Environmental Restoration: Part 4 - Phase 1 Field Investigations

In Environmental Restoration: Part 4 - Phase 1 Field Investigations, you'll learn ...

• Understand the value of re-sampling existing monitoring wells to compare results with earlier analyses performed by others
• How to determine the geologic setting of the waste disposal site
• How to determine the nature of the bedrock and the type of soil cover and their properties
• How to determine the particle size of the site soils

Overview

Credit: 3 PDH

Length: 46 pages

This course, Part 4, is the fourth in a series of six sequential courses, Parts 1 through 6, that present the history and steps taken to remediate the environmental hazards created by the land disposal of chemical and radioactive wastes on the campus of a research institute.

The practice of shallow land burial of hazardous wastes was widely used throughout the US between the 1960s and the 1980s. However, since the late 1980s both federal and state legislations were promulgated requiring the environmental regulatory agencies throughout the US to investigate operating, decommissioned and abandoned landfills of all types having in mind the ultimate goal of mitigating the impacts these waste disposal sites have on the natural environment. This series of courses, are written from the perspective of a Manager who leads a team charged with the implementation of an environmental Remedial Investigation (RI), Feasibility Study (FS) and Engineered Remediation (ER) of a hazardous waste disposal site. The courses draw from numerous environmental investigations managed by the author across the US. As such, the scenarios that are presented are similar to those a professional environmental engineering practitioner faces in real life.

The case that is developed here is used as an example and a vehicle to present and discuss concepts and project implementation strategies gained through years of experience. This information is not usually found or taught in traditional or standard academic courses dealing with environmental issues or investigations. In their entity this series of courses can be considered an implementation guide for conducting environmental investigations at hazardous waste disposal sites. The environmental problems in the example scenario are those encountered at a decommissioned hazardous and low-level radioactive waste disposal site owned by a research institute. The presentations are sequenced in the order in which investigations would be conducted by an environmental consulting firm contracted to perform and supervise the work that would be done in order to assess the magnitude of the problem and develop appropriate mitigation strategies for the rehabilitation of the site.

This course, Part 4: Phase 1 Field Investigations, briefly reviews the key points of the previous courses in the sequence (Parts 1 through 3), and presents the results of a new round of groundwater and soil sampling and analysis using the approach and testing procedures presented in Part 3 of this course series. This information is then compared to the earlier sampling and testing results obtained by the State Regulatory Agencies to allow evaluation of the validity of the earlier tests.

The results of this Phase of work allowed the development of a preliminary groundwater contour map and clearly indicated the presence of a plume of contamination moving downhill from the burial site. The report issued at the end of this phase of work was reviewed by several State Regulatory Agencies and a number of questions and concerns were raised. The questions and the Consultant’s responses, on behalf of the Institute, are included in the course as well as the press coverage received once the report was made public.