Site Remediation Management

If you are the owner or operator of a property on which a reportable release of oil or hazardous material has recently occurred, Lingenfelter Environmental Consulting, LLC (LINEC) can provide you with practical, cost effective solutions to assist you in managing the environmental conditions on your property.  If you are the owner or operator of a commercial or industrial property on which historical contamination is present, and remedial activities have been initiated by another environmental consultant or are ongoing but never seem to reach an end point, LINEC may be able to propose an alternative course of response actions.  LINEC understands the complexities of managing the cleanup of contaminated property whether the remediation is planned or unexpected.  LINEC‘s LSP is well versed in developing and implementing creative and cost effective remedial action alternatives that minimize cost and efficiently achieve regulatory compliance and/or disposal site closure.  Sometimes the best remedial action alternative from a business perspective is long term management, rather than quickly achieving disposal site closure.  Because of LINEC‘s low overhead costs, ongoing professional services or the maintenance of Remedy Operation Status (ROS), can often be provided to you for significantly less that a larger or nationally recognized firm.

Commonly, commercial property owners and small business owners are unexpectedly thrust into a situation where they may be facing the possibility of civil or criminal liability due to the discovery and/or occurrence of a reportable release of Oil or Hazardous Material (OHM).  Dealing with a new reportable release condition or the long term management of historical contamination is one of the most costly problems a commercial property owner or small business owner may face.  A release to the environment is a liability, which may significantly reduce the value of your property.  LINEC is always willing to provide a client with sufficient information to understand the available options to manage an environmental condition.  LINEC provides its clients with plain language explanations and guidance through the complicated regulatory compliance process.  If the need arises for soil and/or groundwater remediation, LINEC will provide you with recommendations for cost effective, innovative remedial technologies to manage the specific contaminate conditions observed at your property.  LINEC works with experienced general and/or environmental contractors when excavation is necessary, and has existing relationships with suppliers and other environmental/general contractors when in-situ treatment is the selected remedial alternative.

Historically, when excavation dewatering was necessary, a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit Exclusion was coordinated by an environmental consultant for the on-site treatment and subsequent discharge of contaminated water removed from an excavation.  Due to changes in the NPDES program and the onerous requirements to obtain a Remediation General Permit (RGP) from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is no longer cost effective to perform on-site treatment except in the case of large or ongoing projects.  LINEC currently recommends that dewatering at most disposal sites (such as the removal/replacement of underground storage tanks at a gasoline service station or subsurface utility work) include containment in a fractionating tank and off-site transportation for treatment.   Depending on the specific requirements of your project, LINEC can assist you in obtaining an RGP from EPA, coordinating the necessary subcontractors to perform temporary containment and off-site treatment, or in the case of a smaller dewatering project simply coordinate the services of a vacuum truck.  In most cases, LINEC‘s LSP can prepare a Bill-of-Lading (BOL) for the off-site transportation of contaminated groundwater as a Remediation Waste.

Prior to recommending an active remedial action alternative or in-situ treatment at disposal sites where regulatory standards have been exceeded, LINEC will evaluate the feasibility of progressing toward site closure using a Massachusetts Contingency Plan (MCP) Risk Characterization to assess the risk of harm to human health, safety, public welfare or the environment.  Depending on the property use, performance of an appropriate class risk characterization may eliminate the need to perform remediation activities or minimize the scope of cleanup activities by only eliminating areas of higher concentrations and implementing administrative controls to limit exposure to residual contamination.  A Method 1 Risk Characterization compares the conditions at the disposal site to promulgated MCP Method 1 Standards in cases when contamination is limited to soil and groundwater (Method 1 cannot be used if contamination is present in one or more environmental media other than soil or groundwater, or is known to bioaccumulate and is present within two feet of the ground surface).  A Method 2 Risk Characterization supplements and modifies the MCP Method 1 Standards with site and chemical specific information.  Site conditions are then compared to the derived MCP Method 2 Standards in the same manner that MCP Method 1 Standards are used.  A Method 3 Risk Characterization relies upon detailed information about a disposal site, the contamination present and potential exposures to Human and Environmental Receptors under all current and reasonably foreseeable Site Activities and Uses to characterize the risk of harm.  The scope and level of effort of a Method 3 Risk Characterization is required to reflect the site specific nature of this method, and the complexity of the disposal site.

LINEC performs MCP Method 1 Risk Characterizations internally and has professional relationships with other environmental companies which specialize in evaluating the toxicological risks posed by contaminants at a Disposal Site when preparation of an MCP Method 2 or 3 Risk Characterization is necessary.  Upon request, LINEC can provide a recommendation for retaining the services of an outside environmental risk assessor or obtain competitive bids from multiple independent risk assessors.

LINEC is open to exploring creative ways to provide environmental consulting services such as working together with client managed construction crew personnel and equipment and only providing LSP opinions and electronic submittals to DEP (direction and guidance to the extent possible and in conformance with applicable health and safety regulations; some remedial activities require the services of licensed subcontractors; most remedial activities require the collection of environmental samples by a trained professional).  This type of arrangement may be able to save a client considerable expense by utilizing existing personnel and equipment (or their own local subcontractors with which an existing business relationship and/or association exists) and only retaining outside LSP services.  Additionally, most environmental consulting companies utilize subcontracted services for tasks such as drilling, excavation and contaminated soil recycling/disposal.  Most environmental service companies mark up the cost of these subcontracted services a minimum of 15 to 20% but may mark up these expenses as much as 50 to 100%.  One of the ways LINEC attempts to minimize our clients remediation costs is to provide our clients with the option of paying for selected subcontractor services directly.  When a client opts to have LINEC coordinate payment for subcontracted services, those services are only marked up 15%.

LINEC‘s LSP has experience managing releases of OHM for the follow types of clients:

  •  Residential property owners impacted by heating oil releases;
  • Gasoline service station owners;
  • Insurance companies;
  • Municipalities;
  • Dry cleaners;
  • Various small/large commercial and industrial property owners; and
  • Property owners located downgradient of a disposal site.

LINEC‘s LSP has experience managing and/or providing oversight for releases of OHM in association with the follow types of remedial action alternatives:

  •  Soil excavation and off-site transportation (with and without dewatering);
  • Vacuum extraction (with and without air sparging enhancement);
  • In-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) application/injection;
  • Automated product recovery only systems;
  • Groundwater pump and treat systems (with and without product recovery, air stripping, and activated carbon polishing of vapor and liquid phase discharges);
  • Sub-slab depressurization; and
  • Monitored natural attenuation.

LINEC‘s LSP has specific experience managing and/or providing oversight in association with releases of the following chemical constituents:

Petroleum hydrocarbons such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil (#2, #4 and #6), etc., and their associated chemical constituents;

Gasoline additives such as lead, methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), and ethylene dibromide (EDB);

Chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE; a common degreasing chemical), tetrachloroethylene/perchloroethylene (PCE/PERC; most common chemical used to dry clean clothing), and their breakdown/daughter products;

Heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium (trivalent and hexavalent), lead, mercury, etc.;

Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), many of which are classified as human carcinogens and are commonly found in crude oil, coal tar, creosote, and asphalt; and Cyanide.

Please feel free to contact LINEC with any questions you may have regarding your individual environmental consulting needs or for more information on how LINEC may be of service to you.  Thank you for considering LINEC to provide environmental consulting services.