Pros, Cons and Case Studies of Available Regulatory Options for In-Situ RemediationJim V. Rouse

摘要

Prior to the 1970s and the passage of the Clean Water Act, enacted in 1974, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or 'Superfund'), the policy of U.S. water pollution control largely focused on surface water control, with little attention paid to soil and groundwater contamination. In fact, these U.S. policies tended to promote the use of 'evaporation' ponds which ultimately resulted in exasperating groundwater pollution at many sites. Originally there was only limited environmental concerns associated with treatment plants that used the copper, chromium and arsenic (CCA) wood preservation process because it was generally accepted that natural attenuation would be effective in the retardation or fixation of such contaminates. In the case of timber preservation, this was aided by a paper (Palmer and Puis, 1994) published by the EPA which suggested that copper, hexavalent chromium and arsenic would be immobilized by natural geochemical interactions.