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| Brownfields Weekly |
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June 7, 2001 IN THIS ISSUE:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brownfields Weekly welcomes your press releases and story ideas.
If you have a story of interest to the community-at-large, write to the
editors: Get listed on our Industry Links page! Send your link to the editors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HUD Secretary Martinez Confirmed for
Brownfields Summit Washington, DC - Adding to the Brownfields Summit's list of high-profile policy-makers, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez has been confirmed as a Summit speaker. Secretary Martinez joins other brownfields industry leaders at the Summit, including keynote speaker Christie Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator. The Brownfields Summit, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AIG Environmental, will be held at the Chamber's headquarters in Washington DC, June 18, 2001. Focusing on efforts to enact national Brownfields legislation and foster redevelopment, a highlight of the Summit will be "Let's Make A Deal," bringing together local governments, developers, the financial community, and government agencies to broker Brownfields redevelopment deals. For the preliminary agenda and a registration form, please visit the
Brownfields Summit web site: For more details, e-mail Brent Inscoe at brownfields@uschamber.com or call (202) 822-2481. Washington State Taxpayers Pick Up Cleanup
Tab Olympia, WA (ENS) - During the past two weeks, the Washington Department of Ecology has spent about $200,000 to remove at least 32,000 gallons of hazardous waste from the sites of two former Western Washington businesses. The now defunct businesses are Reflex Recycling, a Tacoma hazardous waste disposal and recycling facility, and Boomsnub Chrome & Grind, a Vancouver chrome plating facility. "Spending tax dollars to remove hazardous wastes is our last option, but these business owners either could not or would not deal with the problems," said Kay Seiler, a manager with Ecology's hazardous waste program. Seiler added that the state will attempt to recoup the cleanup costs from the owners. The hazardous wastes, if left unattended, had great potential to cause harm, she said. At Reflex Recycling, also known as Micro Oil, Ecology removed 20,000 gallons of "witch's brew," as one inspector described it. The hazardous waste included 249 aging drums filled with solutions that contained benzene and tetrachlorethylene, suspected human carcinogens. The department also removed the contents of an abandoned 8,400 gallon tanker truck that was dripping hazardous waste into a 55 gallon steel drum. Reflex operated as a treatment, storage and recycler of printing industry wastes. In March 2000, Ecology fined Reflex $20,000 for violating numerous hazardous waste regulations. The action was an effort to prevent a replay of the circumstances at CleanCare Corporation, another Tacoma-area waste handling company that broke dozens of environmental regulations, went out of business, and left hundreds of customers and taxpayers liable to clean and remove the waste it left behind. At Boomsnub Chrome & Grind on 68th Street in Vancouver, Ecology removed all of the liquid hexavalent chrome plating and waste solutions on the site, totaling about 12,000 gallons. Hexavalent chromium is a human carcinogen and is classified by the state as a dangerous waste. In March, Ecology confirmed that small amounts of hexavalent chromium were found in the ground water at the site, but experts do not believe drinking water is threatened. Boomsnub's former site is a federal Superfund cleanup site due to ground contamination by hexavalent chromium. New Technology Paves the Way for Tucson,
Arizona's Rio Nuevo District It’s a short ride on a sunny, arid morning down Congress Street in downtown Tucson, Arizona, to the dusty field that’s home to the Rio Nuevo landfills. Right now, Nearmont, the smallest of three landfills on the site, doesn’t look at all like one. It’s just a bumpy 90-acre stretch of wide-open, dusty land beneath the shadow of downtown’s skyscrapers and against the bone-dry Santa Cruz River. Drive back about 1,000 feet on the utility road, and you’ll see a chain link fence with an open gate. The chain link surrounds a square plot of land, fifty feet long and wide. On the plot at exact intervals is a nine-point grid of PVC piping penetrating the landfill beneath. A small construction trailer sits against the fence. And across from that, a large utility box, wires running into the ground. To the untrained eye, it looks to be nothing more than a Tucson city water experiment. Or to the more suspicious in the desert, a covert government project. But this experimental PVC pipe grid - and what it’s doing underneath the landfill - could change the way brownfields sites of tomorrow are remediated. Past, Future and Present Behind the chain link fence is the City of Tucson’s bioreactor project. It is the physical beginning of a monumental and aggressive brownfields land remediation and redevelopment project. The landfill will become part of Rio Nuevo - an entire city district in the heart of Tucson’s downtown. Projected, Rio Nuevo will take at least 20 years and $350 million to complete. The new bioreactor technology on Nearmont is paving the way for the Rio Nuevo of the future: an entire city district that will pay homage to the city’s historic past