Remediation of Purchased Plant

Location Acquisition

The author of this report has been asked to step in as an Environmental and Safety Manager to inspect a polluted work location that was bought "as is" with the understanding that the acquiring company would pay any and all costs of remediating and fixing the polluted ground and such on the worksite. The early study indications include the fact there is oil pollution in the higher earth around the plant. However, the actual source material is not known and thus a waste delineation study will be necessary. There are also three buildings where equipment has been stored and there seems to be a pit where amounts of oil and other potential substances were discarded. The author of this report is being asked to design a waste delineation program that addresses all of the necessary factors including soil impact, groundwater impact, whether there are any dissolved contaminants in the groundwater and so forth.

Analysis

The most important things to know at the onset is what precisely is in the soil and whether those substances (and what they are) reached the groundwater. It should also be ascertained what precisely is in the waste pools. Of course, what precisely is in those waste pools and what is in the soil would determine what all has to happen to remediate the site and make it ready for any future operations. Regardless, there should be no time-specific plans about what will be done with the plant until all of the waste pool and soil/groundwater issues are dealt with. The acquiring firm surely has an idea what they want to use the location but the location needs to start with as clean a slate as possible. Further, buying this site "as is" without first knowing the depth and breadth of the problem was probably less than wise. If at all possible, the prior owner should be required to offer all of the information they know and they should be made to pay a penalty if they intentionally misrepresent what happened there and/or omit important details that the buying company as a "right to know." Even if the selling company tries to sell a clause that such recourse is not allowed for, lying and fraud in contracts is not protected by contracts and the courts will handle the matter as such.

The following things would need to happen with this location:

The precise substances that are in the soil need to be identified. They will then need to be removed using all of the necessary and required disposal techniques including stripping the polluted soil, getting rid of it and replacing the scraped area with an infrastructure that will allow for the capture and removal of any future spills without having to involve the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and so forth (EPA, 2016; OSHA, 2016).

The plant will need to be retrofitted in a way so that after the spills are done, all fluid movement and/or other activities that are likely to cause a spill are done in an area and a way that minimizes the chances of that happening and makes it easier and safer to clean up if/when there is a spill or other problem

The fluids in the waste pit should be identified and delineated and then dealt with and disposed of properly. Obviously, what the prior owner was manufacturing and what they used in terms of fuel and other fluids to do the same would be relevant. That pit could all be the same general fluid (e.g. oil) or it could be a toxic cocktail of a bunch of different things if the prior owner decided to just dump anything and everything in that pit.

Even when all cleanup and preparation for new operations is supposedly set to go, everything should be checked and rechecked to ensure that a "clean slate" is truly what is in place so that there are no surprises later on. Such a check-off should include inspection and verification by the proper authorities. If they give a green light to starting new operations, that is a good sign that everything is in order.

Work with the government agencies should be a cooperative movement rather than an adversarial one. The government agencies should be understanding if they know that the prior owner was the one that made the mess. At the same time, the government agencies will want the problems dealt with completely and fully.

Absolutely everything that is explained by the selling company, that is imparted and ordered by the agencies and that is found or done at the site overall should be exhaustively documented and detailed so that there is no doubt what happened, when it happened and who was involved. This will be important if there is any question from future owners of the site, audits from government agencies and so forth.