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a FALL CREEK ENGINEERING, INC. Civil. Environmental. Water Resource Engineering and Sciences l Tel.(831)426-9054 P.O.Box 7894,Santa Cruz,CA 95061 Fax.(831}426-4932 'I l Tim O'Brien June 7 2004 ,a Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board 11020 Sun Center Drive#200 ,SUN 1 ZaO Rancho Cordova, CA 95670-6114 ElVhi •j M`-'iIT HEALTH I Subject: Salinity Reduction Evaluation—Alpine Meats, Stockton, Califprp,>iI7)`aERVICES i III Dear Mr. O'Brien: On behalf of Alpirie'Meats, Inc. (Alpine'),'Fall Creek Engineering, Inc. (FCE) has prepared this letter report to summarize our review of salinity reduction measures and water quality data for the facility. As previously discussed with your agency, the Alpine has implemented measures to attempt to reduce the discharge of high salinity waste into their process water. Most notable, the facility recently purchased a reverse osmosis (RO) system to condition the I boiler feed water. This system replaces y p es the sodium chloride softening system that was I j identified as producing a substantial quantity of salt in the effluent. II, Alpine purchased and installed the RO unit in December 2003. However, due to F condition,of the domestic water system, which supplies water to the RO unit the system Jt• l was not fully operational until the middle of May 2004. During the initial startup of the i ' RO'unit Alpine discovered that the main water system was entraining a'substant'ial amount of air ui the's which can potentially cause damage to the'RO membranes and pumping system. Therefore, over the past several months the RO unit was.used on l an intermittent basis until the problems could be corrected. At this time the RO unit is in full operation and the softener system is not in use. I To evaluate the progress of Alpine's efforts to reduce total dissolved solids from the process water FCE has compiled and analyzed effluent water quality data from January �-;A&`—2003.throiigli=April 2-004777-7— Review 004Review of Process Water Dissolved Solids Table 1 presents a summary of weekly total dissolved solids (TDS), sodium (Na) and l chloride (CI) effluent concentrations measured over the past seventeen months. Figure 1 f presents the data set graphically. The data shows that during the winter 2003 and spring } k 2004 time the concentration of TDS,Na and Cl concentrations were generally lower than doling the Summer of 2003. The lower concentration values observed during"tile jwinter i is attributed rainfall'entdring the•ponds: it I� 1•^.If;'� . ... 1 . ,,nl° .:i" cT -,..r .i, a _ 'j� 4,,r' , ,I •r i:... F 1