National Academy Press
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
Support for this project was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Agreement No. CR 818700-01-0, the U.S. Department of Energy under Agreement Nos. DE-AL01-89DP48070 and DE-AC01-89DP8070, Chevron USA, Inc., and the Coalition on Superfund.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alternatives for ground water cleanup / Committee on Ground Water Cleanup Alternatives, Water Science and Technology Board, Board on Radioactive Waste Management, Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources, National Research Council.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-04994-6
1. Groundwater—Purification. I. National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Ground Water Cleanup Alternatives.
TD426.A48 1994
363.73'94—dc20 94-29573
CIP
Cover art by Y. David Chung. Title design by Rumen Buzatov. Chung and Buzatov are graduates of the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. Chung has exhibited widely throughout the country, including at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
The cover illustration shows how the elements of weather, geography, and underground strata all combine to affect our ground water.
Copyright 1994 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, June 1994
Second Printing, July 1995
COMMITTEE ON GROUND WATER CLEANUP ALTERNATIVES
MICHAEL C. KAVANAUGH, Chair,
ENVIRON Corporation, Emeryville, California
JAMES W. MERCER, Vice-Chair,
GeoTrans, Inc., Sterling, Virginia
LINDA M. ABRIOLA,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
CHARLES B. ANDREWS,
S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland
MARY JO BAEDECKER,
U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia
EDWARD J. BOUWER,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
PATRICIA A. BUFFLER,
University of California, Berkeley
ROBERT E. CONNICK,
University of California, Berkeley
RICHARD A. CONWAY,
Union Carbide Corporation, South Charleston, West Virginia
RALPH C. D'ARGE,
University of Wyoming, Laramie
LINDA E. GREER,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C.
JOSEPH H. HIGHLAND,
ENVIRON Corporation, Princeton, New Jersey
DOUGLAS M. MACKAY,
Centre for Groundwater Research, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
GLENN PAULSON,
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, liaison to the Board on Radioactive Waste Management
LYNNE M. PRESLO,
ICF-Kaiser Engineers, Oakland, California
PAUL V. ROBERTS,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
WILLIAM J. WALSH,
Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, Washington, D.C.
C. HERB WARD,
Rice University, Houston, Texas
MARCIA E. WILLIAMS,
Williams & Vanino, Inc., Los Angeles, California
Staff
JACQUELINE A. MACDONALD, Study Director
GREGORY K. NYCE, Senior Project Assistant
ANGELA F. BRUBAKER, Project Assistant
GREICY AMJADIVALA, Project Assistant
GEORGE Z. HORNBERGER, Intern
CINDY F. KLEIMAN, Technical Consultant
GINO BIANCHI-MOSQUERA, Technical Consultant
WATER SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BOARD
DANIEL A. OKUN, Chair,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
A. DAN TARLOCK, Vice-Chair,
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Chicago
J. DAN ALLEN,
Chevron USA, Inc., New Orleans, Louisiana
PATRICK L. BREZONIK,
University of Minnesota, St. Paul
KENNETH D. FREDERICK,
Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.
DAVID L. FREYBERG,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
WILFORD R. GARDNER,
University of California, Berkeley
WILLIAM L. GRAF,
Arizona State University, Tempe
THOMAS M. HELLMAN,
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, New York, New York
ROBERT J. HUGGETT,
College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, Virginia
CHARLES C. JOHNSON, Consultant,
Bethesda, Maryland
WILLIAM M. LEWIS, JR.,
University of Colorado, Boulder
CAROLYN H. OLSEN,
Brown and Caldwell, Atlanta, Georgia
CHARLES R. O'MELIA,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
STAVROS S. PAPADOPULOS,
S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland
BRUCE E. RITTMANN,
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
JOY B. ZEDLER,
San Diego State University, San Diego, California
Staff
STEPHEN D. PARKER, Staff Director
SARAH CONNICK, Senior Staff Officer
SHEILA D. DAVID, Senior Staff Officer
CHRIS ELFRING, Senior Staff Officer
GARY D. KRAUSS, Staff Officer
JACQUELINE A. MACDONALD, Staff Officer
M. JEANNE AQUILINO, Administrative Associate
ANITA A. HALL, Administrative Assistant
GREGORY K. NYCE, Senior Project Assistant
MARY BETH MORRIS, Senior Project Assistant
ANGELA F. BRUBAKER, Project Assistant
BOARD ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
CHRIS G. WHIPPLE, Chair,
Kaiser Engineers, Oakland, California
CHARLES FAIRHURST, Vice-Chair,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
JOHN F. AHEARNE,
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
COLIN J. ALLAN,
Whiteshell Laboratory, Pinawa, Manitoba, Canada
JEAN M. BAHR,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
LYNDA BROTHERS,
Davis Wright Tremaine, Seattle, Washington
SOL BURSTEIN,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
MELVIN W. CARTER,
Atlanta, Georgia
CARON CHESS,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
E. WILLIAM COLGLAZIER,
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
PAUL P. CRAIG,
University of California, Davis
B. JOHN GARRICK,
PLG, Inc., Newport Beach, California
ROBERT D. HATCHER,
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
PERRY L. McCARTY,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
