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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2005 / Member Profile - A Clean Refit: Todd Pacific Shipyards |
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Member Profile - A Clean Refit: Todd Pacific Shipyards |
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Written On: November/December 2005 |
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Written By: by Dan Brunell |
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In the shadows of the giant cranes that dominate Seattle’s waterfront along the north shore of Harbor Island is Todd Pacific Shipyards. A stalwart of the Seattle waterfront for almost 90 years, Todd is the largest private shipyard in the Pacific Northwest. With an extensive clientele including the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, Washington state ferries, fishing fleets, cargo ships and even cruise liners, the facility covers more than 30-acres of land and employees more than 800 employees.
In 2000, Todd set an example of environmental stewardship. "As a key member of the Seattle waterfront community and a highly productive waterfront industry, Todd understands that it is essential to protect the water quality of Elliott Bay," said Al Rainsberger, manager of Safety, Security and Environmental Compliance for Todd Pacific. "Throughout the last five years, Todd Pacific Shipyard's management has set the example of environmental stewardship by proactively and comprehensively changing the way the business is run."
In 2003, Todd completed construction of an industrial storm water collection and treatment system that prevents all discharge of contaminated industrial storm water into Elliott Bay. Throughout the company's 89-year previous history, rainfall that collected on facility pavements was naturally drained to catch basins and discharged to surface waters via numerous near-shore outfalls. This runoff is now detained and discharged to the sanitary sewer for treatment at King County's treatment plant, after it has gone through special processing at Todd’s own filtration system to remove grease, oils and solids. Todd has integrated this environmental friendly philosophy into all aspects of its business.
Additionally, Todd has installed upgrades to its dockwater collection and pre-treatment system and adopted a comprehensive abrasive grit blast management plan. Abrasive grit is specified by customers to remove existing coatings of paint from the underwater hulls of ships and may contain heavy metals. The abrasive grit blast management plan prevents grit from contacting storm and surface waters.
Todd worked with employees at all stages of grit handling to develop and implement a comprehensive grit-management program which containerizes spent grit at its source, minimizes rehandling of grit, and reduces the potential for grit to be tracked through the yard or allowed to enter storm drains or surface waters. Todd has also reduced the amount of grit by switching to hyro-blasting to remove paint from ship’s hulls. The water waste from this process is treated by a dock-water processing system so that no waste enters Elliot Bay.
"Through these change in procedures, we have been able to reduce the amount of abrasive grit purchased by approximately 30 percent," added Rainsberger. "In 2001, Todd purchased 3.5 million pounds of abrasive grit; in 2003 a total of 2.5 million pounds were purchased. Sixty to 70 percent of paint removal practice at Todd now involves hydroblasting instead of abrasive grit blasting."
Todd has a commitment to find more environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional chemicals, solvents and paints in the shipyard. For example, through use of an alternative machinery cleaner solvent, Todd has reduced hazardous waste disposal of machine cleaning solvent from 760 gallons to zero gallons over the past six years. The reduced usage of this solvent also has beneficial economic results, with an estimated savings of more than $15,000 a year.
With these environmental achievements, Todd looks for more opportunities. In the summer of 2004, Todd began a comprehensive remedial action to remove contaminated sediments which have accumulated offshore of the Todd facility throughout the history of shipyard operations. Coordinated with shipyard business activities, remedial action will take two years and will comply U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements for clean-up under the Superfund program. The effort will completely remove contaminated sediments from the open water; significant, permanent near shore salmon habitat will be constructed; and over-water shading in important marine habitat areas will be permanently removed.
The efforts of Todd Pacific have not gone unnoticed. Todd was selected by the City of Seattle, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Resource Venture Group as the recipient of the Businesses for an Environmentally Sustainable Tomorrow Award in the Storm Water Pollution Prevention category in 2004. Todd has also received the William M. Benkert Bronze Award from the U.S. Coast Guard and the 2004 Environmental Excellence Award for Pollution Prevention and Clean-Up from AWB. Yet, environmental responsibility is a constant vigil, one that Todd Pacific will look upon with great vigor well beyond the 21st century.
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