review of remediation practice in the uk during 2001

8/8/2019 Review of Remediation Practice in the UK During 2001

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FIRSTFARADAY

Review of Remediation

Practice in the UK

during 2001

RESEARCH REPORT No. 1


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FIRSTFARADAY (Faraday Partnership for Innovative

Remediation Science and Technology) is a UK Centre of

Excellence for the assessment and remediation of contami-

nated land and associated waters sponsored by the DTI,

EPSRC and NERC. It brings together seven key academic

institutions, four Research and Technology Organisations

and the Environment Agency for England and Wales.

FIRSTFARADAY interacts with a diverse, cross-sectoral network

of SMEs and larger companies, from technology providers,

contractors and regulators through to land owners, financiers

and insurers, who form the FIRSTFARADAY Industry Group.

FIRSTFARADAY Industry Group members are provided

with assistance in / access to: remediation technologies

and knowledge to enable the profitable restoration of

land; discounted training; opportunities to participate in

innovative, business driven R&D; funding mechanisms;

and numerous opportunities to raise company profile

through dissemination and networking services.

Core partners of FIRSTFARADAY are:

Universities of Aberdeen, Queens Belfast, Cranfield, Oxford,

Nottingham and Sheffield, NERC Centre for Ecology andHydrology, British Water, Pera, C-Tech Innovation, CL:AIRE

and The Environment Agency for England and Wales.

Our Mission:

Develop world-class scientific methods, technologies and

tools for the assessment, remediation and management

of contaminated land.

Form a dedicated network of academic, industrial and

other stakeholders and regulators committed to cost-

effective research, technology transfer and training.

Enhance the position of the UK contaminated land and

water sector in the global market place.

This is achieved through our three primary activities:

Research and Development

Delivering cost-effective, sustainable solutions with an

emphasis on industrially-focused market-driven multi-

disciplinary projects.

Training and Development

Enhancing staff and company performance and propagating

state-of-the-art approaches and good practice.

Technology TransferDeveloping business opportunities, contacts and collabora-

tions through the effective translation of industries needs,

solutions and aspirations.

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FIRSTFARADAY: The Faraday Partnership for

Innovative Remediation Science and Technology

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www.firstfaraday.com


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1 Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Summary of previous survey 2

1.3 Current survey design and analysis methodology 3

2 Detailed analysis of the survey outputs 5

2.1 What was the area of the site? 5

2.2 What was the main reason for site remediation? 5

2.3 What licenses/permits were required? 6

2.4 What types of contaminated media were remediated? 7

2.5 What remediation objectives / clean up criteria were set? 7

2.6 Why was contaminant clean-up required? 8

2.7 What was the approximate cost of remediation activities? 8

2.8 What were the key contaminants treated during remediation? 9

2.8.1 Organic contaminants 9

2.8.2 Metallic contaminants 10

2.8.3 Gases & vapours 10

2.8.4 Inorganic Compounds 11

2.9 What remediation techniques were used? 11

2.9.1 Civil engineering-based methods: solids and fluids 12

2.9.2 In-situ remediation of solids 13

2.9.3 In-situ remediation of fluids 13

2.9.4 Ex-situ remediation of fluids 14

2.10 Which factors were most significant in selecting the remediation techniques used at site? 14

3 Discussion 16

4 References 18

Appendix I Example questionnaire 20

Appendix II Classification of remediation techniques 24

Appendix III A graphical summary of results 27

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Contentsii


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Rationale

The treatment and control of land contamination is an area undergoing rapid

technological development and change. A survey of remediation practice within

England & Wales was conducted on behalf of the Environment Agency between

1996 and 1999. This was published in 2000 as R&D Technical Publication P401

Survey of remedial techniques for land contamination in England and Wales(Environment Agency, 2000). However, numerous changes in legislation and

guidance since 1999, such as the release of CLEA (Defra & Environment Agency,

2002), the implementation of Part IIa of the Environmental Act 1990 and the

publication of the Environment Agencys guidance on natural attenuation, mean

that this survey is now considered to be somewhat dated.

FIRSTFARADAY, in conjunction with the Department of Trade and Industry and

with the co-operation of the Environment Agency, conducted this new survey of

remediation activities that occurred in England and Wales during 2001 to update

this earlier work. The work was conducted by FIRSTFARADAY partners Land

Quality Management (University of Nottingham) and Pera (Melton Mowbray).

Neither the current survey, nor that conducted in 2000 (Environment Agency,

2000), can be treated as statistically representative due to factors such as:

limitations in the knowledge of participating organisations, the fragmented and

variable nature of the data, and the lack of a statutory mechanism for storing and

retrieving planning information. However, in combination, these two surveys

serve as strong indicators of trends in remediation activity undertaken within the

UK between 1996 and 2002.

1.1

1

Introduction 1.0


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The study conducted in 2000 on behalf of the Environment

Agency (Environment Agency, 2000) collated data on

remedial activities that occurred between 1996 and 1999

from local authorities, landowners, developers and other

organisations relating to 367 sites. The resulting report high-

lighted several trends in remediation practice. A number of

these are described below.

