The DTSC will receive $1 million of the grant and the City of Sacramento will receive $400,000 for redevelopment of blighted commercial property within the city.

We have been performing work at this former dry cleaner for the past couple of years and we did soil gas investigations, soil investigations, we installed groundwater wells, sampled groundwater, and operated a soil vapor extraction (SVE) system. It is a relatively straight-forward site and a straight-forward approach to remediation of a dry cleaner, but the regulatory agency was a bit slow with the review of our submittals due to budget cuts and furlough days.

Regulatory FAQ
Regulatory FAQ II
Definition of Terms
and
Industrial Facility

Those posts described the basic steps associated with the work I do at various types of sites. This post will describe my involvement in the standard dry cleaner site located in a standard shopping center.  Let’s say that there is a shopping center that has multiple units and one of them is a dry cleaner.  This tenant has been in operation as a dry cleaner since the center was built some 20-30 years ago.  The dry cleaning process, as I have discussed in my previous post about green dry cleaning, uses tetrachloroethelene (PCE).  From an environmental standpoint, this chemical can be a hassle to purchase, manage, dispose of, and generally use.  Due to the difficulties associated with disposal of PCE, many operators of dry cleaning facilities historically disposed of the chemical in the sewer by either dumping it in a floor drain, sink, or the toilet.  This practice was generally conducted up until the mid-1970s when environmental regulations became more mainstream.  Releases can also occur beneath the dry cleaning machine itself and in the area where the chemical is stored.

Investigating the potential for releases at these types of sites is generally performed in a few phases starting with a soil vapor survey in the area along the sewer line followed by soil samples in impacted areas identified during the soil vapor survey.  The final phase of investigation generally consists of groundwater samples in impacted areas identified during the soil sampling.

Remediation of a dry cleaner site generally involves soil vapor extraction (SVE) in the area of impacts.  The SVE methods can range from carbon adsorption to chemical oxidation (Generally, carbon is sufficient).  Since the impacted areas are commonly inside the building, excavation using small drill rigs and Bobcat-type excavators is necessary.  There are a number of challenges associated with the process, but it is rather common and these types of sites can be usually be remediated within a few years.

Long Beach Press-Telegram Article

It seems there is soil impacted with Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) at the wetland site that is confusing the issue, along with other potential roadblocks. This is not entirely surprising considering that there are electrical transformers on the wetlands property powering the oil well pumps and those transformers have likely been there long before the 1979 PCB ban.

Although no longer commercially produced in the United States, PCBs may be present in products and materials produced before 1979. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the products that may contain PCBs include Transformers and capacitors, voltage regulators, high voltage switches, electromagnets, hydraulic oil, fluorescent light ballasts, thermal insulation, oil-based paint, and some construction mastic materials.

The EPA is conducting a sampling program and will be performing a risk assessment for the wetlands that will likely include PCBs and other oil-field related compounds. This is not an uncommon process, the part that I do find uncommon is that the City of Long Beach is having this investigation performed by the EPA and that it is happening so late in the game. The EPA does good work and has some very good scientists and engineers at their disposal, but they are a governmental agency and move at the pace that you would expect a governmental agency to move. A private consulting firm would be able to conduct the sampling and risk assessment that the EPA is doing in far less time. This timing is becoming a factor as the property owner has only given the City of Long Beach until the end of the calendar year (December 31st) to make a decision, and I can almost guarantee that the EPA will not have their investigation completed at that time, let alone the reporting on the investigation or the risk assessment.

I wish the best of luck to the City of Long Beach and the property owner but this deal sounds like it is beginning to sour. As a citizen of the City of Long Beach, I am hoping I can assist the city in this manner but so far they haven’t taken me up on my offer. Strange, seeing as how they are turning down free consulting but that is their prerogative.

Regulatory FAQ
?????????Regulatory FAQ II
and
Definition of Terms

Those posts described the basic steps associated with investigation of your standard corner retail gas station. For this post, let’s assume that you own an industrial facility of some sort. Either you owned the property and leased it to a widget manufacturer or you are the widget manufacturer and you own the property were you do your work. For whatever reason, the decision has been made to close the widget factory and sell the property. To do so, you will have to decommission all the various parts of the facility. A vital step in this process is what is called the, “Hazardous Materials Inventory”. This process will identify everything from mercury switches in thermostats and PCBs in light ballasts to large storage tanks and make recommendations for the appropriate method(s) for their decommissioning.

