Environmental Cleanup

Based on the Lectures Given during the Eurocourse on Technologies for Environmental Cleanup: Soil and Groundwater, held at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy, September 21--25, 1992

This report reviews the National Aeronautics & Space Administration's (NASA) environmental cleanup costs. It provides an assessment of NASA's: (1) determination of the extent of contamination it may be responsible for cleanup & progress in its cleanup program, (2) cost estimates for accomplishing cleanup, & (3) efforts to determine whether potentially responsible partiesÓ should share in cleanup costs. Includes a map showing location of NASA field facilities having potentially contaminated sites, plus other maps. Charts, tables & graphs.

The fiscal and technological limitations associated with cleaning up hazardous waste sites to background conditions have prompted responsible parties to turn to risk-based methods for environmental rememdiation. Environmental Cleanup at Navy Facilities reviews and critiques risk-based methods, including those developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Society of Testing and Materials. These critiques lead to the identification of eleven criteria that must be part of any risk-based methodology adopted by the Navy, a responsible party with a large number of complex and heavily contaminated waste sites. January

The number of hazardous waste sites across the United States has grown to approximately 217,000, with billions of cubic yards of soil, sediment, and groundwater plumes requiring remediation. Sites contaminated with recalcitrant contaminants or with complex hydrogeological features have proved to be a significant challenge to cleanup on every levelâ€"technologically, financially, legally, and sociopolitically. Like many federal agencies, the Navy is a responsible party with a large liability in hazardous waste sites. Environmental Cleanup at Navy Facilitites applies the concepts of adaptive management to complex, high-risk hazardous waste sites that are typical of the military, EPA, and other responsible parties. The report suggests ways to make forward progress at sites with recalcitrant contamination that have stalled prior to meeting cleanup goals. This encompasses more rigorous data collection and analysis, consideration of alternative treatment technologies, and comprehensive long-term stewardship.

The present book, Bioremediation for Sustainable Environmental Cleanup, has a compilation of seventeen chapters comprehensively describing the state-of-the-art on emerging bioremediation approaches employed for sustainable environmental clean-up of diverse environmental pollutants such as metal(loid)s, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dyes, pesticides, petroleum hydrocarbons, etc., by using bacteria, fungi, algae, higher plants, and novel materials like biohybrids, nano-biomaterials, and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4). Different bioremediation strategies such as biosorption, bioprecipitation, bioaccumulation, biodegradation, biotransformation etc. have been described in detail. The emphasis throughout, however, is on sustainable environmental clean-up. Eminent researchers from various countries located in diverse geographical areas, including Argentina, Canada, Germany, India, Pakistan, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, have contributed towards the chapters of this book.

While expected environmental cleanup costs for unneeded property arising from the 2005 BRAC round are not yet fully known, Department of Defense (DOD) data indicate that about $950 million will be needed to clean up these bases, adding to the estimated $13.2 billion total cleanup cost for the prior rounds. Although DOD's cleanup program has matured compared to prior BRAC rounds, there are still many unknowns and the cleanup estimate for the 2005 round should be considered preliminary. In fact, environmental cleanup costs are likely to increase as more intensive environmental investigations are undertaken, additional hazardous conditions are discovered, and future reuse plans are finalized. Furthermore, Congress does not have full visibility over the total cost of DOD's BRAC cleanup efforts because none of the four reports DOD prepares on various aspects of environmental cleanup present all types of costs past and future to complete cleanup at each base. Compiling a complete picture of all costs requires extracting information from multiple reports, as GAO has done to estimate the total cleanup cost for the four prior BRAC rounds. More complete and transparent cost information would assist Congress in conducting its oversight responsibilities for this multibillion dollar effort.