Firstly, the report showed that, as a percentage of the

overall development activity taking place within England

and Wales, the proportion of sites requiring remediation

was insignificant.

A number of trends in the remedial activities undertaken at that

time in England and Wales were also identified. The survey

revealed that, in general, most remedial activities involved:

small sites (


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The current survey was conducted in the form of a

questionnaire, which was distributed for completion by local

authorities, developers, regional development agencies and

consultancies working in the contaminated land sector. The

questionnaire requested details of any remediation project

that began during 2001. In total, over 100 questionnaires

were distributed.

The questionnaire, an example of which is contained within

Appendix I of this report, was based upon the format used

in the previous survey (Environment Agency, 2000). The

principal changes were that, in the current survey, a greater

emphasis was placed on tick box responses instead of

written statements, and that the questionnaire was

designed as a stand-alone document, which did not rely

upon any follow up questions or telephone interviews. Both

these changes were designed to make the questionnaire as

simple as possible to complete.

Only minor changes were made to the questions contained

within the questionnaire in order to make the data obtained

from the two surveys as comparable as possible. In the current

study, more detailed data was obtained on the licences and

permits needed for each project, the nature of the clean-up

criteria used and on the reasons that remediation was deemed

necessary.

The Environment Agency study (Environment Agency, 2000)

identified significant difficulties in analysing data by region.

Due to this prior knowledge, no attempt to collect data on

the region in which each site resided or the previous use of

the site was made in the current study. No attempt was

made to analyse data submitted by Local Authorities and

owners/developers separately as the data set was not

considered to be large enough.

In total, responses were received from 28 organisations

covering 72 different sites. The quantity and quality of the

data derived from the questionnaire varied: some questions

were completed by very few respondents while some respon-

dents provided much more complete responses than others.

For a number of questions within the survey, one or more

responses could be selected. This makes statistical analysis of

the data difficult, as the number of responses to these ques-

tions can be greater than the number of sites for which data

was obtained (i.e. if each site has 3 contaminants the total

number of contaminants will be 3-times the number of sites).

3

Current survey design and analysis methodology 1.3


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In order to compare the results of this survey with those of

the earlier survey (Environment Agency, 2000), a similar

methodology for deriving percentage data was employed in

the body of this report. This is described in the following

example and generates results as percent of sites for which

data was obtained. However, the data summarised in the

Pie charts in Appendix III represent simple percentages.

The remainder of this report provides detailed analysis of the

results for each question asked along with comparisons with

the earlier survey (Environment Agency, 2000) followed by a

discussion.

Example: Responses were obtained from 20 sites to the question,

What colour vehicles were used on site? The table above is a sum-

mary of the responses received.

In this example, the average number of vehicle colours

present on any one site is 2, hence the total number of

responses is 40. The percentage data represents the

number of responses in each category divided by the

number of sites (i.e. 20). Thus, 25% red vehicles implies

that red vehicles were present at a quarter of the sites

that responded to this question. However, because more

than one colour of vehicle was present at each site, the

total percentage will add up to more than 100%.

This methodology is applied throughout the report and, as

such, the tabulated percentage data can be interpreted

from the number of sites indicated in brackets; i.e. (n=20) in

this example.

Percentage

(n=20)25 20 20 95 40 200

Responses 5 4 4 19 8 40

Red

Blue

Green

Yellow

Other

Totals

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1.3


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What was the area of the site?

The data presented in Table 1 shows that size data was

supplied for 57 sites. This data indicates that 63% of

remediation projects involved small sites of less than 1

ha, and 42% involved very small sites (10 ha). The remediation of these small

sites is currently the focus of the CLUSTER project

(www.exsite.co.uk).

Additional data on the percentage area of the site requiring

remediation was obtained for 34 sites (data not shown).

This limited data set indicated that the entire site was

remediated at approximately 30% of sites, and over half

the sites area required treatment at around 70% of sites.

There was no obvious relationship between the size of site

and the area requiring remediation; action was reportedly

needed over 10% to 100% of the area of small sites

(20 ha). These

findings also agree with those reported elsewhere(Environment Agency, 2000).

Table 1: What was the area of sites subject to remediation in 2001?

What was the main reason for site remediation?

Data on the reason why remediation was needed was

obtained for 68 sites. This indicated that the main factor

driving the need for remediation works was the redevelop-

ment of the land for either residential or commercial use

(82%), rather than the management of contamination or

future liabilities (see Table 2).

The majority of locations being redeveloped were for resi-

dential purposes (63%) with only 19% of respondents

reporting redevelopment for industrial use. This compares to

the 27% and 33% respectively reported by the Environment

Agency (2000). However, it should be noted that this earlier

survey allowed for multiple reasons for each remediation

project whereas the current survey only accepted the main

justification (although 2 main reasons were identified at

two sites).

The data also indicates that the management of future lia-

bilities (1%) and facilitating future site redevelopment (4%)

are now the least frequent reasons for remediation work to

be carried out. This contrasts to the survey carried out on

behalf of the Environment Agency (2000), which indicated

a stronger emphasis on these aspects (13% and 21%respectively).

2.2

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review of remediation practice in the uk during 2001

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