LTR - Ep. 43 - The Dinosaur Method of "Dig and Haul" As A Remediation Method

In this 43rd episode, I discuss The Dinosaur Method of "Dig and Haul" As A Remediation Method.

"Digging and Hauling" away contaminated Soil and Water has been done for decades.  It's out of sight and out of mind.  However, there is a strong push to change this age old practice to newer alternatives that actually address the problem, rather than relocating the problem by transporting it to a new location.

Advances in treatment technologies, provide a means of addressing the problem in situ (in place) efficiently, economically and effectively.

A combination of treatment technologies to actually address the contamination needs to become the new standard or paradigm for dealing with contaminated soil and water, as opposed to just relocating it to a disposal facility to be dealt with at some time in the future.

The time is now, to make the change!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

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SPEAKER_02 0:39

Our 43rd episode is brought to us by our ongoing sponsor, Hambi Environmental. Hambi Environmental is a manufacturer of field test kits for analyzing water in soil and solid surface samples and for petroleum hydrocarbons and provide uh accurate results within 10% of a lab result, economical results at$35 a test for soil and solid surface and$45 a test for water, and efficient providing those results in four minutes for soil and solid surface and six minutes for water analysis. So thank you, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast, Let's Talk Remediation, where we are trying to have a positive impact on the environmental remediation industry. And with that, let's get into our 43rd episode. Um so our 43rd episode, I wanted to have the topic of the age-old dinosaur method of discussing digging and hauling as a remediation method. Uh, digging and hauling has been uh the primary remediation method forever. Um it's kind of what it's the fallback that everybody kind of uh results to in the end. And I don't even like the idea of calling digging and hauling remediation because digging and hauling is not actually remediation, it is relocation of a problem. So let's dive into it a little bit deeper. Digging and hauling remediation involves the excavation of contaminated soil in transporting it to an authorized facility for disposal or treatment, typically to address environmental hazards, industrial spills, construction debris. Um services include site assessment, utility marking, excavation, and remediation of contaminated soil. Some of the key aspects of digging and hauling are uh site assessment and preparation, which means um initial assessment of contaminated soil and um the marking of underground utilities that might be present uh so that would come into uh you know, could be possibly affected by the excavation or the digging. Um excavation types, uh, you know, you're you got your standard earth excavation of the soil where you're just straight digging. Sometimes your uh uh excavation could involve vacuuming up for sensitive areas, um uh and deep excavation um for uh deep digging of you know to put in foundation or if groundwater systems need to be done, something like that. Um contamination management is another aspect, uh removal of hazardous material, including uh polluted or contaminated dirt and uh buried containers such as uh storage tanks, um, underground storage tanks. Um another aspect to the digging and hauling as a method uh involves the transportation disposal. That means you've got to uh load up this contaminated soil uh and transport it uh and uh then get it to its location and dispose of the waste there at a licensed facility, which comes at cost, of course. And this is pretty common in the industrial remediation uh industry. Um and so some common applications would be, you know, what we're talking about today, environmental remediation, uh, handling contaminated soil from spills or industrial operations. Um, and then um uh construction support, which is where we talked about, like say, digging to put a foundation in place or groundwater systems, site preparation for building or construction, and hauling away of contaminated, you know, dirt or debris. Um, and then of course, if you have uh utilities or uh infrastructure going into the ground, you know, trenching for piping and utility installations, that type of thing. So the the overarching thought is that digging and hauling as a uh means or a method for remediation involves the excavation of soil and transporting it to a disposal facility, right? That's the high overview look. Um, however, there is a significant and growing and long-standing push within the environmental industry, uh, environmental engineering, environmental remediation, with regulatory support uh and regulatory sectors to reduce or stop this dinosaur technology uh or method, not technology, a dinosaur method, that um everybody kind of defaults back to uh called dig and haul, also known as dig and dump uh remediation. It there's this push to get away from this type of method uh in favor of doing in- situ or on-site treatment methods, right? Um the shift is driven by the desire to lower costs, lower carbon emissions, um, minimize risks with the transportation of hazardous waste uh because it has to be transported, um, and really avoid the trans uh transferring of the pollution from one location to another, just relocating the problem. Um the keys for the push to stop this dinosaur uh method of dig and haul would be the environmental impact and sustainability. Dig and Hall is viewed as a high carbon linear approach that often involves uh moving massive amounts of waste, creating excessive truck traffic on our roadways, and utilizing uh landfill space, right? Um situ advantages to treatment, uh, modern in- situation or in-place remediation methods treat the