![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
Making the Program Faster, Fairer, and More Efficient (Continued)
4-1 | 4-2 | 4-3 | 4-4 | 4-5 | 4-6 | 4-7 | 4-8 | 4-9 | 4-10 | 4-11 | 4-12 | 4-13 | 4-14 | 4-15 | 4-16 | 4-17
ENHANCING CLEANUP EFFECTIVENESS AND CONSISTENCY
EPA has initiated several ongoing reforms to ensure that cleanups are cost-effective and reflect the most recent advances in science and technology. Partially because of these reforms, three times as many Superfund sites have been cleaned up in the past seven years than in all the prior years of the program combined.
Some of the more significant advances in cleanup effectiveness and consistency are described below.
|
An Example of Innovative Technology and Cost Savings in Indiana At the Seymour Recycling site in Indiana, bio-remediation, an innovative technology, resulted in significant cost savings. During actions to remove the immediate threat posed by the site, EPA discovered that bacteria were naturally aiding in the remediation of soils on-site. The remedial design accommodated this discovery by relocating a planned ground water treatment works one-third of a mile downslope to utilize the bio-remedial activities occurring naturally in the soil. By taking advantage of this natural process, EPA could construct a smaller ground water treatment facility, which resulted in substantial savings. |
Implementing Technological Innovations
SARA established a preference for treatment of hazardous wastes and created a demand for alternatives to land disposal. New innovative treatment technologies grew from this demand to provide more permanent, less costly solutions, for dealing with contaminated materials.
The Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) Program was established to meet this increased demand for alternative technologies. The SITE Program has provided demonstrations of new technologies at particular sites, resulting in average cost savings of over 70 percent per site. The total cost savings for innovative treatment as opposed to conventional treatment is estimated at $2.1 billion.
Superfund's Technology Innovation Office works to break down barriers to using new technologies by providing a wealth of technical information, including:
- A free monthly e-mail service newsletter which reaches over 9,500 cleanup professionals;
- Traditional classroom and Internet-based seminars, which reached over 3,000 site managers in 1999; and
- An online database, which provides information on more than 500 assessment and cleanup technologies.
|
Related Links |
|
Technology Innovation Office Home Page CLU-IN EPA REACH IT Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable |
EPA has worked to form several partnerships to improve the coordination of research and development efforts between academia, private industry, and the Federal government. They include: an industry/government partnership to find innovative solutions to high priority problems; a petroleum refinery partnership for improved solutions for ground water contamination; a partnership with State dry cleaners cleanup programs; and an interagency partnership to collaborate across the Federal government on technology demonstrations and evaluations.
EPA also promotes the research and development of innovative technologies by sharing the risk with PRPs who select remedies employing low-cost, high performance technologies. EPA will "underwrite" these innovative approaches by agreeing to reimburse up to 50 percent of the cost if the innovative remedy fails and a subsequent remedy is required.
These risk-sharing agreements work. At the Douglassville Disposal site in Pennsylvania, EPA amended an incineration remedy to a chemical dehalogenation remedy using lime-based stabilization. The use of this innovative technology resulted in savings of $36 million.
|
Technologies Used to Make Sites Safe Today, there are as many ways to clean up a Superfund site as there are types of sites. EPA tailors the techniques and technologies to community needs and to the individual problems posed by different areas of a site. Here are some of the cleanup techniques that EPA developed to make sure that all areas of a site are safe:
|