as one of the oldest settlements in the West. In fact, archeologists have found that people have lived in the Tucson area as far back as 2,600 years ago. What’s now Nearmont was once part of the land where the San Augustin Mission was established in mid 1700s. The old Mission included a convento - a priest’s residence and trade school - a mission garden, a chapel, a granary and smaller storage buildings, the entire grounds surrounded by a wall. By 1840, the Mission had finally been abandoned. As the Mission ruins disappeared into the late 1800s and early 1900s, the site became home to a clay pit. That ceased operations for good in the 1940’s, until it became its final incarnation: a 1950’s-era city dump. For twelve years, the site saw the only the city’s trash, until it was closed and forgotten in 1962. Thirty-seven years passed until Rio Nuevo had its rebirth. In November of 1999, Tucson politicians put Proposition 400 in front of the voters - its purpose to raise $60 million in Arizona state tax money over ten years to help fund the Rio Nuevo project. It passed by a convincing 62% margin. Among the planned projects at Rio Nuevo are a full-scale recreation of the San Augustin Mission and adjoining Cultural Plaza. Also planned are an Arizona Historical Museum, an American Indian Cultural Center and a Mercado with retail stores. More downtown housing will be added. Future additions include the Sonoran Sea Aquarium, the Tucson Science Center, an IMAX Theatre, an expanded Tucson Convention Center, and a City Visitor’s Center. But the completed vision of Rio Nuevo is some years away. What Rio Nuevo has now is what’s behind the chain link fence - the experimental bioreactor. 100 Years in 40 Months Underneath the Nearmont landfills lie decades of Tucson refuse. Between 15 and 50 feet of it. The problem: the trash beneath the landfill must be degraded and made non-reactive. That, added with the methane gas landfills naturally produce make it too undesirable for building. Otherwise, any construction on the land would be at least century away - the time it would take the garbage in Nearmont to degrade naturally. Tucson’s Office of Environmental Management (OEM), however, was preparing a solution - the bioreactor. But remediation technology like it had never been used before. If it did work, and proved safe and cost-effective, it would be used to remediate the other landfills. The process it performs is called enhanced aerobic degradation. Simply, the nine-spot PVC pipe grid - dug under the ground and inside the landfill - naturally accelerates the landfill degradation by pumping controlled amounts of air and water into the refuse itself. According to the data OEM has collected so far, the bioreactor will break down and settle the refuse, as well as eliminating the landfill’s natural methane production, in about 40 months. The end result: Composted land, ready for development. Not only that, Tucson’s bioreactor has proven safe and cost-effective. Most importantly, it works. So well, that it's being made into a full-scale system for use on all three landfills. Paving the Way Toward Tucson’s Future The Mission recreation, museums and the IMAX theaters of Rio Nuevo are still years away from reality. But right now, one important part of its continuing history is the unassuming PVC pipe grid behind the chain link fence, paving the way for the reinvigoration of Tucson’s downtown, adding to the city’s rich tradition, culture and history. --Exclusive to Brownfields Weekly. For more information on the City of Tucson’s bioreactor remediation
project, contact: And for more information on Tucson’s Rio Nuevo project, visit: Breaking New Ground: Washington DC, July
10-11 Today, remediation projects that apply natural resource-based approaches are achieving substantial cost savings while improving the social, economic and environmental value of sites. While these natural approaches are successful in cleaning up many contaminated sites, there are still many barriers that discourage their increased use in RCRA/Superfund remediation projects and Brownfields redevelopment. Sponsored by The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC), this conference will explore these barriers using experts from across the U.S. who will present real-world case studies highlighting any impediments grouped into institutional, social and technical areas. Each session will conclude with a facilitated discussion where participants will have an opportunity to suggest additional methods for applying ecological enhancements and ideas for reducing barriers to their application. Visit WHC’s Web site for more details and a summary on the 2000
RCRA conference: Or contact: Wildlife Habitat Council, 1010 Wayne Ave. Suite 920, Silver Spring, MD 20910; (phone) 301-588-8994; (email) RCRA@wildlifehc.org Pennsylvania's "Clear Road To Redevelopment" Pennsylvania's innovative Land Recycling Program is a great example for other state and local governments that want to improve and expand their brownfields redevelopment programs. The Land Recycling Program is helping to transform vacant brownfields into economically stimulating, job-producing sites, while promoting the protection of the environment. More than 15,000 people now work on former brownfields sites in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. For more information on what Pennsylvania has done to clear the road
to brownfields redevlopment, visit their Land Recycling Program web page
for factsheets on specific aspects of the program: |