Quantifying Life-Cycle Environmental Footprints of Soil and Groundwater Remedies
ER-201127
Objective
Green and sustainable remediation (GSR) involves quantifying the secondary effects (e.g., unintended environmental impacts) of soil and groundwater remediation on the environment and taking steps to minimize these effects while meeting the regulatory requirements governing a remedy. The Army and Navy have been piloting the SiteWise™ tool developed by Battelle to facilitate the quantification aspect of GSR, and the Air Force has recently started applying the Sustainable Remediation Tool (SRT™) developed by Air Force contractors (GSI Environmental and others) to provide a similar function. Use of the tools not only helps quantify the effects of an entire remedy but also the various components of a remedy, so that efforts to minimize the effects can be appropriately targeted on the remedy components that are the largest contributors. These new tools are being applied at Department of Defense (DoD) facilities, but to date, the accuracy and completeness of the results have not been compared to an appropriate benchmark. The objective of this project is, therefore, to demonstrate/validate SiteWise™ and SRT™ and benchmark these tools against an industry accepted life-cycle assessment (LCA) software package (SimaPro).
Technology Description
The two currently used, publicly available DoD GSR tools are SiteWise™ and SRT™, which were recently developed to assist remediation project teams with quantifying the unintended environmental effects of remedial options. These spreadsheet-based tools utilize literature referenced values to convert remedy information into environmental effects such as total energy usage, greenhouse gas emission, water usage, and other sustainability parameters. SimaPro, a for-purchase LCA software package, guides its user through the four steps of the LCA process as defined by ISO Standards 14040 and 14044. The SimaPro software and the process it models are more robust than the two DoD tools (and other similar non-DoD tools) but are also more complicated and expensive to apply.
Benefits
DoD project managers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state regulators need scientifically defensible and easily implementable approaches to evaluate a site's environmental footprint across a variety of categories in order to address DoD and EPA initiatives and improve upon current and planned remedies. This project will lead to improved confidence in the application of the DoD tools for GSR and also facilitate acceptance of GSR results from these tools by regulators. In addition to demonstrating and validating the tools, this project will identify and subsequently implement improvements to the DoD tools based on the benchmarking results. The project also will document the specific practices, procedures, and nuances of applying SimaPro to site remediation projects. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2013)
Points of Contact
Principal Investigator
Ms. Karla Harre
Naval Facilities Engineering Command Engineering Service Center
Phone: 805-982-2636
Fax: 805-982-4304
Document Types
- Fact Sheet - Brief project summary with links to related documents and points of contact.
- Final Report - Comprehensive report for every completed SERDP and ESTCP project that contains all technical results.
- Cost & Performance Report - Overview of ESTCP demonstration activities, results, and conclusions, standardized to facilitate implementation decisions.
- Technical Report - Additional interim reports, laboratory reports, demonstration reports, and technology survey reports.
- Guidance - Instructional information on technical topics such as protocols and user’s guides.
- Workshop Report - Summary of workshop discussion and findings.
- Multimedia - On demand videos, animations, and webcasts highlighting featured initiatives or technologies.
- Model/Software - Computer programs and applications available for download.
- Database - Digitally organized collection of data available to search and access.