March 2015

One of TFA’s largest, non-production related, capital projects was completed this past November; the on-site Stormwater Treatment Facility. With its completion, TFA is now able to meet or exceed new state and local requirements as a 1200-Z Stormwater Permit holder. The permit allows us to discharge storm water into the Willamette River, PROVIDED we meet the strict limits on “Metals, Oil & Grease and Suspended Solids” spelled out in the permit.

To achieve the required compliance, the project consisted of three phases. The first phase consisted of changes to the existing infrastructure that handles our storm water runoff, which required major modifications and additions to our underground piping system in order to collect and send all the storm water to one location on our property.

Phase two was the storage of the collected storm water, which was accomplished by constructing a 95,000 gallon water storage tank in the specified location. This is the most noticeable feature of the project.

The third and final phase of the project was the filtration system that filters and cleans the collected storm water. The process of cleaning the storm water is done through the use of various filtering pods, recycling valves, and micro-fine filters. The filtration and process cycles are controlled with state of the art software and microprocessors.

The 1200-Z Stormwater Permit requires us to process 91% of the storm water generated from annual rainfall, or as we learned from Hydrology studies done during the design phase of the project, 705 gallons a minute (gpm)! The 95,000 gallon storage tank allows for a more manageable filtration, and a process rate of 120 gpm.

Since the system went online in late November of 2014, 3.2 million gallons have been processed in accordance with our permit.