contaminated soil or groundwater without having to remove it, typically creating less waste, lower admissions, and less overall disruption, right? So you're not relocating the problem from one place to another by transporting and disposing, which is the traditional means of dig and haul. You're actually treating things in place by some means. Um, also, uh cost factors. While excavating can seem like it's uh effective, and it can be, it is often more expensive to do the transportation and pay the disposal fees, particularly for larger scale projects, um, when excavation costs sometimes can be where it could be you know several times higher than just treating uh the the contamination in place and on site. Um the risk of transfer critics argue that um moving contaminated soil simply relocates the risk rather than destroying it. And in previous topics, we have covered the cradle to grave. You know, you get this false sense of comfort knowing that, hey, I've dug up this contamination, I've transported it and paid the disposal fees at a licensed facility, and it's out of out of sight, out of mind. However, the cradle to grave says that at some point in time, if that has to be dealt with, then you are still on the hook for that. So you you you cradle to grave mean you create the user who created the contamination is still responsible for it, even though it got moved from one place to another. So the the risk of transfer there. Um regulatory support. Many uh many agencies and consulting firms are are shifting towards sustainable remediation and greener technologies, such as uh chemical oxidation, bioremediation, soil vapor extraction. Um and both regulatory bodies and consulting firms are are seeing these as technologies have advanced, so we don't have to use the dinosaur technology anymore, or dinosaur method, excuse me. I keep saying that. Um we don't have to use the dinosaur method of digging and hauling anymore because technology has advanced to where there are other types of sustainable remediation options that uh not only will cut costs, cause less disruption to our environment, but there it it's um it just makes more sense to treat rather than to just relocate. So um some of the common alternatives to just digging and hauling would be, like I said, in- situ chemical oxidation or in- situation, which is done by injecting uh chemicals directly into the ground to destroy the contaminants that are present in either the the water or in the soil. Bioremediation uses microbes to eat the contaminant in the ground, and that can be natural microbes or uh uh man-made microbes, which is enzymes. Um I mentioned soil vapor extraction is the pulling of hazardous vapors out of the soil or the water. It's using a vacuum, solidification and stabilization, which is mixing binding agents uh to lock the contaminants in place. Uh, this can be like encapsulation. Um, and then thermal disorption is the use of heat to remove contaminants. So you're basically uh burning burning off the contaminants and burning off the soil, um burning the contaminants out of the soil. I would say this is probably going to be what I would say a last uh case scenario uh that I would use thermal disorption, and that's because um it takes a long time after you've burned that soil to burn those contaminants out, it takes a long time for that soil to recover to be usable and to actually be able to grow things. Um despite this push by regulatory agencies and uh environmental consultants, dig and haul is still commonly used for smaller, localized or shallow uh contamination cases where remediation uh I mean where uh immediate um and permanent removal is preferred. Um but again, knowing that yeah, you're just really moving it from one location to another. Okay, dig and haul remains a dominant and often preferred soil remediation method because it offers immediate guaranteed removal of contamination, allowing the land to be safely reused within you know weeks or months. While newer in- situ or on-site technologies exist, digging is still used because it's it provides a clean closure status, which is often faster and less complicated than managing slower biological or chemical treatments, especially for small-scale high concentration pollution. So uh Diggin Hall is still used as a method, I hate to say a remediation method, but still used as a method because of the speed and efficiency, you know, the rapid results you get. Excavation can remediate a site quickly, you know, you know, in in days, weeks, or months compared to alternatives that can take, you know, um if you're talking about like say not natural microbes that could take years, right? Um the immediate development for developers, time is money. So digging and hauling allows for a quick turnaround so that the site can be further developed, like a brownfield site can be turned into you know a park or residential or commercial space, something like that. So the speed and efficiency removes the source immediately. Digging removes the source zone, the area of the highest contamination, uh, stopping further contamination of groundwater or soil via spreading. Um another uh reason it's still used is regulatory and financial certainty. You know, if you dig that contaminated soil and get it out of the way, you can get a no-further action uh status. Regulatories uh and developers trust this method of digging and hauling because it physically removes the contaminant or the hazard, often leading to a no-further action status from the EPA or state agencies, reducing long-term liability at that site. Let's not forget the credit or grave, though, because when you just move it to a disposal facility, you still are on the manifest as being a responsible party for that contamination. But clear project limits. The cost and times required for excavation are often easier to predict than the unpredictability of in-sit you biological treatments. Um, even