Sundance Lumber Company, Inc.
Location: 1001 N. 35th Street, Springfield
Activity at this Location: Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. has a lumber manufacturing operation at this location.
Discharges: Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. has Clean Water Act permit coverage for two types of discharges: industrial stormwater discharges and cooling water discharges. Sundance Lumber’s industrial stormwater discharges are regulated under Oregon’s statewide general industrial stormwater permit, and its cooling water discharges are regulated under Oregon’s statewide general permit for discharges of “non-contact cooling water, defrost water, heat pump transfer water . . . cooling tower blowdown[, and] cooling and sump water discharges from hydropower facilities.” Both permits were issued by and are administered by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
Oregon’s statewide general industrial stormwater permit allows permit holders to discharge industrial stormwater provided that they prepare and implement a stormwater pollution control plan, perform required monitoring of discharges, and report the results of this monitoring to the DEQ. Oregon’s statewide general industrial stormwater permit includes “benchmarks” for total copper, total lead, total zinc, pH, total suspended solids, and total oil & grease, and if monitoring of stormwater discharges reveals exceedance of any of these benchmarks, the permit holder must review and, if necessary, revise its stormwater pollution control plan accordingly. The full text of Oregon’s statewide general industrial stormwater permit can be viewed in a PDF file at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Web site.
Oregon’s _statewide general permit for discharges of “non-contact cooling water, defrost water, heat pump transfer water . . . cooling
tower blowdown[, and] cooling and sump water discharges from hydropower facilities”_ was issued by DEQ on August 28, 1996, expired on July 31, 2001, and includes discharge limits for flow, temperature, total residual chlorine, and pH, and requires monitoring of all of the above and monthly reporting of monitoring results to the DEQ. The permit’s flow limits do not apply to hydropower facilities, and the permit also includes a limit on discharges of biocides and water treatment chemicals. The full text of this permit can be viewed in a PDF file at the Oregon Department of Envrionmental Quality (DEQ) Web site.
Where Discharges Go: Discharges from this facility flow toward Q Street Floodway via the City of Springfield storm sewer system. (Q Street Floodway flows across Springfield and into Eugene, ultimately merging with the Canoe Canal in Alton Baker Park, with the combined flow of these two waters going to the duck pond in Alton Baker park, which in turn flows into the Willamette River just upstream from the DeFazio and Ferry Street bridges.
Compliance Summary: The concentration of total suspended solids in stormwater discharged from Sundance Lumber Company, Inc.‘s N. 35th Street facility has repeatedly exceeded the applicable industrial stormwater permit benchmark of 130 milligrams per liter since at least 2000. Oregon Clean Water Action Project sent Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. a letter on behalf of Willamette Riverkeeper in March of 2007 informing Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. that Willamette Riverkeeper would intiate a Clean Water Act enforcement action against Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. unless it addressed the concentration of total suspended solids in its stormwater discharges. Sundance Lumber Company, Inc. responded to our letter with a letter outlining Sundance Lumber Company, Inc.‘s past efforts to address elevated levels of total suspended solids in its stormwater discharges, and its recent contracting of Mid-State Industrial Service to perform additional vacuumng of the site. December, 2007 monitoring results showed a total suspended solids concentration of 167 mg/l, which is closer to the permit benchmark of 130 mg/l. Monitoring results for July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009 are due at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in July of 2009, and OCWAP will review these results as soon as we are able to get access to them.
During the summer of 2008, OCWAP discovered that Sundance Lumber was illegally discharging log sprinkling water from its facility, and brought this to the attention of the City of Springfield and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. This led to Sundance Lumber’s modification of its log sprinkling practices so that log sprinkling discharges are collected in a 5,000 gallon holding tank for reuse in subsequent log sprinkling.
Last updated: Jun 22, 2009