Category: Site Investigation and Remediation

EnviroForensics recently attended a technical presentation regarding chlorinated solvent groundwater remediation techniques at a former manufacturing facility using reductive dechlorination. A case study was presented wherein a groundwater remedy was implemented for a comingled TCE and 1,1,1-TCA plume. The groundwater remedy included application of emulsified vegetable oil and microbes to the subsurface, circulation of groundwater, and monitoring over a 2 year period. The treatment successfully reduced groundwater contamination, but did not address the source of contamination within the soils.

The source of soil contamination was left in-place and “capped” by the former building slab, which was reportedly cracked and in poor condition. Migration of contaminants can occur when rainwater percolates through the soil downward to the underlying groundwater. If a prescribed cap fails to prevent soil contaminant migration to the groundwater, a potential exists to re-contaminate the entire groundwater treatment area. In presented case study, the “cap” was cracked and in poor condition; and therefore, unsuitable to prevent rainwater percolation through the contaminated soils. If selected as a viable option, a cap must be appropriately designed and engineered to prevent migration of soil contamination to the groundwater.

Leaving a source of soil contamination in-place should be a major concern for business and property owners. A responsible party should consider the potential liabilities and obligations of a remedy that leaves any contamination in-place. Contamination left behind can result in long-term monitoring requirements for an indefinite period of time, in some cases 30 years or more; in addition to severely limiting the future reuse of the property. During the remedial planning phases of a project, it is important to choose a proven remedial strategy that will remove contamination across all media phases, thereby reducing future liability and long-term stewardship requirements (LTS).

LTS requirements typically include monitoring and assessing exposure to contaminants remaining in-place which could pose a risk. LTS plans are developed with specific strategies to monitor and assess contaminant exposure over an indefinite period of time. Monitoring can be required until contaminants reach a level that do not pose a risk. When dealing with recalcitrant contaminants like trichloroethene (TCE) and tetrachloroethene (PCE) that don’t readily breakdown in soils, this can be a very long time. The burden of LTS requirements can ultimately be placed on the responsible party owner indefinitely.

EnviroForensics’ expert team understands the potentially-high cost and lengthy responsibilities associated with long-term environmental problems–we know it’s essential to address contamination at its source. We assist property owners every day to develop appropriate plans for cleanup of soil and groundwater so that business and property owners understand the remediation plan and are not burdened with long-term environmental issues. Our team of environmental professionals possess the skills and experience to accurately assess environmental contamination and create cleanup strategies that minimize future liabilities. We know that remedial strategies including LTS do not fit into your overall business goals, which is why we make it our business to ensure remediation plans clean up your property and limit future liabilities and long-term requirements.

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About the Author

Jennifer Hallgarth, L.P.G.
Senior Project Manager
866.888.7911
jhallgarth@enviroforensics.com

Ms. Hallgarth is a licensed professional geologist with over 10 years of experience in environmental consulting with focus in insurance claim expertise.  She has been responsible for management of numerous chlorinated solvent and petroleum projects throughout various stages of investigation, remediation and closure; ranging from $1,000 to over $1,000,000.  Ms. Hallgarth has experience in due diligence, compliance, remediation, reporting and regulatory negotiation. She has directed numerous subsurface investigations of varying size and employed a variety of remedial technologies including: soil excavation, air sparge, soil vapor extraction, multi-phase extraction, and chemical oxidant injection.

Ms. Hallgarth has conducted various vapor intrusion assessments including property access coordination and risk-communication with residents, business owners and stakeholders.  She has employed vapor mitigation using sub-slab and sub-membrane depressurization systems, and other techniques to control indoor air exposure.

Ms. Hallgarth has experience in file reviews, forensic investigation design, reserve estimating, claim coverage evaluation, cost allocating, settlement, litigation support and third-party oversight.  She has interfaced and negotiated with property owners, insurance carrier groups, attorneys and other stakeholders.

It is a common occurrence for some environmental investigations to be completed over the course of several years.  It is a known rule of thumb in the environmental industry that the longer an investigation takes, the more expensive it is. Additionally, every extra dollar spent to better understand the distribution of impacts results in a multi-dollar savings on remediation activities. It is our goal at EnviroForensics to complete our investigations in a meaningful and efficient manner that provides sufficient data for decision making, while minimizing the amount of time and money required to complete the work.

