The Nashua River, Massachusetts was rank and lifeless in 1960s due to untreated sewage and red dye f

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Chapter 6 Working toward Sustainability
Hazardous Waste
The Nashua River, Massachusetts was rank and
lifeless in 1960s due to untreated sewage and
red dye from paper mills. In 1993 it was a
paradise for anglers and canoeists as the
community worked to clean the river. (photos
from National Geographic, 1993)
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• Ch 6b Sustainability Hazardous Materials
• hazardous solid and liquid waste
• U.S. waste handling
• hazardous waste disposal
• hazardous material laws
• radioactive waste
• mining waste

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• Types of Waste
• Municipal liquid waste
• Municipal solid waste
• Hazardous liquid waste
• Hazardous solid waste
• Radioactive waste

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• EPA definition of hazardous waste based on
• 1. List of substances and industrial process
  wastes
• source specific waste
• generic waste
• commercial chemical products
• 2. Any substance that possesses any of following
  four attributes
• ignitable
• corrosive
• reactive
• toxic

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• Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
• gives EPA authority to
• gather information on chemical toxicity, to
  determine unreasonable risks, and institute
  appropriate controls
• covers life cycle of specific chemicals from
  pre-manufacturing to manufacturing, importation,
  processing, distribution, and disposal
• maintains inventory of existing chemicals
• can prohibit manufacture or importation of
  chemicals
• notifies other importing governments of chemical
  exports from US

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• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
• 1976 - revised in 1980, 1984 - regulates
  generation, storage, transportation, treatment,
  and disposal of hazardous substances
• Transportation, storage and disposal
• tracking system
• permitting system
• controls and restrictions on disposal
• treatment, storage, or disposal (TSD) facilities
• manifest
• permits
• financial resources to maintain facility after
  closure including 30 post-closure years

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• The Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendment to RCRA
  (HSWA)
• eliminate use
• reduce amount used
• recycle and reuse
• treat the generated waste to reduce volume and
  toxicity
• dispose of properly

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Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liabilities Act CERCLA, 1980
deals with abandoned hazardous waste
sites responsible parties (RP) removal actions
(RA) remedial programs
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Responsible parties - RPs Retroactive liability
Strict liability Joint and several liability
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National Priorities List (NPL) Remedial
investigation RI Feasibility study FS Record
of decision ROD Remedial design
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Figure from Allen, 1997
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brownfields abandoned, idled, or under used
industrial and commercial facilities where
expansion or redevelopment complicated by real or
perceived environmental contamination EPA
estimates of 500,000 - 1,000,000 US
Brownfields 2002 - Small Business Liability
Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act -
CERCLA amendment
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• Hazardous waste disposal
• Industrial by-products - concentrated and highly
  toxic - acids, bases, organic solvents, etc.
• Reduce, recycle, convert or destroy
• Dilute and disperse
• 3 . Concentrate and contain

Casmalia Hazardous Waste Site, California has
been closed for environmental reasons (Keller,
1996)
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• Hazardous Waste Treatment
• land storage
• secure landfill
• underground injection well
• surface lagoon
• waste pile
• settling
• aeration
• reverse osmosis
• ion exchange (adsorption )
• electrodialysis
• chemical treatment
• biological treatment
• high temperature incineration

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• Land disposal
• secure landfill
• surface lagoon
• underground injection well
• waste pile

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• Secure landfill - for toxic solid waste
• Waste put in sealed drums
• Records
• Two or more liners
• Leachate collection systems
• Groundwater monitoring
• Cost 20 to 400/ton
• no site is truly secure!

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190 acre hazardous waste landfill in Los Angeles,
California (photos from Loan and LaFountain,
Civil Engineering, 2003)
Storm water detention basin lined with
polyethylene and clay composite geotextile
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Deep well disposal - Injection of liquid waste
down deep wells Cost 20 - 400/ton This type
of disposal now discouraged by EPA
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• Incineration - fine streams of liquid at
  temperatures of 900-1000 C
• strongly advocated by EPA
• produce carbon dioxide
• effective for organic waste
• Not effective for some inorganic compounds
• ash (also a hazardous waste)
• metals may volatilize - difficult to remove
  from air
• air pollution
• Cost 2000/ton