FRED W. McLAFFERTY,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
H. ROBERT MEYER,
Keystone Scientific, Inc., Fort Collins, Colorado
D. KIRK NORDSTROM,
U.S. Geological Survey, Boulder, Colorado
GLENN PAULSON,
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
Staff
CARL A. ANDERSON, Staff Director
PETER B. MYERS, Staff Director, retired April 30, 1993
INA B. ALTERMAN, Senior Staff Officer
ROBERT S. ANDREWS, Senior Staff Officer
KARYANIL T. THOMAS, Senior Staff Officer
DANA CAINES, Administrative Associate
VERNA BOWEN, Administrative Assistant
LISA CLENDENING, Administrative Assistant
GAYLENE DUMOUCHEL, Administrative Assistant
REBECCA BURKA, Project Assistant
DENNIS DuPREE, Project Assistant
ELIZABETH LANDRIGAN, Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON GEOSCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND RESOURCES
M. GORDON WOLMAN, Chair,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
PATRICK R. ATKINS,
Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
PETER EAGLESON,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
EDWARD A. FRIEMAN,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California
W. BARCLAY KAMB,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
JACK E. OLIVER,
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
FRANK L. PARKER,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
RAYMOND A. PRICE,
Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
THOMAS C. SCHELLING,
University of Maryland, College Park
LARRY L. SMARR,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
STEVEN M. STANLEY,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
VICTORIA J. TSCHINKEL,
Landers and Parsons, Tallahassee, Florida
WARREN WASHINGTON,
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
EDITH BROWN WEISS,
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
Staff
STEPHEN RATTIEN, Executive Director
STEPHEN D. PARKER, Associate Executive Director
MORGAN GOPNIK, Assistant Executive Director
JEANETTE SPOON, Administrative Officer
SANDI FITZPATRICK, Administrative Associate
ROBIN ALLEN, Senior Project Assistant
Preface
"A little water clears us of this deed"
Macbeth, Act II, ii
Over the past 15 years, evidence has accumulated that the nation's ground water resource, which supplies more than 50 percent of the population's drinking water, is threatened not only by excessive overdrafts but also by contamination caused by past and present industrial, agricultural, and commercial activities. In the United States, it is estimated that more than 300,000 sites may have contaminated soil or ground water requiring some form of remediation (see Table 1-2 in Chapter 1). The potential cost of these remedial activities may be as large as $750 billion in 1993 dollars to be spent over the next 20 to 30 years (see Chapter 1). The magnitude of the problem may be equally significant in other industrialized countries.
The U.S. public response to this growing perception of a threatened resource with unknown human health and ecological impacts has generally been to demand restoration of the ground water to drinking water standards (although the cleanup goal varies with the site, as discussed in Chapter 6). This goal of restoration to drinking water standards is currently the primary driver of ground water remediation activities at most sites regulated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, also known as the Superfund act. Restoration to potable standards has also been the goal at other sites regulated under state laws and in some cases at sites regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
The technological response to these statutory and regulatory demands over the past decade has almost exclusively been the application
of so-called "pump-and-treat" technology. Simply put, this technology involves extracting water from the ground below the water table using standard water-well technology. The extracted and contaminated water is then treated with established above-ground technologies such as air stripping or adsorption on granular activated carbon. In essence, pump-and-treat technology attempts to flush out the contaminants and to return the contaminated area to a condition in which water drawn from wells will meet drinking water standards without further treatment. However, in contrast to the suggestion from Lady Macbeth quoted above, a very large amount of water is often required to flush out even modest amounts of contaminants, and the amount of water required to rid a site of contamination is often unimaginably large. In essence, the United States has been conducting a large-scale national testing program to determine if restoration of contaminated aquifers is achievable within reasonable time frames and at an affordable cost.
The exact number of pump-and-treat systems currently in operation in the United States is unknown, but it may well exceed 3,000. A sufficient history of operation of this technology now exists to assess its efficacy. Unfortunately, and some would say not surprisingly, the effectiveness of this technology to restore contaminated aquifers seems quite limited. This has led to a widely held view that pump-and-treat is a failed technology and should be rejected as a technique for ground water remediation. Thus, the United States and other industrialized nations, as well as developing nations, are confronted with a major dilemma: how to protect human health and the environment from contaminated ground water without wasting resources pursuing technical strategies that appear unable to achieve agreed-upon societal goals. A further significant problem is how to convey these technical limitations to a public that has grown increasingly skeptical of technologists.
