How clean is clean enough?
- Growth Environmental Services Inc., Farmington Hills, MI (United States)
Since the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was enacted in 1976, property owners, attorneys, environmental consultants, and state and federal regulators have debated the question, ``how clean is clean``? Recently, the issue has become, ``how clean is clean enough``? With pressure to restore former industrial properties for new industrial uses, some argue that not all property needs to be restored to the same standard. Proponents of this view maintain that if the potential for future exposure to existing harmful substances at a site is relatively low, site restoration need not be as extensive as for property that will have high public exposure. To address this issue, the American Society for Testing and Materials developed a decision-making procedure to guide assessment and response to subsurface contamination at petroleum-release sites. The Emergency Standard Guide for Risk-Based Corrective Action Applied at Petroleum Release Sites, ES 38-94 integrates risk- and exposure-assessment practices with site assessment and remedy selection to ensure that appropriate response action is taken. Twenty-three states are using or considering the ASTM standard. The standard uses a tiered evaluation approach to site classification that tailors assessment and remediation activities to site-specific conditions and risks. Successive tiers call for increasingly sophisticated levels of data collection and analysis. Thus, the conservative assumptions used in lower tiers are replaced in upper tiers by site-specific data and assumptions. After completing each data-collection tier, users review the data and decide whether more site-specific information is necessary.
- OSTI ID:
- 78142
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Solutions, Journal Name: Environmental Solutions Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 8; ISSN ESOLE7; ISSN 1077-2537
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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