Features Contamination Water Issues
Colorado company wins NGWA’s remediation Award

Nov. 11, 2014, Westerville, OH – Essential Management Solutions LLC of
Evergreen, Colo., has received an Outstanding Groundwater Project
Award from the National Ground Water Association for excellence in
restoring contaminated ground water.

Nov. 11, 2014, Westerville, OH – Essential Management Solutions LLC of
Evergreen, Colo., has received an Outstanding Groundwater Project
Award from the National Ground Water Association for excellence in
restoring contaminated ground water.

The award will be presented in December at the 2014 NGWA Groundwater Expo and Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

The project took place from 2009-2013 at the former Herington Army
Airfield located in Herington, Kansas, to remediate trichloroethylene
(TCE). The TCE had impacted the overburden soil and three underlying
bedrock units at the site resulting in a dissolved plume that extended
about six miles off site.

The project used an innovative continuous oxidant injection method
that evolved from an original attempt at this approach elsewhere in
2007.

Conventional wisdom for in situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) projects
assumes that multiple injections are required over time. Successful
remediation with ISCO has been hampered by heterogeneous geology and
geochemical constraints like natural oxidant demand and matrix
diffusion. The high costs associated with the conventional approach to
ISCO has dampened enthusiasm for it.

The most difficult challenge for ISCO has been addressing
contaminants trapped in immobile groundwater pores and dead-end spaces,
and treating contaminants diffused into finer grain units (matrix
diffusion). ISCO treatment improvements over the last decade have
largely focused on efficient and effective application methods
accelerating reagent-contaminant contact, but have neglected to address
the challenge of matrix diffusion.

The success of Essential Management Solutions’ application method in
the Herington project has significantly expedited the time frame to
remediate ground water at the site and impacted areas downgradient.