• Groins, structures and sand movement
• Breakwaters
• Dredging, and Harbor operations
• Human impacts through cumulative effects of individuals

Waste in Societies

• A direct link to you and your personal activities
• Past excesses dominate many contaminated sites (sites now abandoned, or shut town, but that still pose an environmental threat)
• New owners at these sites (who pays? who's responsible for remediation?)

• Point source vs non-point source
• Domestic
• Manufacturing
• Mining
• Radioactive* [subject of next lecture]
• Oil and gas production
• Hydrothermal
• Salt and Brine

• RECOVERY
• DISPOSAL
• MONITORING & PREDICTION
  

Geological recovery of energy, industrial minerals and metal ores that lead to contamination of the environment (inherently geologic in its character)

Disposal of our modern societal wastes in locations chosen to minimize the threat to the environment (thus inherently geologic in its character)

Monitoring and predictive modeling of movement of contaminants in the environment (inherently geologic in its character)

Major acts and laws (from: Testa, S.M. (1995) Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management; Ann Arbor, Lewis Publishers

• 1872 Mining Law
• 1970 National Environmental Policy Act
• 1972 Clean Water Act
• 1973 Endangered Species Act
• 1974 Safe Water Drinking Act
• 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act
• 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

1872 Mining Law

• Written to promote mining and mineral resource development
• One can claim land for minerals while paying no money for rent or taxes on profits (Depletion allowance for non-renewable resources)
• If vaulable minerals are found company can purchase the land for $5/acre.
• Law has no provisions for environmental cleanup
• Mining on federal lands accounts for $3-4 billion per year.
• Managed by BLM and Forest Service.
• 52 mines are currently on the superfund list
• Primary concerns are effects on water quality and transport of toxic trace metals

• Since 1800's significant solid waste provided by mining activities
• Environmentally hazardous (acid waters, trace metal contamination, radioactive)
• Indirect contributions from smelting ores created SO₂ -> sulfuric acid despoiling of landscape.
• Between 1910 and 1980
• 31 billion metric tons of mine waste
• Waste related to processing of minerals, Sludges
• 13 billion metric tons of mine tailings
• Overburden, rock waste from mine construction
  

Source: Testa, S.M. (1995) Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management; Ann Arbor, Lewis Publishers.

• Nixon Signed into Law
• Required EIS (environmental impact statement)

1972 CWA - Clean Water Act

• Control of toxic water pollutants through limits on discharge.
• Includes regulation of discharge into ocean waters within US jurisdiction
• Excluded the New York Bight sludge dumping

1973 - Endangered Species Act

• Perhaps single most important piece of environmental legislation.
• Points to the protection of organisms and their environments.
• Has been effectively applied in numerous situations where environmental threats have appeared (snail darter and TVA, spotted owl and timbering in NW, ...)
• Considered by some as the single most piece of legislation threatening development of resources and under severe attack by the 104th Congress

1974 - SDWA - Safe Drinking Water Act

• Improvement of public water supply systems
• Regulate underground water injection that threatened public water supplies
• Recognition that chlorinated organics were contaiminating surface and subsurface supplies of water
• Drinking Water Standards
• Identify drinking water contaminants and specify max contaminant levels (MCL)
• UIC - Underground Injection Control program
• SSA - Sole Source Aquifers
• Special protection for aquifers that serve as a sole source of drinking water.

1976 - TSCA - Toxic Substance Control Act

• An information gathering act
• 1- information to identify and evaluate potential chemical hazards
• 2- Regulation of production, distribution, and disposal.

1976 - RCRA - Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

• Regulates Hazardous and Toxic Wastes
• Provides ìcradle to graveî management of wastes.
• Employs a permitting procedure requiring geologic and hydrogeologic site characterization
• Development of detection/monitoring systems.
• Management unit types

• Tanks
• Surface Impoundments
• Waste Piles
• Landfills
• Incinerators
• Underground Injection
• Others

1980 CERCLA - Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Amended 1986) SUPERFUND ACT

• Provides Cradle to Grave management of existing hazardous waste sites
• Mining, Hazardous Wastes, Landfills, Spills,
• Currently 724 Hazardous Substances List
• 1,500 Radionuclides on the List
• Defines contaminants and pollutants
• Any substance that reasonably may be expected to have adverse effects on organisms and/or their offspring.
• In 1990 - 1,187 sites chosen from a list of over 33,000 potential sites
• Criticized for lack of results
• Small number of sites declared cleaned up.
• Where did the $$$ go??

Geologic Aspects of Siting

NATURAL RESOURCES

• Natural resources are where you find them, oil and gas is where you find it, groundwater is where you find it. (all constitute uncontrolled variables in that the sites are chosen where the resource is)

INDUSTRIAL SOURCES

• Aside from many natural substances our modern society produces many new chemicals (principally organics)
• Many of these chemicals not degradeable in the environment.
• Degradation PRODUCTS are potentially toxic
• Environment not adapted to handle.

WASTE DISPOSAL SITES

• Disposable sites are controlled variables in that you have a reasonable choice in where you locate them (subject to distances from where waste is generated, costs of disposal, adequacy of site relative to local contaminating effects, political pressures (NIMBY)

• Hydrogeologic definition and evaluation
• Porosity, permeability, water table, groundwater flow (direction and rate)
• Chemical characteristics of the aquifer (reactivity with fluids)
• Geologic Setting
• Nearness to rivers, lakes, nearby housing, industry, ...
• Appropriate monitoring
• Local Groundwater
• Air quality

• Environmental damage
• Direct
• Indirect, long-term
• Cleanup
• Remediation
• Restoration
• Socio-economic
• Emotional
• Property value effects
• Personal health effects
• NIMBY factors (Not In My Back Yard)
• Political
• Decisions are largely unpopular
• Requires compromise among divergent constituencies

The following is a list of disposal techniques that have been suggested

• Into space
• In Ocean Sediments
• Deep well injection (High temp)
• Shallow sub-surface sites
• Burn It
• Store it above ground.
• Find a POSITIVE use for it.
• Natural gas from sanitary landfills
• "V8 Juice"
• Recycling