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Work Stuff
Apr 22, 2024 17:10:18 GMT -5
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Post by richm on Apr 22, 2024 17:10:18 GMT -5
Leaving it buried would be logical. But there is way too much money, in finding the contamination and forcing remediation. It's a whole industry now. As others have said, buying a corner lot on a busy highway, might be a good decision. Catching a $10 million clean up on that same lot. Not so good. Leaving it buried is illogical The petroleum will flow and spread. The good thing is, it floats on top of the water table. It all depends on the groundwater gradient. Some areas have a string downward movement. Bithlo and dunnellon both have areas where the gas station groundwater impacts went down 100 or more feet and affected drinking wells in Bithlo. Not all do that and many gas stations just have this little area of soil and gw impacts that dont migrate far… easy to clean up during construction. Impacts arent the end of a project and there is less leniency involved when they dig into stinky soil. Someone is gonna call fdep and report it.
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Post by cadman on Apr 22, 2024 17:53:26 GMT -5
Leaving it buried is illogical The petroleum will flow and spread. The good thing is, it floats on top of the water table. It all depends on the groundwater gradient. Some areas have a string downward movement. Bithlo and dunnellon both have areas where the gas station groundwater impacts went down 100 or more feet and affected drinking wells in Bithlo. Not all do that and many gas stations just have this little area of soil and gw impacts that dont migrate far… easy to clean up during construction. Impacts arent the end of a project and there is less leniency involved when they dig into stinky soil. Someone is gonna call fdep and report it.I know this well. One company I worked for was selling sites after I left, most were under the state program, but two had new spills not covered. Both had to be cleaned up. One wasn't too bad at $50,000 or so, but the other was an old Bulk plant and they had a lot of dirt removed. I saw the size of the hole. I heard it was expensive to clean it up. There was debate with the state that it was an old spill and should have been covered under the program. I know the environmental insurance company, many lawyers, and lots of money was spent to solve the problem. Never heard who paid what when it settled. One reason why I never wanted to own the property or the gasoline equipment. I let the petroleum guys handle that part and I just rent the store and sell their gas. Does your company handle the phase two inspections of these sites?
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Apr 22, 2024 20:11:06 GMT -5
On another note. Our earth even tries to heal itself from the contamination created in LUST sites.
We had a site in a municipality that was almost completely clean after the tanks and the fill immediately around the tanks was removed. It took over 10 years but the petroleum was eaten up.
They also have microbes that they “plant” in the ground that feed on the petroleum contaminants. It’s slower than removal of the soils and treatment of the removed materials but it works. There is a new car dealership a few miles away that is located upon a site that was very contaminated and was cleaned up with these microbes.
Just my 2 cents.
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Work Stuff
Apr 22, 2024 20:43:12 GMT -5
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Post by swampdog on Apr 22, 2024 20:43:12 GMT -5
Smart move Cad. Today’s monitoring of fuel tanks usually enables leaking tank impacts to be addressed sooner minimizing down gradient contamination and recovery costs. The older leaking tanks can result in the leaked fuel plume having to be evaluated through expensive monitoring wells establishing the extent of the contamination. After that, the construction of recovery wells with pumps, and air strippers can be necessary to clean up the contamination. This can take a long time depending on specific circumstances.
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Work Stuff
Apr 22, 2024 20:59:08 GMT -5
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Apr 22, 2024 20:59:08 GMT -5
Smart move Cad. Today’s monitoring of fuel tanks usually enables leaking tank impacts to be addressed sooner minimizing down gradient contamination and recovery costs. The older leaking tanks can result in the leaked fuel plume having to be evaluated through expensive monitoring wells establishing the extent of the contamination. After that, the construction of recovery wells with pumps, and air strippers can be necessary to clean up the contamination. This can take a long time depending on specific circumstances. It sounds like you have had some experience with some major contamination. We have one “old” gas station site (circa 1930 - 1970) that has the “plume” extending underneath Harlem Ave (42A). It’s a main road north to south. They are trying to figure out what they are going to do with it now. The clean up estimate (post tank removal) was in the neighborhood of 400k in 1994. This is definitely a problem site. A friend of mine owns a historic site that is contaminated. It’s one of Andrew Carnegie’s US Steel coke plants. Carnegie set up funds for cleanup of his sites. Forethought from the “richest man in the world” around 1920 (?).
