LTR - Ep 59 - Relocation aka "Dig/Vacuum and Haul" is NOT Remediation

In this 59th episode, I discuss the topic Relocation aka "Dig/Vacuum and Haul" is NOT Remediation.

The old traditional default thought to dealing with contaminated soil is to dig and haul it off to a waste disposal facility.  Similarly, vacuuming up contaminated water and transporting it to a disposal facility.  In both of these case, the contamination is only being relocated.  It is NOT being remediated.

In order to remediate the contamination, it has to be treated in order for it to be broken down and the contaminate(s) has to be acted upon by a means of changing its form from being hazardous to non-hazardous.

Relocating the contamination is a quick and easy fix to be moved out of sight and out of mind.  It is NOT Remediation.  It's removal from the current location to another.  In this case, it is stored at a waste disposal facility still in it's hazardous form, in theory to be dealt with at some future time.

We CAN NOT keep doing this forever!  

We have natural resources that we require to live.  It is in Everyone's best interest, to change our thought processes, from the quick easy fix of digging/vacuuming and hauling to a disposal facility as being the method of last resort, instead of being the default first choice.  It is vital to our survival as a species.

We must have the first thought to actually remediate the contamination and use waste disposal facilities as a method of last resort.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hey there, let's talk remediation. This is your host, Charles Fader, and this is our 59th episode of Let's Talk Remediation. Our 59th episode is brought to us by our ongoing sponsor, Hambi Environmental. Hambi Environmental is a manufacturer of field test kits for analyzing water and soil samples for determining the contamination level for the contaminants of petroleum hydrocarbons, aromatics, uh PFAS and PFOS, crude oils, refined fuels, and chlorides. The field test kits provide economical results, accurate results, and efficient results. So thank you, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast. Let's talk remediation, where we're trying to have a positive impact on the remediation industry. And with that, we'll get started with our 59th episode. And the topic for our 59th episode is relocation, also known as dig and haul, is not remediation. Okay. And I just I I've talked about this topic before, um, kind of in in discussion of other subjects. I've kind of uh danced around a little bit, but I really wanted to have this specific uh discussion this episode on to really drive home the fact that digging and hauling contamination, no matter what type of contamination it is, whether it's metals, whether it's petroleum hydrocarbons, whether it's chlorides, whether it's aromatics, whether it's any type of refined fuel, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, whatever the contaminant is, digging and hauling that contamination away in taking it to a waste disposal facility is a temporary fix for moving or relocating the contamination. The contamination still exists, so it is not actual remediation. Remediation refers to the actual treatment to uh to get rid of, to break down, to remove, to uh eliminate the contamination that is in, say, that soil sample, which would be the dig part. Of course, you could do the same thing, you could transport by you know vacuum truck or whatnot, uh contaminated water, and again taking it to a disposal facility. Whether you're digging and hauling, which is typically referred to in moving uh contaminated soil contamination, but you can do like I said, the same thing with contaminated water. The water is contaminated by whatever. You can suck it up, vacuum it up, whatever, and then take it and put it at some waste disposal facility. Either way, the traditional uh thought process is called digging and hauling. And digging and hauling is a temporary fix. It is relocating the contamination, it is not actually remediating it. And so I really want to drive that home that it is not remediation because if for and it's been around forever, that's kind of like the default that everybody kind of goes back to. It's it's what everybody did before they started finding ways to actually treat and remediate things. They just thought, hey, this is easy, it's a quick fix, it's out of sight, out of mine. But the problem is, is at some point in time, we need to really understand that we can't have all these waste disposal facilities everywhere. Ultimately, all natural land will become a waste dump. You know, is that is that what we're gonna we're gonna be living with waste dumps everywhere? I mean, there's already plenty of them as it is, but as the population grows, uh it's gonna come down to having more and adding more waste disposal facilities. And, you know, uh at some point in time we have to actually do something about it, right? So why not think about that now? Think about that stuff in advance. Instead of always thinking, okay, the easy approach and the least economical approach, which is not always the case, but people think about it that way. Is that, well, it's just easy and simple to dig and haul and take it and pay to dispose of it, and it's so cheap to do. Well, it's not actually always the cheapest uh solution. Sometimes treating the contamination in place is the cheapest solution, but people just think I want to do the easy way and get it done now, and so they're willing to even pay a little bit more just to get it done and out of the way immediately rather than take the time and effort to actually remediate. So the school of thought there is that if you just want to think what's good for our environment, what's good for our planet that we live on, that has all our natural resources that we depend on to live every day, do we just want to continue to contaminate it so that it's just so simple and easy so that uh, you know, we all we we end up with eventually with no more clean land in the first place because it's already, and then the thought process will be it's already contaminated anyway, we should just contaminate it more. No, we can't keep doing this. We have got to understand that we have to begin to remediate things as a first choice and only dig and haul as a last resort, okay? And so that is the thought process we really need to change our thinking on, is to think that we really need to understand that digging and hauling or transporting contaminated soil or water to a disposal facility is simply relocating the contamination. It's not actually remediating. So when we change the thought process to understand that, that we need to think remediation first before disposal and disposal as a last option of resort, you know, it's last resort option, then we will begin to better take care of the environment that we live in. Now, in addition to that, sometimes, you know, uh regulators will question what what you're doing about the remediation. How are you treating it? What are you using to treat it with stuff