Programmatic methods for addressing contaminated volume uncertainties.
Accurate estimates of the volumes of contaminated soils or sediments are critical to effective program planning and to successfully designing and implementing remedial actions. Unfortunately, data available to support the preremedial design are often sparse and insufficient for accurately estimating contaminated soil volumes, resulting in significant uncertainty associated with these volume estimates. The uncertainty in the soil volume estimates significantly contributes to the uncertainty in the overall project cost estimates, especially since excavation and off-site disposal are the primary cost items in soil remedial action projects. The Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District's experience has been that historical contaminated soil volume estimates developed under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) often underestimated the actual volume of subsurface contaminated soils requiring excavation during the course of a remedial activity. In response, the Buffalo District has adopted a variety of programmatic methods for addressing contaminated volume uncertainties. These include developing final status survey protocols prior to remedial design, explicitly estimating the uncertainty associated with volume estimates, investing in predesign data collection to reduce volume uncertainties, and incorporating dynamic work strategies and real-time analytics in predesign characterization and remediation activities. This paper describes some of these experiences in greater detail, drawing from the knowledge gained at Ashland1, Ashland2, Linde, and Rattlesnake Creek. In the case of Rattlesnake Creek, these approaches provided the Buffalo District with an accurate predesign contaminated volume estimate and resulted in one of the first successful FUSRAP fixed-price remediation contracts for the Buffalo District.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOD
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 982604
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/EVS/CP-58588; TRN: US201015%%1214
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waste Management Conference (WM '07); Feb. 25, 2007 - Mar. 1, 2007; TUCSON, AZ
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
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