At the beginning of this year, our school purchased a piece of property adjacent to our school. The school plans on building a new Middle School on this land over the next two years. In our monthly school meeting, our dean mentioned that the land was a brownfield and that previous owner had agreed to clean up the property over the next year, before we started building. This news got me wondering if there was a difference between a brownfield and a superfund site and how many others were in our local area. The students were curious if any other school was located on one of these sites and if they had experienced any problems with the land, the clean-up process, or any affects that occured years later in the community.
a. Is there a difference between a brownfield and superfund site?
b. Describe three sites in your local area that are either a brownfield or a superfund site and then briefly explain how the land became contaminated? You can create a map at the EPA site for you area.
c. Choose one of the types of contamination listed above and describe two environmental impacts that could arise.
d. What is bioremediation and explain two recent advances and how they are being used to clean up contaminated sites.
Resources:
Toxic Pollution in Your Back Yard
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6230678
Brownfield Cleanup and Restoration at http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/
Superfunds at http://www.epa.gov/superfund
Bioremediation from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation
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Brownfield’s are land that have been previously used for industrial purposes and may be contaminated with low hazardous wastes or pollution but can be used once cleaned up. Superfunds are heavily contaminated toxic wastes sites that have been abandoned which the government tries to keep us away from. One brownfield in High Point, North Carolina is the West Macedonia Revitalization Area, southeast of the central business district. It became contaminated from vacant, underused, and deteriorating industrial buildings, clusters of blighted residential dwellings, and an abundance of undeveloped land. It is under a redevelopment program established by the city. A superfund site located in Moore County, North Carolina is the Aberdeen Pesticide Dumps. The site consists of an inactive pesticide formulation plant and they would dispose there wastes here. Contaminants in the soil, and possibly the groundwater, include ethyl benzene, DDT, DDE, xylene, and much more. The groundwater contamination is affecting many wells. Another superfund site is the Potter’s Septic Service Pits located in Sandy Ridge, NC. It is contaminated from a previous oil spill. People have been finding sludge in their yards and drinking contaminated water. The water and soil is contaminated with volatile organic compounds such as benzene, xylene, and phenols. There would be many environmental impacts from benzene contamination in the soil. One obvious one is that it can leach through to the groundwater and contaminate drinking water. Benzene has been known to cause headaches, dizziness, leukemia, and even death. Benzene can also lead to defects in fetal animals and harming animals that ingest the contaminated soil. Bioremediation is using microorganisms, green plants, fungi, or enzymes to return the contaminated environment to its original condition. It may be employed to attack specific soil contaminants. Two advances in this are bioaugmentation and bioreactors. With bioaugmentation you add organisms or enzymes to the soil to remove unwanted chemicals. It’s used to remove by products from raw materials and potential pollutants from wastes. Bacteria are most commonly used. Bioreactors treat the contaminated substance treat the contaminated substance in a large tank containing organisms or enzymes. They’re commonly used to remove toxic pollutants from solid waste and soil. Both of these help clean up the soil and remove the pollutants helping to restore it to its original condition.
Brownfields are real property that may be expanded, redeveloped, or reuse that might be limited due to a hazard such as a substance, pollutant, or contaminant. Superfunds are hazardous waste site areas that pose a risk to human health and the local environment. There is a difference between the two being that brownfields are areas that might be contaminated but are being reestablished to their normal conditions while superfunds are areas that are forbidden to people to go near, a place where the government would like the locals to stay away from.
A local superfund site is in Fayetteville, NC. The Carolina Transformer site became a transformer disposal site. The transformers leaked PCB fluids which were not properly dealt with and leaked into the soil. The local soil and groundwater became contaminated with the PCB's. Another local site, a brownfield, is the former Industrial Plastics Property in Greensboro where the soil and groundwater are both contaminated from the mistreatment and misuse of wastes from the plastic leftovers. The site is being redeveloped for non-residential commercial or industrial uses. And in Charlotte is the new Home Depot site, beside the Academy Steel Drum which disposed of wasted from drums to pits and lagoons near the site. The contaminated soil moved around throughout the area with high concentrations of lead, chromium, and PCB's.
PCB contamination can contaminate water sources especially groundwater around the site. Fish in the water the may be contaminated will swallow the PCB's infecting them and the entire population. Being that the PCB's bind strongly to soil its hard to get the contaminated soil back to the normal environmental conditions.
Bioremediation is the process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants, or their enzymes to return the environment to its original condition. Two advances in bioremediation are biostimulation and composting. Biostimulation is the modification of the environment to stimulate bacteria for biorememdiation which is done by adding different forms of nutrients. Composting is the controlled decompostion of organic matter and is the process of producing compost through the decompostion of boidegradable organic matter.
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