Last year, EnviroForensics began an environmental investigation at a former dry cleaning business and current coin-operated laundromat located in Indianapolis where historical operations resulted in a release of chlorinated solvents to soil and groundwater beneath the property.  In September 2015, EnviroForensics completed a high-resolution, dynamic investigation over the course of only two weeks, which allowed our team of experts to fully understand the nature and extent of subsurface contamination in that short time window.  Over 60 borings were advanced and over 450 soil and groundwater samples were collected and analyzed onsite with a mobile laboratory.  EnviroForensics was able to evaluate sample data and make real time decisions with regard to locations for additional soil borings and focus the developing investigation to locations that were most appropriate.  Most importantly, the project team worked alongside the business owner to complete the work, including advancing 6 soil borings inside the building, in a strategic manner that allowed the laundromat to remain open for business.

In the four months that followed, EnviroForensics installed permanent groundwater monitoring wells and completed vapor intrusion exposure assessments at the Site and nearby properties to determine that no potential for contaminant exposure was present.  In February 2016, EnviroForensics staff submitted a Remediation Work Plan to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, including a detailed evaluation of the Conceptual Site Model and an assessment of potential remedial technologies.  Because the investigation provided such a dense data set with regard to soil and groundwater contamination, very few assumptions needed to be made when developing the remedial and regulatory closure approach.  Often times when insufficient data is available, an overly aggressive remedial approach is prescribed.  In this case, the project team confidently selected a remedial strategy best suited to address contamination at the Site and eliminate the potential for future exposure.

EnviroForensics recognizes that many of our clients wish to identify their environmental liabilities and get them resolved as soon as possible.  By completing the investigation in an aggressive manner and preparing the Remediation Work Plan in less than one year, EnviroForensics has been able to provide peace of mind to our client, with their knowing that a scientifically sound cleanup strategy will soon be in place.  Developing a detailed Conceptual Site Model will also allowed EnviroForensics to more accurately determine the costs associated with the upcoming remediation and closure activities. The extra effort upfront during the investigation is expected to result in a significant cost savings over the life of the project. The shorter than average timing of investigation activities alone likely saved the project hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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About the Author

Matthew Bono
Project Manager
866.888.7911
mbono@enviroforensics.com

Mr. Bono has over 3 years of professional experience in environmental consulting. He has been involved in subsurface investigations and remediation activities at facilities and properties impacted with chlorinated solvents, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons throughout the state of Indiana. Matt has assisted with data evaluation and reporting on all phases of projects from investigations through closure and has provided project management services including work scope development, budget management, and personnel management. He has provided oversight during remedial plan implementation, incorporating multiple technological approaches including pump and treat systems, soil vapor extraction (SVE), enhanced anaerobic bioremediation, thermal desorption, and soil excavation. Matt also has experience in contaminant transport and groundwater flow modeling. He has worked closely with clients and subcontractors, as well as state and federal regulators.

While “release” is a common word used frequently in the English language, it has a varied and convoluted definition when it comes to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”), which governs liability for cleaning up hazardous waste. 42 U.S.C. Section 9601 (22) defines “release” as “any spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, discharging, injecting, escaping, leaching, dumping, or disposing into the environment.” Historically, the term “release” has only dealt with liquids and solids being dumped on land or getting into rivers and streams, but Pakootas v. Teck Cominco Metals, Ltd., currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, could give rise to air emissions being included as a source of CERCLA liability.

The Ninth Circuit previously held in Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice et al. v. BNSF Railways; Union Pacific Railroad Company 764 F3d 1019 (2014) that particulate emissions from diesel engines did not constitute a release under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) as the RCRA definition of “disposal” does not include the word “emitting.” While CERCLA’s definition of “release” includes emissions, it takes its definition of “disposal” directly from RCRA – a fact that Teck is arguing is pivotal in determining whether the hazardous particulate matter it emitted, which later fell to the ground, gave rise to CERCLA liability.

However, the plaintiff/appellees and the federal government argue that regardless of the absence of the word “emitting” in RCRA’s definition of disposal, the emission of hazardous waste into the air where it later settles and impacts human health and the environment is a type of disposal and to rule otherwise “would negate disposal in countless cases [and] put polluters beyond [Superfund’s] reach.”

Although the Ninth Circuit ruled against defining particulate matter from diesel exhaust as a matter of RCRA disposal, there are several routes it could take to distinguish Pakootas from Center for Community Action, not least of all the exclusion of petroleum as a hazardous waste under RCRA as a distinguishing factor between hazardous particulates that are leaving Teck’s facility and those leaving diesel engines – if RCRA can separate petroleum out from other hazardous materials, it is hard to see how the Ninth Circuit could not do the same in interpreting CERCLA.

