Spillguard portable berms used in the Decontamination Process as Katrina Cleanup Continues in Louisiana

During the clean up of New Orleans, 89,000 large appliances from the St. Tammany Parish were scheduled for disposal. 

This was not a simple solution to the handling of the 40,000 refrigerators, which were collected from homes and businesses around New Orleans.  The Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality required removal of all the coolant and decontamination of the refrigerators before scrapping. 

Rain for Rent, Baton Rouge was contacted by the contractor to provide a 500 BBL Stainless Steel Frac tank to store water from the pressure washers, eighteen 12'x50' Spillguards to stage the refrigerators for the decontamination process, and three air-operated diaphragm (AOD) pumps with hoses to move contaminated water.

In St. Tammany Parish alone, 6,000 gallons of coolant were removed from the 40,000 refrigerators and 12,600 tons of metal were bundled and shipped to a scrap iron yard for reclamation.  One million pounds of hazardous household waste (pesticides, herbicides, battery acid, gas cylinders, oil base paint, etc.) were also collected for proper disposal.

The collections from St. Tammany Parish were just a small portion of the massive cleanup of the surrounding parishes.  In excess of 600,000 large appliances, 300,000 gallons of coolant and 100,000 tons of metal were collected, recycled or disposed.  Hazardous household waste exceeded 16,000,000 pounds. 

The Senior Response Manager for Environmental Quality Management stated, “My management team and I have appreciated all of Rain for Rent personnel's efforts to support our field operations here in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.  Rain for Rent has definitely been  an asset to our cleanup efforts.”

Spill Protection systems are an environmentally-safe solution.