Lessons learned at Savannah River: Phased-in approach lets new groundwater cleanup methods complement traditional ones

The Savannah River Site, near Aiken, SC, in 1983 began one of the largest and most successful cleanup programs for soil and groundwater contaminated with industrial solvents. Coordinated, phased implementation of groundwater pump-and-treat, soil-vapor extraction and other technologies at the site`s Administration and Materials Manufacturing areas has resulted in rapid cleanup progress. To date: more than 2.25 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater have been treated by two air strippers removing over 334,000 pounds of solvents; soil-vapor extraction units have removed more than 39,000 pounds of solvent from the vadose zone since they were installed last year; several innovative technology demonstrations performed at the site since 1988--including horizontal wells, air sparging, co-metabolic in-situ bioremediation, radiofrequency and joule heating, solvent collection and recycling--have removed or destroyed more than 20,000 pounds of solvent. Cleanup activities have removed about 11% of the original 3.5 million pounds of industrial solvents generated from process-waste disposal operations conducted at the site from the 1950s through 1979.