State of the Practice of Characterization and Remediation of Contaminated Sites

With increased manufacturing and industrial prowess following World War II, the United States entered into a period of unprecedented economic growth and advancement of the quality of life for its citizens. Nevertheless, as had occurred before in Western Europe, and is now occurring in the developing world, economic expansion and industrialization outpaced advances with respect to environmental stewardship. As a result, the environment was significantly impacted - often in the form of vivid, high-visibility events and disasters, but far more often with little notice or directly observable side effects on the subsurface environment. Regardless, in all of these cases, the cumulative effect was enormous and presented a very real threat to the gains made in quality of life in the preceding years. This state-of-the-practice paper presents a chronology of the effects of over 60 years of rapid industrialization, economic expansion, the detrimental effects to the environment, and the resulting reactions from private citizens, the corporate sector, and local, state, and federal government. An overview of the evolving regulatory framework as well as site characterization and remediation technologies used in practice is presented. Finally, the emerging holistic approaches and technologies to achieve green and sustainable remediation of contaminated sites are discussed. Many challenges and opportunities still exist for the development of efficient, reliable, simple and cost effective technologies to characterize and remediate numerous contaminated sites.