There may be nearly 300,000 waste sites in the United States where ground water and soil are contaminated. Yet recent studies question whether existing technologies can restore contaminated ground water to drinking water standards, which is the goal for most sites and the result expected by the public. How can the nation balance public health, technological realities, and cost when addressing ground water cleanup? This new volume offers specific conclusions, outlines research needs, and recommends policies that are technologically sound while still protecting health and the environment. Authored by the top experts from industry and academia, this volume: Examines how the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the subsurface environment, as well as the properties of contaminants, complicate the cleanup task. Reviews the limitations of widely used conventional pump-and-treat cleanup systems, including detailed case studies. Evaluates a range of innovative cleanup technologies and the barriers to their full implementation. Presents specific recommendations for policies and practices in evaluating contamination sites, in choosing remediation technologies, and in setting appropriate cleanup goals.

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.

Most books on ground water and soil cleanup address only the technologies themselvesâ€"not why new technologies are or are not developed. Innovations in Ground Water and Soil Cleanup takes a holistic approach to the entire field, addressing both the sluggish commercial development of ground water and soil cleanup technologies and the attributes of specific technologies. It warns that, despite cleanup expenditures of nearly $10 billion a year, the technologies remain rudimentary. This engaging book focuses on the failure of regulatory policy to link cleanup with the financial interests of the company responsible for the contamination. The committee explores why the market for remediation technology is uniquely lacking in economic drivers and why demand for innovation has been so much weaker than predicted. The volume explores how to evaluate the performance of cleanup technologies from the points of view of the public, regulators, cleanup entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders. The committee discusses approaches to standardizing performance testing, so that choosing a technology for a given site can be more timely and less contentious. Following up on Alternatives for Ground Water Cleanup (NRC, 1994), this sequel presents the state of the art in the cleanup of various types of ground water and soil contaminants. Strategies for making valid cost comparisons also are reviewed.