Contaminants in the Subsurface

Download or read book Contaminants in the Subsurface written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-04-23 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At hundreds of thousands of commercial, industrial, and military sites across the country, subsurface materials including groundwater are contaminated with chemical waste. The last decade has seen growing interest in using aggressive source remediation technologies to remove contaminants from the subsurface, but there is limited understanding of (1) the effectiveness of these technologies and (2) the overall effect of mass removal on groundwater quality. This report reviews the suite of technologies available for source remediation and their ability to reach a variety of cleanup goals, from meeting regulatory standards for groundwater to reducing costs. The report proposes elements of a protocol for accomplishing source remediation that should enable project managers to decide whether and how to pursue source remediation at their sites.