Groundbreaking technologies for site characterization and remediation monitoring

✍ Scribed by George E. Robitaille

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Weight: 12 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1086-900X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6521(1998)2:2<61::aid-fact1>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

Contamination of soil and groundwater by hazardous chemicals is a worldwide problem that has serious ramifications for future generations. In order to clean up a hazardous waste site, the contamination at the site must first be delineated. Site characterization can be very costly, accounting for a third or more of the total cleanup cost. The most common way to determine the extent of subsurface contamination is to collect samples from soil borings or monitoring wells and send them to a laboratory for analysis. This approach has proven to be inefficient, expensive, and prone to error. Furthermore, the trend toward risk-based cleanup strategies may not require removal and/or treatment of the contaminated area, but rather long-term monitoring to ensure that there is no unexpected migration of the contaminant. Consequently, improved methods of monitoring contaminants in the subsurface are important for both the characterization and remediation of a site.

The Tri-Service (Army, Navy, and Air Force) Site Characterization and Analysis Penetrometer System (SCAPS) was developed to address the need for improved site characterization tools. This proved to be quite a challenge, given that no existing technologies were readily available for transition to the SCAPS. A breakout session at the 1993 EPA Third International Symposium on Field Screening Technologies, held in Las Vegas, was the first formal request for VOCs, metals, and explosive technologies to fit into the SCAPS-deployed probe configuration. The current SCAPS capabilities developed from leveraging research efforts amongst the tri-service and tri-agency (