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Post by richm on Apr 22, 2024 21:09:38 GMT -5
It all depends on the groundwater gradient. Some areas have a string downward movement. Bithlo and dunnellon both have areas where the gas station groundwater impacts went down 100 or more feet and affected drinking wells in Bithlo. Not all do that and many gas stations just have this little area of soil and gw impacts that dont migrate far… easy to clean up during construction. Impacts arent the end of a project and there is less leniency involved when they dig into stinky soil. Someone is gonna call fdep and report it.I know this well. One company I worked for was selling sites after I left, most were under the state program, but two had new spills not covered. Both had to be cleaned up. One wasn't too bad at $50,000 or so, but the other was an old Bulk plant and they had a lot of dirt removed. I saw the size of the hole. I heard it was expensive to clean it up. There was debate with the state that it was an old spill and should have been covered under the program. I know the environmental insurance company, many lawyers, and lots of money was spent to solve the problem. Never heard who paid what when it settled. One reason why I never wanted to own the property or the gasoline equipment. I let the petroleum guys handle that part and I just rent the store and sell their gas. Does your company handle the phase two inspections of these sites? I’ve worked on all levels of finding, sampling, and remediating the sites. Now all i do is find and verify the presence of contamination. The state requires an engineer to design remediation systems now. Geologists can sign off on all phases except the design. I’m a Geologist. I’m very experienced in level 2 sampling and they let me do the excavation type remediation under my seal on non-program sites.
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Post by stc1993 on Apr 23, 2024 3:26:48 GMT -5
We had an old radiator repairman retire. His shop was on the edge of town by the Flint river bridge. He donated it to the city. Us taxpayers got stuck with a big bill cleaning up heavy metals from the radiators. He had been in business a long time. I forget how much it cost. We also have 3 EPA Superfund sites at USMC base.
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Post by richm on Apr 23, 2024 6:22:10 GMT -5
We had an old radiator repairman retire. His shop was on the edge of town by the Flint river bridge. He donated it to the city. Us taxpayers got stuck with a big bill cleaning up heavy metals from the radiators. He had been in business a long time. I forget how much it cost. We also have 3 EPA Superfund sites at USMC base. That's "heavy stuff". Amazing how bad the previous "normal practices". Like pouring the used oil from a car to the ground and making sure the catch bucket was upside down so it didn't fill with rain water... Burying stuff you didn't want laying around.
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Post by cadman on Apr 23, 2024 6:47:09 GMT -5
I have heard old dry cleaner locations are pretty bad for contamination. Not sure if it is true.
We have one giant superfund site here in Gainesville. It is the old Koppers and Cabot sites that were next to each other. There were old creosote pits they just covered up with dirt when the plants closed. Koppers treated telephone poles with creosote and Cabot made carbon black and other chemicals. The neighborhoods around it sued both companies due to the ground pollution. It is a huge mess that will probably never get cleaned. A shopping center sits on part of the property.
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Post by swampdog on Apr 23, 2024 9:52:12 GMT -5
Old dry cleaning sites are notoriously bad. New regs are greatly improving the operations. Another business that can require cleanup is the funeral homes that do the embalming. Older locations dumped a host of body fluids and embalming fluids into septic tanks with drain fields. As mentioned radiator repair businesses, auto repair and general vehicle cleaning operations have all been guilty of having free rein with disposal of waste.
The problem sites in cities that are now paved over can be very expensive to investigate and cleanup. Many times expensive wells are constructed to find the plume. If you hit a plume, additional wells are drilled further down gradient until a well comes up clean. You then have somewhat of an understanding of the dimensions of the contamination. If you go down gradient and don’t find the contamination, you have to backtrack upgrade until you capture the plume. This is complicated and can require wells down gradient and perpendicular to the site to ensure capture/remediation is possible. Very expensive to the property owner or previous tenant. Anyone purchasing property that might be suspicious should do their due diligence as w-bacon mentioned to evaluate the cost of the future development.
I’ve seen private wells sampled that show contamination with everyone scratching and wondering where it came from. Interesting that often “old timers” remember an abandoned dump up gradient that is the culprit. The worst is when a property owner starts losing their hair in clumps and exhibits other symptoms that sends out the scientists to start investigating.
We had one case where some organized crime folks would charge tanker trucks to dump their cargo (everything from spoiled food waste to chemical waste)down a disposal well. I received a whistleblower call and hooked the dude up with the right agents that did a raid impounding the entire operation with customer’s trucks (some guilty some legitimate). Those operators are still doing time.
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Post by altuck on Apr 23, 2024 10:09:33 GMT -5
Reminds me of Cattle Dipping Vats. Prior to the 1960s, the state required cattle to be dipped in a vat containing arsenic etc. to kill ticks. There were probably 3-4 thousand dip vats mostly in rural areas. All of these sites are considered polluted, but the state doesn't even know where they all are and certainly, do not have the funds to remediate them.
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Post by richm on Apr 23, 2024 13:16:40 GMT -5
The cattle dip vats are for real - the landowners buried most of em and there you have a giant arsenic contamination area.
Dry cleaners are worse than we thought - they say most old cleaners are well contaminated.
Like Swampdog said, you start punching holes in the ground til you find the edges and you put some deep wells in the central portion to see how deep it goes. All takes time and $.
Back when there were more jumbo parcels, we had to go to govt offices to review mylar aerial photos - there used to be a lot of "sand spots" that would pop up in a year, never seen before or after. Many of those spots turned out to be dumping and debris burial areas. Harder to find em with computerized aerial photographs due to resolution and graininess as opposed to just a white spot on a mylar...
There was a place in Tampa that operated as a waste hauler and they dumped the juice down the drain on-site. It went to a french drain...might still be a superfund site.
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