An interesting article in the Independent Newspaper the other day about how more and more people are choosing a career related to the environment. There’s even mention of contaminated land! Read more here. At the bottom of the article are some other interesting links about getting a green career.
The RegenWM centre of excellence in Land Reclamation is hosting a series of events relating to contaminated land.
See the Events page for further details.
We’ve all been waiting along time for an update from DEFRA on the way forward and here it is
With ‘dig and dump’ becoming more expensive, landfill tax exemption about to end later this year and less lanfills avaiable that can accept hazardous waste developers are having to look at alternative ways of remediating their sites. Biffa have joined forces with Biogenie to offer an alternative solution. Hydrocarbon contaminated soils can be taken to one of their treatment centres where bioremediation will be used to clean the soil up and then used for daily cover / restoration at Biffa’s landfills. More can be read on Biffa’s website.
Although there is no doubt that this is a huge step in the right direction we still need to aim for reducing the amount of soil that is removed from site in the first place. There are still environmental costs associated with transporting soil, even if it is going to be treated. To achieve this then in-situ remediation needs to become more prominent and for this to occur developers need to plan much further inadvance. With fuel costs and thus transport costs rising faster than ever before maybe we aren’t too far away from this.
When we hear about Government exceeding their own targets to build 60% of all new homes on brownfield land our immediate impression is that all those contaminated gas work sites and industrial sites across the country are being remediated. However, the truth is far from this as gardens of existing houses are classified as brownfield sites. According to thisismoney.co.uk 30% of new homes built in in 2005 in the southeast were built on previous residential land. If developments on gardens are now essentially encouraged does this mean that we will see even more infill developments occurring and less redevelopment of our contaminated sites?
If you feel strongly against gardens being classified as brownfield land then you can sign a petition here.
Here is a common situation that arises in contaminated land investigations. The picture below shows an extract from a borehole log with a sequence of Top Soil, Made Ground and Mercia Mudstone. Soil samples were taken during the site investigation and a sample was taken at 1.6m.
The first question that immediately comes to mind is whether the sample comprises Made Ground, Mercia Mudstone or both. Samples should always comrpise a unique strata and it should always be clear which strata the sample came from.
We have come across a number of consultants reports which have this sort of ’sampling strategy’ and it needs to be addressed.
contamLand had its first comment today! Pete commented on the topic ‘Tackling the Skills Crisis’
Learn all about remediation of a former petrol station in California.
Alney Island situated on the River Severn in Gloucestershire has been found to contain elevated concentrations of lead and Benzo-a-Pyrene. The findings came about as a result of the Environment Agency undertaking flood defence works.
The Council successfully applied for funding from DEFRA so investigations could take place to assess the extent of contamination present. Investigations are still ongoing and it will be a few more months before any decisions can be made. All the reports produced to date for the Council can be reviewed on their website.
To read the Local Paper’s article on the site then click here. You can read about Alney Island on wikipedia .
English Partnerships and the Academy for Sustainable Communities have produced a Draft Brownfield Skills Strategy. Contaminated land professionals are only one of many professions who are in short supply. The strategy is currently open to public consultation and closes on the 27th May 2008. Click here for further details.
From our side we doubt that there is a private company or public body out there who finds it easy to recruit contaminated land professionals. On the other hand we also reckon that if you are job hunting at the moment then it probably isn’t going as well as you had thought it would.
As we enable anyone to add comments to posts without having to register we encourage you to add your own views and experiences. It can only be a good thing for the industry if we can learn from each other on this important topic.
If you would like to comment on this post then please click on the comments link next to the calendar date of May 11 in the top right hand corner of this post.