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Cleanup of High Profile Brownfields Site - Client Earns Additional
$3 Million by Using ISTD |
November 2005. TerraTherm is pleased to announce the
recent on time and on budget cleanup of an
important, high profile Brownfields site, contaminated with CVOCs
and DNAPL, located in Richmond, CA directly on San Francisco Bay.
The project was successfully completed using TerraTherm's
proprietary, quick and clean, In-Situ Thermal
Desorption (ISTD) process. Because of the robust and predictable
nature of ISTD's heating and contaminant removal mechanisms, low
residential goals were easily achieved. This allowed the City of
Richmond (the owner of the property) to negotiate a $5M increase
in the selling price (from $8M to $13M). The total project cost,
including the cost of power (2.6M kWh @ $0.16 per kWh), was $2.1M.
Thus, achieving low residential standards throughout the
treatment zone using ISTD resulted in a net gain in
property value and revenue of ~$3M for the City of Richmond.
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Skyline view of San Francisco Bay taken from the
Terminal 1 Site |
The City of Richmond financed the remedial effort via a loan from
the California Environmental Redevelopment Fund (CERF, www.ca-cerf.com)
backed by remediation cost-cap insurance from ACE Environmental
Risk/ACE INA (www.ace-ina.com).
The insurance provider stated that they "would not have been
able to insure the remedial effort if it had been based on
excavation due to the unpredictable nature of remedial excavation
projects and the high rate of claims associated with such
efforts". The client, insurer, and oversight consultant (Geomatrix,
Inc. of Oakland, CA) all indicated that they were very happy with
the results of the project: constructed and treated on-time,
completed within budget, no insurance claims, no complaints from
near-by residences, achieved remedial goals, and very
impressed with the high level of professional and technical
competence of the TerraTherm team. |
The next phase of the project involves construction of ~300
desirable waterside residential units. The resulting tax revenues
once the development is complete are expected to total more than
$15M annually for the City of Richmond.
The project was completed for the City of Richmond's
Redevelopment Authority. The property had been used since the turn
of the century as a bulk storage and transfer terminal when it
consisted of a pier, large warehouse, numerous above ground
storage tanks, and supporting buildings and piping. Ships would
dock at the pier and transfer cargo and materials to/from the
warehouse and tank farm. A large variety of solvents, fuel oils,
and food grade oils were stored in the above ground tanks. Leaks
associated with the handling and transfer of the materials
resulted in direct releases to the subsurface. Materials present
in the subsurface included fuel oils and chlorinated solvents,
including perchloroethene (PCE), trichloroethene (TCE),
cis-1,2-DCE, and vinyl chloride (VC).
Subsurface materials consisted of bay mud, which was dredged
from the bay and used to create the land for the terminal. The
upper 2 to 3 feet across the site consisted of coarse fill. The
bay mud underlying the fill is under consolidated, has a high
porosity and is saturated. The water table is generally located at
~3 ft below the ground surface (bgs). The treatment depth, as
determined by pre-treatment characterization, extended to 20 ft
bgs. The total volume of soils treated was approximately 7,000 cy.
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