In the event that the Ninth Circuit does find for Pakootus, industry could find itself facing increased scrutiny and liability for emissions, as well as a greater need to file Part A RCRA notices regarding characteristic hazardous waste air emissions.

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About the Author:

Justin Gifford, Esq. 
General Counsel, Compliance Manager
866.888.7911
jgifford@enviroforensics.com

 

Justin Gifford is a licensed Attorney and permitting expert with additional experience in the technical side of EnviroForensics.  Mr. Gifford functions as EnviroForensics’ chief legal officer and has expertise in corporate contracts and structure, labor and employment, land use and permitting as well as practical experience in permitting with federal, state and local agencies. He is well versed in researching, locating and interpreting regulatory requirements and bringing those to bear in assisting EnviroForensics and its subsidiaries in complying with those rules whether through permitting activity or compliance auditing.  Mr. Gifford additionally works with exterior clients on a consulting basis to achieve regulatory compliance and be aware of upcoming regulatory changes, including those found under RCRA, CERCLA, TSCA, the CWA and the CAA.

As General Counsel for EnviroForensics, Mr. Gifford is responsible for evaluating, developing and implementing company policy, addressing corporate filing & reporting requirements and providing other legal services as necessary.

As a scientist, Mr. Gifford has conducted remediation projects ranging in size from retail gas stations and dry cleaners to large-scale municipal properties and industrial sites and has experience working within voluntary and enforcement cleanup programs operated by various State agencies and the U.S. EPA. Mr. Gifford is responsible for obtaining site access from properties adjacent to client properties and attaining permission to operate in municipal rights of way and has experience in collecting and interpreting soil, groundwater and gas data.

Long Term Stewardship, or LTS, is the most recent hot topic in the business of environmental claims, and understanding it is extremely important for constraining long-tail cleanup costs. In site cleanup and closure strategies that focus on risk-based concepts, the elimination of human health pathways is the determining factor for closure.  Often, closure plans include intentions to manage exposure through a series of institutional controls designed to limit future land use, although no provisions are in place to ensure that they are maintained following regulatory closure. Recent developments in environmental policy at the State and Federal regulatory levels are promoting the creation of guidelines requiring the need for specific LTS plans describing the monitoring and assessment activities to be performed.  Due to the potential for extremely long time periods over which LTS must be performed, the associated costs are high.  High enough, frequently, that monetary decisions are made to remove a larger amount of contamination during initial cleanup activities to limit the breadth or length of LTS requirements. With increased regulation of post-closure LTS activities, it has become, and will remain, extremely important to quantify LTS costs prior to finalizing remedial strategies.

Two recent industry events provided a special emphasis on this issue, as business owners, regulators, environmental consultants and insurance carriers attempt to fully understand how to quantify and evaluate the impact of LTS costs.  This evaluation is extremely important during the planning stages of site cleanup activities. The 2015 Annual Conference of the Federation of Environmental and Toxic Tort Issues (FETTI), held October 7-9, 2015, invited four environmental industry experts to discuss the issue. Attorney David R. Gillay (Barnes & Thornburg) presented legal considerations, Theresa Evanson (WDNR Remediation & Redevelopment) presented some challenges faced while exploring LTS issues in Wisconsin, Sherri Estes (U.S. EPA) discussed the Federal perspective, and Jeff Carnahan (EnviroForensics) presented a detailed analysis of how LTS costs and active remediation costs are balanced during remedial planning.

A seminar presented on October 22, 2015 by the Midwestern States Environmental Consultants Association (MSECA) also focused on LTS issues.  Representatives from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. EPA were on hand to present information and lead LTS discussions. The message delivered by the agency representatives was that LTS requirements will definitely be regulated in the near future, both at the State and the Federal level.  As presented in another case study by Jeff Carnahan, there are many times where larger upfront capital expenditures, in the form of active remediation, will reduce overall project costs and shorten timeframes when upcoming LTS requirements are considered.

