Honeywell issues statement about plant leak

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Web Editor - Jay Marchmon

Story Created: Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:19 PM

Story Updated: Thu Dec 23, 2010 9:27 PM

The Honeywell official statement:

"At around 3 p.m. this afternoon, the Metropolis plant experienced a leak of hydrofluoric acid at its tank farm. The plant sounded its emergency siren and activated its emergency response procedures as a precaution. The release was immediately contained by the plant's water mitigation system and a team immediately began working to stop the leak. The leak was stopped before 5 p.m. local time.

At this point, there are no indications of off-site impact from the release and it did not involve any radioactive materials. All on-site personnel were accounted for and there were no injuries.

All of the plant emergency response procedures and equipment functioned as designed. The plant is initiating a full root cause analysis to determine the cause of the leak."

 

Honeywell released another statement Wednesday evening about the USW 7-669 claims:

 

You should have the statement I sent to your earlier and you can confirm that I said it was a leak and I did not characterize it as as "small" leak. 

 
 

On the charges about the knife gate: The statement is absolutely false. The knife gate valve did close as it was designed.  (This is part of the containment system that I explained earlier e-mail.) The knife gate valve closed and water from the mitigation towers is collected in a containment system. There, the fluorine levels in the water are mearured. If they amount of fluorine is the water is below a certain limit set by our permits, it is discharged into our storm water system. That was what was done tonight. The knife gate closed, the water was captured and the fluorine content mearured. The amount in the water did not exceed the permitted amount and was discharged into the storm water system.

 
On the union's general charges, this is our statement:
 

"As it has done in the past, the union is misstating what happened at the plant today to advance its own agenda. To make false assertions based on hearsay and unnamed sources is irresponsible.

 
 

Honeywell takes these matters very seriously, and we are accountable to the community and to the NRC to fully understand what happened and to make the facts about the incident publicly available.

 
We have provided an accurate account of what happened based on the available facts. We will continue to provide additional information as we analyze what happened and determine the root cause."

 

To read the United Steelworkers statement, click here.

For the original story, click here.

For the 6pm coverage, click here.

For the 10pm coverage, including community reactions, click here.