Let’s just say that a portion of this facility was used as a steam cleaning area with floor drains that conveyed the wash-down water into the sanitary sewer. Before the wash-down water went into the sanitary sewer, it flowed through a three-stage clarifier to allow the solids to settle out. All of this is a very common feature in industrial facilities. The Hazardous Materials Inventory identified the use of chlorinated solvents, specifically TCE, during the 1970s in various parts of the property including the steam cleaning area. Based on these findings, the recommendations are to advance soil borings in the area of the steam cleaning area, the floor drains, and the three-stage clarifier. The data collected from this investigation will allow us to evaluate how much soil (if any) around of the steam cleaning area is impacted with TCE and / or anything that was being washed off the widgets that were being steam cleaned.

Can’t wait to hear the next part? What do we do? How much do we have to dig out? How much will it cost? How long will it take to do all the work? Well, it takes a couple weeks to get data back from the lab and write the report. Check back next month!

It appears as though these properties, predominantly in the outskirts of the populated areas of Southern California, are changing hands quite rapidly. While very little actual construction appears to be taking place right now, when the residential market returns to, “Normal” I would expect the people who hold this property will be able to reap tremendous rewards.

The environmental concerns of these properties are usually few since the larger properties tend to be on raw land, but we have come across a few that are on properties that were formally industrial properties or abandoned oil fields of some sort. These properties have additional requirements prior to development that many times makes the deal go sour because the purchase price is so low and there is no short-term return on investment to pay the costs of remediation.

Additional Program Information

• Superfund Hazardous Waste Cleanup: $800 million to clean up hazardous and toxic waste sites that threaten health and the environment. EPA has 1,255 sites on its National Priority List, selected based on a hazard ranking system. There are many Superfund sites ready for construction, but not funded due to budget shortfalls and over 600 sites with ongoing construction that could be accelerated.

• Leaking Underground Storage Tanks: $200 million for enforcement and cleanup of petroleum leaks from underground storage tanks at approximately 1,600 additional sites. There are an estimated 116,000 sites with the potential to contaminate important water supplies.

• Closed Military Bases: $300 million for cleanup activities at closed military installations allowing local communities to redevelop these properties for productive use. The Department estimates that there is a $3.5 billion environmental cleanup backlog at bases closed during previous BRAC rounds.

• Brownfields: $100 million for competitive grants for evaluation and cleanup of former industrial and commercial sites – turning them from problem properties to productive community use. Last year EPA was only able to fund 37% of Brownfields applications.

Federal, state and Local programs are already in place to receive these funds and have been lacking funding for some time now.  I would expect that the revitalization of these programs and this influx of funding will go a long way to making many redevelopment projects on impacted properties pencil out a lot more often.   These programs could also help alleviate some of the funding issues associated with obtaining a loan on impacted or Brownfield properties, whether that loan is for a purchase, a bridge loan, or a construction loan.

Additionally, a “Buy American” policy requires that iron and steel used in construction and repair projects funded under the bill be produced in the United States unless found to be prohibitively expensive.

Tesla Abandons Plan for Calif. Plant

Electric car maker will look for a new site after failing to secure loan.

By . Agence France-Presse

Tesla has scrapped plans to build an electric car plant in Silicon Valley, saying Jan. 31 that it will opt for an abandoned factory elsewhere in order to win a low-cost federal loan.

Tesla announced in October that the dismal economy had effectively slammed the door on its hope of getting $100 million in venture capital money to build a Model S sedan plant in San Jose.

Construction of the factory, about 20 minutes from Tesla’s headquarters in San Carlos, Calif. was scheduled to begin in mid-2009.

Tesla had picked an 89-acre lot on which to build a 500,000-square-foot plant to pump out four-door, all-electric sedans.

It would have been the first time the vacant lot was used for heavy industry.

Tesla is competing with other car makers for low-interest loan money the U.S. Department of Energy has available to fund development of “brownfield” sites, factories or plants no longer in use.

Tesla wants a $250 million loan to build a sedan plant.

“We cannot do anything that may jeopardize securing the federal loan,” said Tesla senior communications manager Rachel Konrad. “That’s one of the reasons we are now planning to develop on a brownfield site instead of the greenfield site in San Jose.”

Tesla is in “late-stage” negotiations with another site for its Model S sedan plant and expects to begin production in 2011 as originally planned, according to Konrad.

Tesla says that in March it will unveil a Model S car its Hawthorne, Calif., design studio.

The Model S car is a five-passenger sedan run by a lithium-ion battery pack that is expected to power the car for about 240 miles  per charge. The car has an estimated price of $60,000.Copyright, Agence France-Presse

Feb. 2, 2009