Development of a Large Warehouse Complex Overlying Slag, a Landfill, and Karst

Work is underway to develop a 465-acre site to include six large warehouse facilities. The site was an industrial facility in the past, and portions of the site had been used as a disposal area for steel slag and industrial debris. The subsurface conditions include historical fills, buried underground structures, and an unregulated industrial waste landfill in addition to alluvial, glacial, and residual soils. This case study reviews Kleinfelder’s site exploration, geo-hazards encountered onsite, and how the project team addressed these geo-hazards. Kleinfelder’s site exploration program primarily used borings and test pits to evaluate subsurface conditions and supplemented those with selectively located air probes and geophysics to provide a better understanding in certain areas. Hazards considered in the development of the site include karst geology, potentially expansive slag fill, and building over an industrial landfill.