The development of brownfield sites usually has a requirement to remediate the land and to remove or make safe any contamianted soils. With the increase in disposal charges and the removal of the landfill tax break on the remediation of brown field sites, we are now seeing that many sites are designed in such a manner that contamianted can either be capped or left in situ under hard landscaped areas.

In instances where contaminated soils need to be removed from site, the historical method of doing so was to sample the undisturbed land, have chemically analysed and then build up a map of the areas of contaminated. Such analysis is normally presented in a site contamination report, from where lane remediation plan is designed to ensure the conamiantion is dealt with consistent with the contamination report.

We have just finished a contract for Persimmon Homes at Louth. This site differed in that heavy metal contamination was evident in a stockpile, though from the sampling it could not be determined where in the stockpile the contamination was or the quantity. As the stockpile was over 1000 cubic metres, you will appreciate the huge costs invovled should the old approach be taken and all the stockpile be remvoed as Hazardous. Over the last two months we have worked with Terra Consult and designed a solution for Persimmon, whereby we used an on site XRF handhled detector to sample every bucket load of soil and give an exact chemical composition of the soils within 90 seconds. The soil was then split and disposed of inaccordance with its composition, be it inert, non-hazardous or active.

The result was that the stockpile was sucessfully split, the contamianted soils disposed of in accordance with their exact composition and the site remediated quickly, efficiently and hugely cheaper than if the the old method of all the soils being classified as hazardous.

Whilst our area of operations has traditionally been North Yorkshire, this is a service that we can offer nationwide. Contamianted Land, Land Remediation, XRF detector, site clearance

Article source: http://www.toddskips.co.uk/blog/?p=636