28   APPLICATION OF TWO REAL-TIME TOXICITY TESTS TO
MONITOR ROCKY FLATS PLANT WATER QUALITY
Holly Wolaver, Environmental Engineer, Surface Water Division
Sandra Spence, Research Engineer, Environmental Technologies
Ian Paton, Cooperative Education Student, Surface Water Division
EG&G Rocky Flats Plant
Golden, Colorado 80402-0464
INTRODUCTION
Rocky Flats Plant (RFP) is a Department of Energy (DOE) facility. Like other industrial facilities,
RFP is subject to Clean Water Act (CWA) regulations that require surface water discharge monitoring. Unlike most industrial facilities, RFP is also regulated under a Federal Facility Compliance
Agreement (FFCA) that requires development of water quality monitoring on a real-time basis.
RFP occupies an area of 6,550 acres (2,650 hectares) approximately 16 mi (26 km) northwest of
Denver (Figure 1). Approximately 2 million people live within a 50 mi (80 km) radius. Adjacent land
use is a mixture of agriculture, open space, industrial, and low-density residential housing.
The surface water system at RFP includes the upstream raw water sources, surface water features
within the RFP boundaries, and downstream surface waters. Potential sources of surface water
contamination upstream include background metals from historic Colorado mining operations,
gravel and clay mining operations, and railroad and highway maintenance activities. Overflows,
runoff, and alluvial recharge from these sources have the potential to affect the water quality of
Walnut, Woman, and Rock Creeks through surface water and alluvial groundwater sources (Figure
2).
RFP manages 150 to 200 million gallons per year of (non-process) surface water, which is ultimately
collected in detention ponds. Process water, often containing radioactive materials, is treated in a
separate system. Surface water management focuses on the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)
effluent originating from plantsite domestic water usage, and storm water runoff. RFP sanitary waste
streams are made up of domestic waste streams from sources such as cafeterias, restrooms, showers,
and some pretreated industrial waste streams (film processing, janitorial activities, industrial equipment cleaning, and cooling tower blowdown). Photo processing wastewater is treated to remove silver
Figure 1.    Rocky Flats plant location.
48th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, 1993 Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, Michigan 48118. Printed in
U.S.A.
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