DALTON, GA. (WRCB)  --  More than two dozen Dalton employees were taken to a local hospital Monday for decontamination after an explosion occurred at the MFG Chemical plant on Callahan Dr.  

"I thought it was a pressure valve releasing," says International Coatings employee, Darrin Locke. "Heard a loud, very loud whistle."

International Coatings sits across the street from the MFG Chemical plant. Employees tell Channel 3 the explosion happened just before 9 Monday morning.

"We saw just some color in the sky. Of course we all made a mad dash for the backside of the building, not sure what was going to take place at that time," Locke says.  

"We have an over-pressured rupture of a reactor," says Dalton Fire Chief Bruce Satterfield.  

"It blew a hole in the roof of the building," adds Bruce Frazier, with the Dalton Police Department.  

The chemical that was being made during the time of the explosion is called coagulant 129. Its a substance used for water treatment and can cause skin irritation or respiratory problems. "Its not the nastiest stuff in the world but you wouldn't want it on your skin or anything," Frazier says.  

Nearly 50 employees from the surrounding area were taken to a local hospital for decontamination. Even a few from International Coatings came forward with symptoms after we talked to them.

"I've got a couple with some irritation to their throats, stuff like that," says Locke.  

All told, 47 people were brought to the Hamilton Medical Center for decontamination.

A chlorine leak sent the North Metro Chemical Assessment Team to the city of Coon Rapids east water treatment plant on Dogwood Street early Monday morning.
Two members of the North Metro Chemical Assessment Team donned hazardous materials suits to enter the city of Coon Rapids’ east water treatment plant early Monday morning to turn off valves to stop a chlorine leak. Photo: Coon Rapids Fire Department

Two members of the North Metro Chemical Assessment Team donned hazardous materials suits to enter the city of Coon Rapids’ east water treatment plant early Monday morning to turn off valves to stop a chlorine leak. Photo: Coon Rapids Fire Department

An automatic alarm alerted the on-call city of Coon Rapids public works employee of the chlorine leak about 5 a.m. and the Coon Rapids Fire Department was called in.

According to Fire Chief John Piper, two members of the chemical assessment team, comprising firefighters from the Coon Rapids, Fridley and Spring Lake Park-Blaine-Mounds View (SBM), that responded put on hazardous materials suits and went into the water treatment plant to turn off the valves to both chlorine tanks and both sulfur dioxide tanks.

The treatment plant’s scrubber system removed the chlorine, Piper said.

According to Rick Bednar, city utilities operations supervisor, the leak was caused by a loose fitting.

Fire Department responded to the Water Treatment Plant on Water Street Friday afternoon when an 1,800 gallon tank of chlorine began to leak.

Assistant Fire Chief Jerry Vanden Brook said the leak occurred around 3 p.m. in a warehouse that stores chlorine used to treat water.

Vanden Brook said a pipe between the tank and a valve of a chlorine tank ruptured, spilling about 5 to 10 gallons of chlorine per minute.

Firefighters diluted the chlorine, making it like chlorine bleach, he said. The liquid then ran into a conduit that leads to the sewer treatment plant, officials said.

People were evacuated from a water treatment facility in Columbia Heights Tuesday after two chemicals were accidentally mixed together and caused a dangerous reaction.

Employees notified the Columbia Heights fire department just after 1 p.m. that hydrochloric acid and caustic soda had been combined at the plant, according to John Larkin, assistant fire chief. When mixed, the two chemicals cause excessive heat and triggered the sprinkler system to go off in the building.

All employees were immediately evacuated and no injuries were reported, Larkin said, adding that the reaction was contained to the facility's hydrochloric acid room.

The Allegheny River flowed liked wine last week near Sharpsburg when the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority released a harmless chemical that turned the water purple.

As expected, phone calls poured in about the mysterious-colored water, according to Sharpsburg Councilman Tony Sacco.

The local fire department, the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Allegheny County Health Department responded.

"I knew it wasn't anything the borough did wrong because we don't have the capacity to dump those kind of chemicals," Sacco said.
The borough has it's own water supply system and treatment plant, drawing from wells near the river.

"Everybody was on the job immediately and found out where the source was," Sacco said.

It was the second day on the job for Rich Aluise, Sharpsburg's new water plant manager.

"I got the call from Councilman Lou DeLuca and all I could do was look upstream to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority," he said.

And that has been an automatic reaction for Aluise, who worked at the Authority for 21 years.

Authority employees were washing out a bin, located about 1 mile north of Sharpsburg near Aspinwall, where Permanganate, a chemical routinely used to remove iron and manganese from drinking water, is stored.

The chemical ended up in the Allegheny because recent rain caused the sewer system to overflow into the river, said Stanley States, PWSA's director of water quality and production.

GILBERT, Ariz. - The water treatment plant in Gilbert runs into some problems Wednesday night.

Firefighters responded to the plant near Greenfield and Baseline roads.

Crews said machinery inside exploded, and there was a small hazmat leak from the chemicals stored there.

The leak did not affect water supplies.

Responders worked with plant employees to shut the building down and contain the leak.

Ten people were hospitalized after a mixture of chemicals made them sick at the water plant in Coral Springs Thursday morning.

The incident happened shortly before 9 a.m. at the plant at 3800 Northwest 85th Avenue, according to Coral Springs Fire Department Capt. Richard Antonini.

