Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Infill cohousing_Remediation?

[Chris ScottHanson (chris]

More than you ever wanted to know about remediation...

"...the term refers to the removal of pollution or contaminants from  
environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment, or surface  
water for the general protection of human health and the environment  
or from a brownfield site intended for redevelopment. Remediation is  
generally subject to an array of regulatory requirements, and also  
can be based on assessments of human health and ecological risks  
where no legislated standards exist or where standards are advisory."  
- from Wikipedia

When it was purchased, the JP Cohousing site had arsenic and lead  
contamination at the surface on all exposed and some unexposed ground  
surfaces.  This is common in and down wind of large cities within  
manufacturing areas, where it was common for arsenic and lead to go  
up the factory chimney and land downwind, accumulating over the years  
into a relatively hazardous condition.

A large part of the cost of the site remediation required on this  
project was cleaning up arsenic and lead contamination, processing it  
(stabilizing it so that it would not leach into the ground water) and  
exporting most it (nearly 100 truck loads if I remember correctly) to  
hazardous waste landfills in two different states.

Having most recently been a scrap metal yard, they also found PCBs,  
dumped right on the ground in the early 1970s we learned, when an  
electrical transformer was emptied of its oil based/pcb laden coolant  
in order to recycle the metal parts of the transformer.  (At the  
time, the recycled steel was probably worth $19.95.  The clean up of  
the PCBs 35 years later, cost nearly $100,000.)

Of course, there was asbestos insulation on the piping in the furnace  
room.   The cost was only about $35,000 to clean this up.

Chris ScottHanson


On Sep 2, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Create2gro [at] aol.com wrote:

> Can you explain "Remidiation"?
>
> HOLISTIC NEIGHBORS
> create2gro [at] aol.com
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