In Situ Remediation Advisory Services

Introduction - It's Time For a Change

After having worked on in situ remediation projects for over 20 years, I’ve decided to focus all my attention to helping responsible parties, regulators, consultants, and attorneys make investments in in situ remediation that result in a positive remediation return on investment (RORI).

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Let’s face it, treatment of chemicals that have worked their way into groundwater is a complex task, and to date our industries track record has been hit and miss, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted. As a result, we have relied on a variety of other approaches to get regulatory relief, e.g., risk assessment, institutional controls, and MNA for example. Not that there is anything wrong with this, however as a result we need to realize that we are leaving chemicals in the ground for future generations to deal with.

I’ve been involved in hundreds of projects across the U.S. Denmark, Columbia, and Canada, from high resolution site characterization, chemistry selection and dosing, and injection design. Most important is field implementation, e.g., injection or fracturing. As the saying goes “I know a lot because I have seen a lot.”

These projects have occurred in multiple site conditions and contaminants including petroleum, solvents, metals, and PFAS. Technologies that I’m intimately familiar with are ISCO, Bio, ISCR and activated carbon sequestration. I know how they work, how to design them, how to inject them, and I know what kind of performance they are capable of.

As a remediation contractor, I didn’t have the luxury to always provide recommendations on approaches and expectations that had a low probability of success. I must admit it was quite frustrating and I promised myself that eventually I would give back to the industry by sharing this knowledge and perspective with those who can benefit the most. Obviously, those paying the bills are my highest priority and others discussed above who rely on meeting their customer expectations.

I’ve seen projects with high remediation performance expectations fail for the following reasons:

Characterization:

Lack of understanding of contaminant flux or mass distribution for effective targeting to achieve contact and residence time for effective treatment. Even when high resolution characterization is performed, the inability to transfer this knowledge into actionable and targeted remediation plans.

Design:

Selection of chemistries based on bench scale testing versus what chemistries will work best in site lithology based on contaminant mass distribution, persistence, and residence time, is often the root cause of not meeting expectations. Too often liquid amendments are injected into fine grained soils or conversely solid amendments into coarse grained soils. Then when it comes to heterogeneous sites, there is greater confusion on how to best approach.

Basing final designs that use “rules of thumb” or “default values” from chemistry vendors, that were only meant to be utilized for budget estimates. Important design considerations like Radius of Influence and supporting injection volumes usually have no scientific design basis. Also, scavenging, or catalytic reaction considerations are often not based on actual site data.

Injection:

At the end of the day, if the above considerations are adequately addressed, injection is usually the most critical component to achieving results, but often treated like a commodity field service with no true oversight of what is actually accomplished in the field. Today most traditional injection contractors are trying to win work and then implement as cost effectively as possible to achieve a reasonable margin. They really have no vested interest in your project results, and if you don’t manage them very closely, they will default to their standard, everyday practices, which is primarily a “get it in the ground” mentality. In many cases you may not get an experienced crew to implement your project, or they may not disclose what actual equipment they are going to provide. It’s time to select the best injection contractors, hold their feet to the fire regarding scope of work and injection performance parameters, to make sure this final investment in the project is realized to get the results you are looking for.

Currently, responsible parties and their consultants are relying on small companies with low revenue performance to perform injection work. Based on my experience they have their hands full remaining profitable, finding qualified employees, training, and retaining them, scheduling too much work at the same time, not resetting between projects, and limited funds to support investment in new and backup equipment, R&D, and providing a solid safety program. Obviously, it’s critical that you know who you are subcontracting with and their financial condition.

Summary:

In situ remediation takes considerable investments and time to meet regulatory or internal business expectations. Our industry is not very well regulated as to the quality of the remediation being performed. No one provides bullet-proof guarantees, or should they be expected to, for their designs, chemistries, or field implementation services. As a result, and in my opinion, much of the hundreds of millions that have been invested, often quite foolishly, have not moved the needle forward towards cleaning up sites and limiting risk and liability.

Based on my experience, I can help you ensure every dollar invested in remediation is benchmarked against realistic results and that the designs, approaches, chemistries and injection contactors are providing you the best value and chance of success. There is too much money at stake not to get this right, and after over 20 years of doing the same thing, it is time for change.