IT Corporation

Last updated April 08, 2019

IT Corporation was a United States industrial company whose principal business was the disposal of industrial hazardous waste. At least as early as the 1970s the company was one of the largest market share holders of the liquid hazardous waste disposal sector in the western U.S. One of the principal facilities was a large set of industrial waste disposal ponds in Martinez, California.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment.

Martinez is a city in and the county seat of Contra Costa County, California, in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 35,824 at the 2010 census. The downtown is notable for its large number of preserved old buildings and antique shops. Martinez is located on the southern shore of the Carquinez Strait in the San Francisco Bay Area, directly facing the city center of Benicia and the southeastern end of Vallejo, California.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is a public agency that regulates the stationary sources of air pollution in the nine counties of California's San Francisco Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southwestern Solano, and southern Sonoma. The BAAQMD is governed by a 24-member Board of Directors composed of elected officials from each of the nine Bay Area counties. The board has the duty of adopting air pollution regulations for the district. It is one of 35 Air Quality Management Districts in California.

Air quality oversight

The proximity of the Martinez ponds to sensitive receptors including residences, led to odor complaints from individuals, especially on low wind velocity days when the ponds were upwind of residences. [1] IT established an "on call" air monitoring response to test odor whenever the city of Martinez received a citizen complaint. These tests, together with routine periodic monitoring, provided an extensive database [2] to assist in managing waste pond decision-making.

An odor, or odour, is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds that are generally found in low concentrations that humans and animals can perceive by their sense of smell. An odor is also called a "smell" or a "scent", which can refer to either a pleasant or an unpleasant odor.

Olfaction is a chemoreception that forms the sense of smell. Olfaction has many purposes, such as the detection of hazards, pheromones, and food. It integrates with other senses to form the sense of flavor. Olfaction occurs when odorants bind to specific sites on olfactory receptors located in the nasal cavity. Glomeruli aggregate signals from these receptors and transmit them to the olfactory bulb, where the sensory input will start to interact with parts of the brain responsible for smell identification, memory, and emotion. Often, land organisms will have separate olfaction systems for smell and taste, but water-dwelling organisms usually have only one system.

Water quality oversight

To protect groundwater, IT conducted regular groundwater and waste pond sampling to test for a range of analytes as well as pH. These test results were submitted to the county health department and the state water board. [3] Generally water quality testing confirmed the satisfactory operation of IT's liner control program.

In chemistry, pH is a scale used to specify how acidic or basic a water-based solution is. Acidic solutions have a lower pH, while basic solutions have a higher pH. At room temperature (25 °C), pure water is neither acidic nor basic and has a pH of 7.

Bankruptcy sale on winding up business

In early 2002, after IT declared bankruptcy, substantially all IT assets and some liabilities were sold to the Shaw Group. [4] Prior its bankruptcy, IT Corporation was involved in the Encanto Gas Holder decommissioning for San Diego Gas and Electric, and the IT project manager for the decommissioning is a named defendant in the environmental crimes trial United States v. San Diego Gas and Electric (2007). [5]

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References

↑ Planning File on IT Corporation Waste Ponds, City of Martinez Planning Department, 1975-1986
↑ Odor testing for IT waste ponds, Martinez, California, prepared for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District by Earth Metrics, 1977-1984
↑ Water quality Sampling Data for IT Corporation's Martinez Waste Ponds, Contra Costa County Health Department, 1974-1988
↑ The Shaw Group Inc. Signs Asset Purchase Agreement to Purchase Substantially All of the Assets of the IT Group, Inc.
↑ SDG&E asbestos-removal trial begins