Question

You are the environmental specialist for a company that has just purchased a property and started construction of a home office. During excavation you find that the site is part of an inactive landfill. Testing of soil samples shows that vinyl chloride, a hazardous waste, is present in concentrations that exceed regulatory standards. What is your next action? If the remediation of the problem is very costly, will you seek participation by other parties? If so, why?

Answer 1

As an environment specialist, if vinyl chloride is found in the construction land, which is hazardous waste, as the land happens to be a part of an inactive landfill, next action would be to conduct boreholes and trial pits investigations, especially focusing in the areas with most suspicion. Tests should be conducted at various location and at various heights in order to ascertain the level of contamination. Based on this we can decide what kind of clean-up methodology to adopt. Various clean-up techniques involve either excavation and removal of the contaminant, or treating the contaminant land, and putting limitation to the spread of the contaminant. Some of the treatments types can be : biological, chemical or thermal treatments.

Now, in case after the investigation, we found out that the remediation of the problem is very costly, we've to seek participation of other parties such as Owner of the landfill, government, Building councils etc. as the problem is something which may involve such parties, who can provide valuable input in this regard, to make the further moves simple. Example, if government can provide with some vital info about the landfill, who and when it was made, by what waste, we can counteract the problem more effecitively.