The topic of sustainable remediation continues to be prominent news. The Sustainable Remediation Forum (SURF) held it's10th meeting in June in Chicago. SURF is a collaborative forum focused on developing the ability to use sustainability concepts in remedial action decision-making, including brownfields. Approximately 50 people with deep interest in sustainable remediation attended the two day meeting. Attendees represented private industry, public agencies (both federal and state), universities and the development community.

Sustainability White Paper
A highlight of the meeting was the discussion of the SURF white paper which members have been working on during the last two years. The white paper tackles the subject of "how do we fix the environment without causing more harm in the future". The white paper, "Sustainable Remediation White Paper - Integrating Sustainable Principles, Practices, and Metrics Into Remediation Projects" was published in a special Summer 2009 issue of the Remediation Journal. The lengthy white paper comprised the entire volume of the journal and included the following sections:

• Introduction
• Description and Current Status of Sustainable Remediation
• Sustainability Concepts and Practices in Remediation
• Impediments and Barriers
• A Vision for Sustainability
• Application of Sustainable Principles, Practices, and Metrics to Remediation Projects, and
• Conclusions and Recommendations.

Dr. David Ellis, of the DuPont Corporate Remediation Group, and Paul Hadley, of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control were the lead authors of the paper, along with 51 co-authors and contributors. According to Dave "SURF's mission is to make every phase of every clean-up more sustainable. Regulators, businesses and the public have become increasingly aware of site remediation, and they're demanding clean-ups with smaller environmental footprints. This white paper represents a cohesive, collaborative effort to find better ways of restoring contaminated sites."

In a July 14, 2009 SURF press release, former EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, called the white paper's release "a watershed event in public policy deliberations about environmental remediation."

The White Paper can be accessed through the SURF website: www.sustainableremediation.org

Greener Cleanups
One of the important discussions at the SURF meeting was to delve further into the distinction between "green remediation" and "sustainable remediation". Green remediation is the assessment of those actions that make a selected remediation activity greener (e.g., using biodiesel fuel in remediation vehicles rather than gasoline; handling on-site material only one time rather than moving multiple times). Sustainable remediation steps back earlier into the process (e.g., sustainable options analysis and life cycle analysis), and identifies economic and social issues, as well as environmental issues — before a remedy selection is made.

Illinois EPA has developed a series of tools to help site owners, developers and their consultants in incorporating greener cleanup practices. Greener Cleanups are less polluting, more efficient cleanup activities and technologies designed to increase the environmental benefits of remediation. The intent of greener cleanups is to:

• Reduce carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases,
• Conserve natural resources,
• Improve energy efficiencies (and decrease costs), and
• Reduce waste material requiring off-site disposal.

Illinois EPA has created a simple matrix to guide site owners and consultants in choosing sustainable practices that can be applied to site assessment, planning and design, and cleanup. The matrix lists 36 individual actions, followed by a qualitative ranking of their level of difficulty and feasibility (sub-categorized by cost, schedule and technical complexity). The benefits of each action to air, water, land and energy are also identified.

Heather Nifong of the Illinois EPA, guest speaker at the Chicago SURF meeting, recommends that the matrix be applied to all Illinois brownfield projects. She indicated that "Illinois EPA doesn't expect sites to adopt every action recommended by the matrix - that would probably be impossible. Instead, the Agency is asking site owners and other stakeholders to think more broadly about their cleanup options and apply greener practices wherever practical".

The link for the Illinois EPA Greener Cleanups initiative: www.epa.state.il.us/land/greener-cleanups

Picture This
The SURF meeting also featured a relatively new tool called "photo-elicitation" to guide stakeholders when making decisions regarding land use redevelopment. Bill Steward of the University of Illinois demonstrated the tool by which stakeholders can "create a vision of what could be". He gives each stakeholder (which include the site owner and developer) a disposable camera and tells them to visit the redevelopment site and take pictures that are "attractive to them or remind them of the site's history". In-depth discussions of the pictures in follow-up focus meetings create a patchwork of history and stakeholder vision that can result in a consensus-driven sustainable redevelopment plan that "does not force a single development concept onto the end users".

It's summer. Take a dip into these resources and let's go SURFing.

Ken Kastman is a vice president and senior principal engineer in the URS Corp. Chicago Office.