though the in-situ biological treatments are less expensive than the dig and haul and can be dig and haul you do once you know you're done, versus in-situ type treatments, you don't know uh how many treatments it's going to take. And so it's kind of like an open-ended book. So there's they like that clear knowing that hey, I've dug it up and that cost is sunk, and that's it. Uh, the finality piece of it, it eliminates the risk of future contamination from reappearing or requiring ongoing monitoring, which is common if you you know uh you cap something or a partial cleanup strategy or a slow moving uh remediation strategy. Um, you know you got you dug it all out and it's it's moved from one place to the other. So that particular place where you were is got some finality to it. Um some practical and technical factors, sustainability for complex contaminants. It is the most practical method for shallow, high concentration contaminants, such as heavy metals or thick oils, which are difficult to break down with other techniques. Um synergy with development. If a project already requires deep excavation for underground parking garages, for example, or building foundations, digging out the contaminated soil simultaneously is efficient, right? Um because you're effectively removing it from that location at the same time that you're already having a dig in the first place uh for another purpose, like you know, to build that underground garage or to um have the uh foundation poured. Sometimes there's site uh cons uh constraints. Such some sites are too small for on-site treatment systems, uh like you can't do uh bioremediation piles and let it sit there. Plus, it slows down the project, right? So site constraints sometimes uh there's trade-offs and and limitations, despite its popularity, the industry is increasingly moving toward more sustainable methods because dig and haul uh uh has its downsides. What are its downsides? The high cost at scale. Yeah, while effective for small areas, costs increase dramatically as the volume of soil increases. Um the sustainability issues, digging uses heavy machinery and uh transportation uh trucking, making it uh CO2 sensitive, uh intensive, and it doesn't destroy the pollution, but rather removes it uh and moves it from one location to a landfill, which can lead to liability concerns in the future. So now as I've said in previous episodes, oftentimes the best remediation approach is a combination of methods to get the the best results. And while dig and haul is a dinosaur method uh used in uh as a remediation method, but it's again relocation of the problem, I would suggest that in some cases the best approach would be to get the bulk of the contamination up through a scrape of the surface, for example, get the bulk of it up and dispose of that, and then the residual contamination be treated by an effective method. So again, the combination of methods um is the best approach. I I understand the concept of hey, out of sight, out of mind, but I think more and more people in the environmental remediation industry are waking up to the fact that technology has advanced. There are alternatives out there to the old dinosaur method of dig and haul. And digging and hauling is only relocating a problem. It does seem efficient on the surface that hey, I've got it out of my way so I can do what I need to here, and I've moved it from one place to the other. Hey, I've I transport it there, got it there, I pay the disposal fees, and so it's out of sight, out of mine. However, just like I referenced previously, there is the cradle to grave. You are still on the manifest as the responsible party for that contamination that has been disposed of at that disposal facility. Okay, and whether that disposal facility exists forever or not, we need to think about the fact that that is not dealing with the contamination, that is just relocating it. So at some point in time, that landfill is going to get filled up, and it has to be dealt with at some point. So it's in everybody's best interest if we are truly going to call this remediation that we actually deal with the contamination, and because methods and technologies have advanced so much that we need to get past the idea of out of sight, out of mind, and actually deal with the contamination because the timeline of being able to treat and deal with the contamination in real time has shrunk down so much that there really isn't a whole lot of value in the dig and haul method uh as a remediation means anymore. It's there they're Are so many options out there that can give you effective results in a very short period of time that Dig and Hall needs to be a last resort and used for the most severe circumstances and for most other cases we need to be using alternative methods and as I've said numerous times a combination of methods get you the best results. So that's what I wanted to cover today. I just wanted to go over the dinosaur method of dig and haul as a means of remediation, which really means relocation, and uh just kind of talk about some alternatives uh and that can be used as opposed to doing digging and hauling. And with that, we'll wrap up our 43rd episode. Um, thank you again for tuning in. Thank you, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast, Let's Talk Remediation, where we're having a positive impact on the environmental uh remediation industry. Uh, as I've said uh in most episodes, if you have a topic you'd like for us to cover on a future podcast or a specific question you'd like for us to address, uh, don't hesitate to reach out via my email address, which is C Fader. That's C Frank A T O R at let's talkremediation.com, and we will get that covered for you. Uh, thank you for tuning in, and uh until the next one, this is your host, Charles Fader, and I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

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