11/10
BLP has received a response from Patrick Bell of CalOSHA. We asked if we could switch our back-up alarm to a broadband alarm. His response follows and please pay particular attention to his last sentence starting with CalOSHA.
“A broad based multi-industry Advisory Committee was recently convened to consider adopting rules to permit the use of broadband alarms. The advisory committee recommended against the modification of current regulations to permit the broadband alarms as an alternative to the current Title 8 specification.”
“Evaluations conducted by the CalOSHA Research and Standards Development staff and Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board have identified deficiencies in the decernability of the warning sound emitted by the broadband devices, due to character of ambient noise, object detection range, and directionality of warning device. These findings show the broadband devices evaluated did not comply with existing applicable regulations.”
“If Blue Lake Power can demonstrate that the use of such a device is equally protective under the conditions of use for the operations at issue, then DOSH would consider the legal requirement of the variance for equivalent safety to be satisfied. The remaining question would be: "Does this solution address the community noise issue that is the underlying issue for the variance request?"
“CalOSHA is not bound by community noise ordinances - State occupational safety regulations take precedence over local ordinances.”
As Glenn Zane mentioned at the Nov. 9 public meeting BLP is going to set up an audit of our back-up alarm for early December where CalOSHA will be on-site to determine if the broadband alarm meets their requirements.
BLP Staff
Posted 10/26/10
As of October 21st we are no longer delivering ash to the field across from Calgon Carbon.
BLP Staff
Posted 10/22/10
This morning instrument technicians were repairing damaged conduits. While work was performed on a conduit associated with the steam drum level instrumentation a false high drum level trip signal was issued that caused the turbine to trip off line. The supply of fuel and combustion air to the furnace was immediately cut off and the safeties on the superheater/drum lifted and vented for about four minutes. Additional venting occurred for another 15 minutes. The boiler/furnace operation was stabilized and the turbine came back online approximately 35 minutes after the trip. We have ordered a broadband white noise backup alarm for our loader from Brigade in Pennsylvania and it will be delivered as soon as UPS Ground can get it here. It is our understanding that if this new alarm can be heard above the ambient noise level at a distance of 200 feet it should meet CA OSHA requirements and if so we will not need a variance. We have placed calls to CA OSHA each of the last three days to discuss these new type alarms and have not received a response. We will keep trying.
BLP Staff
Previous News:
Blue Lake Residents: We have ordered the silencer that will quiet the very loud sound when we experience a turbine trip. We have realigned and shielded the fuel yard lights but specific problems may yet exist. We are continuing to work with OSHA to obtain a variance relative to operations of the back up beeper, this is a difficult process and will take some time.