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Remediation of soils
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Dredge spoils
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Dredge spoils from Port of Baltimore used to
recreate vanishing Poplar Island 63 km southeast
of port- will be used as wildlife refuge (photo
from Civil Engineering, June, 2002)
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• Lower Fox River, Wisconsin - superfund site, 2003
• EPA issued a ROD for the last 13 miles of the Fox
  River and all of Green Bay
• paper and pulp industries located along river
• 1950 1970 - PCBs used
• found in water, sediment, and fish tissue
• sediment - concentrations ? 700 mg/L
• water - concentrations 17-61 ng/L contributing
  400 lb/yr of PCB to Green Bay water
• 7 paper companies potential RPs
• 61,000 lbs PCBs will be removed by dredging
  sediment - cost 27.5 million over 7 years
• dredge spoils - dewatered and disposed in
  landfill
• water - flocculation, clarification, and sand
  and carbon filtration
• some sediment capped instead of dredged
• after remediation - PCB concentration ? 1.0 mg/L

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Dioxin contaminated Superfund site, Times Beach/
Route 66 State Park in St. Louis, Missouri
(photo of aerial photograph by K. Bower, 2004)
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• Mine Environmental Problems
• Water
• Land surface
• Underground tunnel collapse

Bingham Canyon copper mine, Utah (Blatt, 1998)
Restored open pit mine
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Waste piles overburden piles spoil heaps tips
tailings slimes
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Acid Mine Drainage From pyrite, water, and
air 2FeS2 7 O2 2H2O ? 2Fe2 4SO4-2
4H 4Fe2 O2 4H ? 4 Fe3 2H2O in presence
of ion-oxidizing bacteria such as metallogenium,
ferrobacillus, thiobacillus, and leptospirillum
the above reaction is greatly accelerated FeS2(s)
14Fe3 18 H2O ? 15 Fe2 2 SO4-2 16 H
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• Acid water treatment plant at the Iron Mountain
  Mine, California
• uses 170 tons/ day of lime - drainage contains
  60 kg/m3 of dissolved metals - pH lt -3.5 -
  discharge 25,000 L/min (Civil
  Engineering, 2001)

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Acid Mine Drainage from underground mines into
surface water
Subsidence around abandoned mine shaft
Tri-State Zinc-Lead District (Kansas,
Oklahoma, Missouri)
Portable ion detector to determine lead
concentrations
Regraded, capped, and revegetated area (photos
by K.Bower, 2003)
Regrading to decrease erosion and cover tailings
with topsoil
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Prairie Plan used Chicago sewage sludge to
reclaim coal strip mined area, Fulton County,
Illinois, 1974 (photo from Chicago Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District)
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• Types of Waste
• Municipal liquid waste
• Municipal solid waste
• Hazardous liquid waste
• Hazardous solid waste
• Radioactive waste

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1940 photograph showing construction of
underground radioactive and hazardous liquid
waste storage tanks at Hanford, Washington (photo
from Civil Engineering, May 2002)
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• Low level waste (LLW) - relatively low
  radioactivity not requiring extraordinary
  disposal precautions
• Currently there are 20 temporary and 6 commercial
  disposal sites for low level waste

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Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - WIPP site in
Carlsbad, NM
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High level waste (HLW) In temporary storage
awaiting permanent disposal Disposal is a problem
for any country that has atomic weapons or has
nuclear power reactors
Steel body
Spent fuel is stored in giant casks, usually at
the nuclear power plant (figure from Wald,
Scientific American, 2003)
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Large commercial nuclear reactors (blue), shut
down plants (red), and proposed storage
facilities (yellow) (figure from Wald, Scientific
American, 2003)
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• Disposal Proposals
• temporary storage
• seabed disposal
• permanent storage in bedrock caverns
• transmutation

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nuclear waste sites near Russia
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• No high level radioactive waste has been put in
  permanent storage in U.S.
• temporary storage at this time
• amount is constantly increasing
• The accumulated world waste amounts to millions
  of gallons of liquids and tens of thousands of
  tons of solids
• The waste must go somewhere!

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• Nuclear Waste Policy Act 1982
• Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
• Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) 1982
• Nuclear Waste Policy Act
• Hanford, WA with basalts
• Yucca Mountain, NV with tuff
• Deaf Smith County, TX with salt
• All three states protested
• Tennessee protested
• Congress called a halt to the investigation

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Multiple barrier concept
Salt
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• High Level Waste Repository
• 1987 - congress decided Yucca Mountain would be
  developed and investigated
• state of Nevada receives 20 million per year for
  compensation

Yucca Mountain, Nevada (photo from Civil
Engineering, 2002)
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Experimental tunnel under Yucca Mountain, Nevada
(Civil Engineering, 2002)

• Research is still underway, Nevada is still
  protesting, and a research tunnel has been
  constructed that may be used for the disposal in
  the future
• 2002 - DOE approved Yucca Mountain as HLW
  repository
• Underground exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain,
  Nevada