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NPEP Success Story: LA World Airports Central Utilities Plant
City of Los Angeles, LA World Airports, Takes the Mercury Challenge, Removes 2,550 Pounds of Mercury
The City of Los Angeles, LA World Airports Central Utilities Plant (LAX) became a partner in the National Partnership for Environmental Priorities Program (NPEP) in February 2007. Los Angeles World Airports is a unique system of four airports owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles. Each of the airports – Los Angeles International (LAX), LA/Ontario International (ONT), Van Nuys (VNY) and LA/Palmdale Regional (PMD) – plays an integral role in helping to meet the regional demand for passenger, cargo and general aviation service in the 21st century. LAX is the world’s busiest origin and destination airport, and has been used as a general aviation field since 1928. In 2007, the airlines of LAX served 61.9 million passengers and handled two million tons of freight and mail. LAX handled 70 percent of the passengers, 75 percent of the air cargo, and 95 percent of the international passengers and cargo traffic in the five-county Southern California region.
LAX's NPEP Goal
In joining the NPEP program, LAX became the first commercial airport in the United States to voluntarily reduce mercury by taking the Mercury Challenge. Our goal was to remove 2,200 pounds of mercury from our Central Utility Plant by December 2007.
NPEP Project Implementation
The Central Utility Plant is a co-generation plant, providing heat and air conditioning to LAX’s passenger terminals and offices. The mercury-containing equipment at our Central Utility Plant included flow meters, calibration instruments, switches and manometers. The equipment utilized multiplied or reduced pneumatic signals, and required designing electronic control systems as a substitute. By removing and properly disposing of the mercury-containing instruments, we not only reduced the risk for mercury spills, but we decreased employee exposure and the potential for costly cleanups.
Hurdles Faced
The major challenge of this project was to keep the Central Utility Plant functioning during the replacement of the equipment. If the Central Utility Plant was off-line during the equipment replacement, all heating and cooling at LAX would cease. This was not an acceptable alternative. Since the machinery was in operating mode at all times, the removal of the mercury-containing equipment was a much more complicated and time-consuming procedure than originally anticipated.
Waste Minimization Results
Upon completing the project, LAX exceeded our NPEP goal by removing 51 instruments from our Central Utility Plant for a total of 2,550 pounds of mercury. The project also increased the awareness of the presence of mercury-containing instruments at LAX and resulted in the recent discovery of additional mercury-containing components, including eight calibration instruments, two manometers, one switch and a used spill kit. We are currently in the process of contracting for the proper disposal of these mercury-containing products. Once completed, this will increase the total amount of mercury removed from LAX to over 3,000 pounds.
Lessons Learned
While completing this project, we learned when a dedicated and hard-working staff of professionals works together; businesses can achieve large reductions in the amount of hazardous substances without interrupting daily operations. We anticipate that the efforts of our Construction and Maintenance staff will motivate all Los Angeles World Airports divisions to find ways to reduce the amounts of hazardous substances in use at all our airports and make LAX one of the nation’s greenest airports.