In response to this dilemma, the National Research Council (NRC) established a committee of experts to analyze the major technical and public policy issues arising from technical limits to aquifer remediation. The Committee on Ground Water Cleanup Alternatives was established through two boards within the NRC: the Water Science and Technology Board and the Board on Radioactive Waste Management. Financial support for this effort was provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Coalition on Superfund, and Chevron Corporation. The boards chose 19 experts to serve on the committee, representing a broad range of scientific and technical disciplines and stakeholders in the debate over ground water remediation.
The scope of the committee's charge included the following questions:
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What are the capabilities of pump-and-treat systems?
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What are the limits, if any, to contaminant removal from the subsurface?
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What are the capabilities of alternative or innovative technologies for subsurface remediation, and what, if any, are the barriers to the use of these technologies?
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What are the socioeconomic consequences of the possible failure of ground water remediation?
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What are the possible alternative goals for ground water remediation, and what factors should be considered in setting those goals?
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What policy alternatives should be pursued to reflect the technical limitations to aquifer remediation?
The committee undertook a thorough evaluation of existing information related to subsurface remediation. During nine meetings held over the past two years, the committee heard reports from numerous private and public groups on all aspects of ground water and soil remediation. Prominent among these were presentations by policy analysts from the EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (including its Technology Innovation Office), technical specialists from the EPA's Ada, Oklahoma, ground water research laboratory, researchers working on DOE efforts to deal with ground water and soil contamination at DOE facilities, and DOE employees working on technology development for environmental restoration. The committee also solicited views of industry trade groups, consultants, contractors, impacted parties, and environmental groups. Finally, the committee relied on the in-depth experience and expertise of the committee members, most of whom are recognized leaders in the technical, economic, risk, and policy debates surrounding this complex subject.
Although the committee was able to review data from only a small number of sites (approximately 80) where pump-and-treat systems have been installed, there was strong consensus that these sites represented the range of conditions encountered at the majority of sites with contaminated ground water. One dominant characteristic that surfaced in all cases was the high degree of uncertainty associated with the task of subsurface remediation. These uncertainties begin with limitations on site characterization and the ability to identify the nature and extent of the contamination in complex, multilayered, and heterogeneous geologic environments, in which key physical, chemical, or biological characteristics can vary by orders of magnitude on the scale of centimeters. They end with uncertainties about the efficacy of any subsurface remediation technology selected for the task in the face of this highly uncertain hydrogeologic and geochemical environment. In between these end points, the
difficult selection of appropriate remedial actions becomes exceedingly complex due to uncertainties in analytical models used to predict the fate and transport of contaminants and uncertainties in the science of risk assessment. The problem becomes even more intractable when these uncertainties are injected into the litigious environment that exists in the United States. This unusual degree of uncertainty significantly complicates debates about the technical, institutional, and public policy strategies that should be pursued to resolve ground water contamination.
The document that follows provides in my view the most comprehensive treatment of the issues arising from technical and institutional limitations on ground water remediation yet available. Six subcommittees chaired by committee members prepared the various chapters in the report; lively debates characterized the later committee meetings as the members reviewed and discussed the subcommittees' chapters. Given the diversity of opinions and backgrounds of committee members, it was a pleasant surprise that we were able to reach a consensus on almost all issues. I wish to acknowledge the significant efforts by committee members, all of whom are heavily overcommitted but nevertheless found the time to make important contributions to the document under friendly but persistent prodding from the Water Science and Technology Board staff.
As with all such reports prepared under the auspices of the NRC, the success of the report is heavily dependent on the skills, dedication, and energy of the staff officer assigned to a committee. In this case, the Committee on Ground Water Cleanup Alternatives was extremely fortunate to have the services of Jackie MacDonald, whose contributions throughout the report are extensive. Aside from the overall management and tracking of each version of chapters or sections of chapters, Jackie demonstrated her very considerable editing skills in preparing or extensively rewriting significant sections of the report and in helping to make the report read in a consistent and comprehensible style, as opposed to sounding like a report written by 19 people. Jackie's attention to detail, persistence, enthusiasm, and commitment to hard work are inspiring, and much of the credit for the success of this document is owed to her.
Thanks are also due to several others who assisted in this project. Greg Nyce and Greicy Amjadivala efficiently managed logistical arrangements for the committee meetings. Angela Brubaker prepared the report manuscript for publication, improving the editorial details in numerous ways. Cindy Kleiman prepared technical reviews of the ecological risks of ground water contamination and analyses of alternative ground water cleanup goals. Gino Bianchi-Mosquera was responsible for much of the legwork in analyzing data from the sites listed in Appendix A and used to prepare the case studies in Chapter 3.
Finally, I wish to again acknowledge the many long hours that committee members must have spent researching, writing, and revising their contributions. I have enjoyed immensely the opportunity to work with such a talented and articulate group of professionals. I hope the reader will agree that the committee has done its task well.
MICHAEL C. KAVANAUGH, CHAIR
COMMITTEE ON GROUND WATER CLEANUP ALTERNATIVES
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Robert M. White is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. Robert M. White are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.