like that? Well, that's important where you know you need to say we want to remediate, we don't want to relocate the contamination. That dialogue or discussion with the regulatory, and then make them understand what you're doing and what you're using. In order to do that, you have to understand it yourself. You have to become educated on what you're using as a remediation means or solution so that you can explain it, not just use it because you know it works, right? So you have to become educated enough to be able to speak to your regulatory agency to explain to them what you're doing. And when you you show that you have the knowledge of what you're doing to the regulatory agency, they're going to be more likely to let you do it and accept that what you're doing as opposed to uh, you know, uh trying to tell you, no, you can't use that. I want you to dig and haul. And I've heard that numerous times that, oh, my state agency said that I had to dig and haul it. And I'm sitting there thinking, why is that? Digging and hauling is not actually remediating, it is relocating. So is it because you didn't push back against the regulatory agency and tell them, no, we don't want to relocate the locate relocate the problem. We actually want to address the problem. Well, in order for you to do that, you have to be knowledgeable enough to have that discussion with them. And maybe uh the the people that have said that didn't want to have that discussion. They were scared to have the discussion. Well, they need to take a proactive approach to understand and be able to talk to the regulatory agency and not be scared of them. And I mean, it's it's in all of our best interests to actually remediate versus relocate. So take the time to have the knowledge to be able to speak to them and push back to them and say, no, I don't want to dig in a haul and relocate and have to go put this in a disposal facility that just further pollutes our our planet. I want to address this, and how I'm going to address this is this is how I'm going to do it. I'm going to treat it this way because I know it works. It's well documented and proven that this remediation technique works, and I'm going to do it because I am not going to further pollute our planet by just re relocating this contamination to a waste disposal facility. And I'm telling you, with that pushback, with that knowledge, knowledge is power, with that pushback, we will be able to change the way things are done. We change the thought process from relocate and dispose of as a first uh resort option to being a last resort option, and our first resort option becomes I am going to do what's in the best interest of everyone on this planet, and I am going to actually remediate this contamination. I don't it doesn't really matter to me, even honestly, if it costs a little bit more, it's in our best interest to not to further pollute our planet and pollute our water resources and our our land from which we get our food from. I mean, we've got to change our thinking and not be so short-minded all the time about thinking I'm gonna go with this quick, easy, inexpensive method. Uh, even though oftentimes there are treatment options that are actually less expensive. We got to change our way of thinking to I I know I sound like I'm a tree hugger out there and stuff like that, but that's not the case. I'm I'm saying we have got to start thinking about the planet in which we live in and stop polluting the planet, okay? And I assure you, I am not super environmentalist tree hugger or any of that kind of thing. I'm just trying to say it only makes sense. Let's stop relocating contamination and let's actually remediate it. And in order to remediate it, instead of relocating it to a waste disposal facility, which ultimately will become a super fund site, which is a a known place of contamination where we're just trying to contain it in one place, uh we we can't have a bunch of super fund sites just more and more added all the time. We we it's just gonna further contaminate our land and our air and our water, and we need those resources, those are necessary for our survival, and so we need to actually remediate contamination. So that is the topic that I wanted to have today for our 59th episode. Um I know it sounds like I'm preaching, and that's because I am. We really need to change our mindset on things and only use relocation and disposal, aka Digginhall, for a last resort for the worst possible issues that cannot be treated or remediated. And for things that can be treated and remediated, we need to use that as a first resort option and change our way of thinking. Okay, and so with that, that's gonna uh end the topic for this 59th episode. Uh again, I I thank you guys for tuning in uh to every episode. Again, if you have a topic you'd like for me to address on a future episode, don't hesitate to reach out to me. My email address is uh my email address is C Fader, that's C Frank A-T-O-R at let's talkremediation.com. You can uh give me a topic for a future podcast episode, or you can just ask a speci specific question you'd like for me to address on an episode, and I'll be happy to do that. Um thank you for tuning in. Thank you, Hanby Environmental, for your ongoing uh support of this podcast, Let's Talk Remediation, where we're trying to have a positive impact on uh the remediate environmental remediation industry. And one last reminder, since this is uh uh just around the corner and was the topic of our last episode, next Wednesday, Wednesday, July the 15th in Odessa, Texas at Lighthouse Environmental at 10 a.m. We are doing a large-scale uh remediation uh of contaminated soil where Hambi Environmentals fuel test kits will do the monitoring to provide the real-time feedback to know where you are as far as the treatment of contamination. And OMG Solutions product eliminate will be used to eliminate the contaminated soil that will be contaminated with crude oil as well as chlorides, and Hambi Environmentals test kits will provide the means to know uh and monitor uh the remediation effort uh by OMG's solution uh eliminate. And uh that will be at again at in Odessa, Texas, uh, next Wednesday, July the 15th at 10 a.m. Our host is Lighthouse Environmental. So um we will uh have the results after uh we do that, but I just wanted to throw that reminder out to you. If you're in the you know Midland Odessa area and you can make it to that, it would be great because we are going to go through a full large-scale remediation project from showing where to sample, how to sample, um, how to treat, how to test, and then we're gonna jar up samples and send them off to the third-party labs as well, and encourage the uh those attendees to do the same, send it to their local labs, and and we'll all you know cross-reference all our results. But again, thank you for tuning in, and that's it for this 59th episode of Let's Talk Remediation, and I am your host, Charles Fader, and I'm out.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

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