Antonini said a man was delivering a tanker truck filled with chlorine and when he transferred the chemicals into a tank, they mixed with some fluorine which was left in the tank.

The mixture created a potentially toxic gas, which caused the truck driver to be overcome with fumes.

The driver and nine others were taken to Coral Springs Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries, Antonini said.

City officials expect a chemical leak that began over the weekend at Martinsville’s water treatment plant to pose no health hazard to the public.

While the plant was operating normally on Sunday, two employees noticed a leak in a tank containing fluorosilicic acid, said city Fire Chief Kenneth Draper.
To help prevent tooth decay, the chemical — commonly known as fluoride — is put in drinking water distributed to city utility customers, he said.
According to Draper, officials think the chemical leaked out from a transfer pump due to the corrosion of pump components. After the leak was noticed, treatment plant employees notified city emergency personnel, who were on the scene late Monday coordinating remediation efforts, Draper said.
“Most of it went into the ground between the tank and the parking lot,” he said of the chemical.

A wastewater treatment product never revealed to state regulators caused a massive fire at chemical plant in Waxahachie on Monday, according to the company.

Magnablend CEO Scott Pendery said Thursday the fire occurred while the company was producing the 16th batch of the product. The production process caused excessive steam, and there was a spark nearby.

"Clearly there's an unacceptable result here along the way, which we're trying to figure out what caused it," he said. "The product, as we understand it, should never have yielded that kind of result."

The company had been making the product at the plant since August.

Pendery said it is not clear whether the company is required to disclose ingredients of the product to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as must be done with many hazardous chemicals

Emergency officials say the potential for a serious situation at the East End's wastewater treatment plant was averted Tuesday after two chemicals, not meant to be combined, were accidentally mixed together.

Fire Chief Fred LaMontagne said everything was safe and stabilized at the Portland Water District's waste treatment plant Tuesday afternoon. His announcement came after 500 gallons of liquid sodium hypochlorite and sodium bisulfite were mixed in a 2,500 gallon container.

Combining the chemicals used to treat wastewater generates heat and has the potential to be explosive. Firefighters from multiple departments responded to the plant following the report of a vapor cloud at about 7:30 a.m.

"We were able to quickly identify the two substances that were combined," LaMontagne said. "At no time was there a risk to the general public."

About 11 employees were evacuated from the plant and officials blocked off a neighboring section of the East End Trail. Some employees were permitted to gather their belongings by about 4 p.m. and LaMontagne expected the trail and surrounding area would reopen to the public sometime Tuesday evening.

Neighboring businesses and the surrounding area was not evacuated as result of the accident. City officials said that air monitors were setup outside the plant to determine if there was any risk to the public — none was found.

MANHATTAN — Thousands of people were evacuated from a packed Harlem park Wednesday afternoon after an explosion triggered a roaring fire at a sewage treatment plant that spewed a 30-foot plume of fire into the air, officials said.

The ferocious four-alarm blaze, which also snarled traffic on the West Side Highway, broke out in the engine room of the city's North River Wastewater Treatment plant, at 725 W. 135th St., at 11:46 a.m., an FDNY spokesman said.

"There was heavy fire, heavy smoke," said FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph Woznica. The cause of the fire, which raged for hours, was not immediately clear, but Woznica said that pressurized fuel helped spark a "30-foot plume of fire."

A hazardous materials team was called to Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. on Wednesday afternoon to deal with an acid spill at the plant, according to the fire marshal.

No one was injured, Fire Marshal Ray Occhialini said.

Occhialini said it happened about 3:45 p.m., when 10 gallons of an organic acid used for water treatment spilled in the back of a tractor-trailer and onto a nearby loading dock.

He said investigators from the state Department of Environmental Protection entered the 125 Depot Road facility with special suits to assess the situation before clearing the scene around 6 p.m.

3 Royal Canadian Mint workers reported OK after breathing chemical fumes
(The Canadian Press) – 22 hours ago
OTTAWA — The Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa says three workers are OK after inhaling some chemical fumes at the facility this morning.
The mint says it appears chemical vapours were released from the waste water treatment system at the refinery.
Spokesman Alex Reeves says the three workers who were exposed to the fumes were taken to hospital to be checked out.
He says all three men have since been released and the cause of the incident is under investigation.
Meanwhile, normal production is continuing at the mint in all non-affected areas, including public tours.
The workers — aged 51, 58 and 35 — were not identified.
But Reeves confirmed reports that two of the men rescued their co-worker by pulling him away from the fumes.
Along with producing Canada's coins, the mint also produces and markets bullion and related refinery products.
Marc Messier of the Ottawa fire department said earlier there was no danger to the public because the fumes were contained.
A hazardous materials team determined there was no need to evacuate the building, and the area where the fumes were released was isolated and ventilated.

Four UC Merced custodians were taken to Mercy Medical Center Monday night after a chemical spill in one of the buildings at the university, officials said.
The spill happened at the penthouse of the science and engineering building, which is the floor right above the third-floor and houses mechanical machines that help operate the building, said Kevin Creed, director of environmental health and safety. The spill leaked to a lab on the third-floor.
The spill involved anywhere from 10 to 15 gallons of water treatment chemicals used in industrial and large buildings to prevent mineral build-up in pipes, Creed said. The chemicals aren’t flammable and are similar to strong bleach.