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About the Author:

Jeff Carnahan, L.P.G.
Vice President, Chief Technical Officer

866-888-7911
jcarnahan@enviroforensics.com

Jeff Carnahan is a Licensed Professional Geologist (LPG) with over 17 years of environmental consulting and remediation experience.  Mr. Carnahan’s expertise has focused on the investigation and interpretation of subsurface releases of hazardous substances for the purpose of evaluating and controlling the risk and cost implications to his clients.  While managing sites ranging in size from retail gas stations and dry cleaners to large manufacturing facilities, Mr. Carnahan has amassed extensive experience working with releases of chlorinated solvents within voluntary and enforcement cleanup programs for various State agencies and the U.S. EPA. Throughout his career Mr. Carnahan has provided technical support to the legal community regarding the cause, origin, transport and potential cost of environmental releases. Additionally, Mr. Carnahan has over 13 years of experience in the investigation and mitigation of vapor intrusion issues and leads the VI Assessment Team at EnviroForensics. His experience and insight make Mr. Carnahan uniquely qualified to advise his clients on potential environmental liability issues and cost implications.

In the past number of years, regulatory agencies have come to consider risk-based site closures an acceptable cleanup strategy. The old-school approach relied upon a standard set of exposure assumptions expressed through default cleanup criteria that were applied to every site. This meant that they had to be conservative enough to be protective of human health and the environment in every possible site setting. While this provided clear guidelines, it was not always practical or even possible for these standards to be met, and many times the default criteria were overly conservative. Because of this, more and more state regulatory agencies have come to accept risk-based closures.

A major difference between risk-based closure and the traditional approach is that risk-based closure is based on site-specific exposure conditions. The primary objective of risk-based closures is preventing human or ecological exposure at unacceptable health levels, and because of this, it is possible that soil and groundwater cleanup may not even be necessary if the levels of contamination do not pose a risk to human health or the environment. However, if contamination is left in place a series of institutional and engineered controls are necessary to ensure that site conditions at the time of closure remain constant.

Following the issuance of documents officially recognizing risk-based cleanup approaches, the environmental consulting and legal community jumped on the opportunity to apply these methods as a cost saving measure. For example, consultants will argue that if contaminated groundwater is not being used for drinking water, there should be no drinking water exposure pathway; or because no one would be coming into physical contact with the contaminated water, there should be no dermal contact exposure pathway.

While this may seem to make sense, it is not an argument that is easy for regulatory agents to support. If all contaminated sites were handled this way, little to no cleanup would occur and contaminant conditions would continue for decades. This leaves little confidence to regulatory agents that the site’s long-term risks will be managed. Additionally, as the regulation of institutional and engineered controls becomes more stringent, the cost of these long term stewardship efforts is beginning to rival the cost of actual cleanup activities.

In the long run, it is best to actively remediate source areas and create a long-term monitoring strategy. This is the approach used by EnviroForensics, and we have obtained more regulatory closures of sites contaminated with dry cleaning solvents in the last five years than any other company. President and CEO, Stephen Henshaw, further details this approach in his article “Risk-Based Site Closures Should Include Remediating the Source Area” (as seen in the March 2014 issue of Cleaner & Launderer).

One of the issues that arises when dealing with an environmental investigation on your property, in addition to the obvious concern regarding the potential contamination itself, is the way that contamination can affect your, or your company’s, public image. The reflexive reaction may be to hide the issue as much as possible, but doing so can have negative ramifications in the long run. The best strategy typically includes creating a communications plan that explains the situation and allows you to stay in front of the issue.

If your site does have contamination, you will likely be required to monitor neighboring sites, as well. In this case, a communications plan would come in extremely handy.  Handouts could be presented to the owners and tenants of these sites in order to inform and outline the sampling process and provide any health risk details, request site access to off-site buildings, and establish timelines for action if contamination exists. If VI sampling or monitoring will need to occur at homes and buildings located over a larger area, such as an entire neighborhood, a more formal communications plan is advised that would likely also include a group information meeting.

In his article “Dealing with the Perception of Risk: The Value of Having an Effective Communications Plan” (as seen in the October 2013 issue of Cleaner & Launderer), Stephen Henshaw, President and CEO of EnviroForensics, explains the importance of an effective communications plan for businesses dealing with environmental investigations. He lists several elements that such a plan should have, including:

• Establishing the protocol of informing off-site property owners and occupants of the sampling results,
• Approaching off-site property owners and occupants to inform them of the process being undertaken and request access to their property or building to conduct additional sampling,
• Sharing the results with the parties,
• Explaining any existing exposure concerns,
• Proposing any necessary exposure mitigation or elimination measures that would be undertaken to protect the affected people.

Ultimately, a strong communications plan in these circumstances will allow you and your company to explain the situation to those who will be affected and will provide opportunities for discussions between the parties at risk and a technical expert and/or regulator. It is best to be forthright with and transparent to the community, avoiding any perception by individuals or the media as being calculating or deceptive. This may not always be the most comfortable or easiest approach, but it will pay off in the end.