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COSTS AND ISSUES RELATED TO REMEDIATION OF PETROLEUM-CONTAMINATED SITES (NEW ORLEANS, LA)
Citation:
WILSON, B. H., G. HATTAN, J. KUHN, R. MACKAY, AND J. T. WILSON. COSTS AND ISSUES RELATED TO REMEDIATION OF PETROLEUM-CONTAMINATED SITES (NEW ORLEANS, LA). Presented at 2004 NGWA Remediation Conference, New Orleans, LA, November 15 - 16, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The remediation costs required at sites contaminated with petroleum-derived compounds remains a relevant issue because of the large number of existing underground storage tanks the United States and the presence of benzene, MTBE, and TBA in some drinking water supplies. Cost information was obtained from the Clu-In Database (http://cluin.org/), maintained by the U.S. EPA, and used to identify what an average or median remediation cost per site would be. One hundred twelve sites were identified that had at least some cost information provided. Ninety-five of the sites were service stations, eleven were public water supplies, and 6 were industrial sites. The mean (median) costs for these cleanups were $400,356 ($197,736) for all 112 sites, $243,299 ($180,000) for the service station sites, $1,026,591 ($240,000) for the public drinking water sites, and $1,907,000 ($546,000) for the industrial sites. Additional UST cleanup cost information from the States of Oklahoma and Florida were included with those from the Clu-In Database, for a total of 815 sites. The sites from these two states are almost exclusively service station cleanups. The mean value of cleanup costs for the 815 sites was $299,673 with a median value of $210,374. Cleanup costs for individual technologies were also calculated. The most common technologies used were air sparing/soil vacuum extraction (AS/SVE), bioremediation, excavation, pump-and-treat, and free product recovery. The mean (median) costs were $389,042 ($358,941) for AS/SVE, $446,098 ($139,506) for bioremediation, $425,300 ($262,744) for excavation, $574,038 ($230,000) for pump-and-treat, and $237,880 ($194,380) for free product recovery. Because there are limitations to the average cost approximations presented here, it is difficult to identify the true inclusive costs of remediation. Frequently, the costs available are estimated and include only a portion of the capital, operation, and maintenance costs. The major factor affecting the cost of cleanup was an impact to drinking water supplies. The mean cleanup costs at sites with drinking water impacts were two to four times as great as sites with no drinking water impact.