Regulatory decisions on remediation should consider affected communities’ needs and values, and how these might be impacted by remedial options; this process requires that diverse stakeholders are able to engage in a transparent consideration of value trade‐offs and of the distribution of risks and benefits associated with remedial actions and outcomes. The Stakeholder Values Assessment (SVA) tool was developed to evaluate remedial impacts on environmental quality, economic viability, and social equity in the context of stakeholder values and priorities. Stakeholder values were linked to the pillars of sustainability and also to a range of metrics to evaluate how sediment remediation affects these values. Sediment remedial alternatives proposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for the Portland Harbor Superfund Site were scored for each metric, based upon data provided in published feasibility study (FS) documents. Metric scores were aggregated to generate scores for each value; these were then aggregated to generate scores for each pillar of sustainability. In parallel, the inferred priorities (in terms of regional remediation, restoration, planning, and development) of diverse stakeholder groups (SGs) were used to evaluate the sensitivity and robustness of the values‐based sustainability assessment to diverse SG priorities. This approach, which addresses social indicators of impact and then integrates them with indicators of environmental and economic impacts, goes well beyond the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act's (CERCLA) 9 criteria for evaluating remedial alternatives because it evaluates how remedial alternatives might be ranked in terms of the diverse values and priorities of stakeholders. This approach identified trade‐offs and points of potential contention, providing a systematic, semiquantitative, transparent valuation tool that can be used in community engagement. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:43–62. © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
In 2009, the Sustainable Remediation Forum released a white paper entitled “Integrating sustainable principles, practices, and metrics into remediation projects” (Ellis & Hadley, 2009, Remediation, 19, pp. 5–114). Sustainable remediation was a relatively new concept, and the white paper explored a range of approaches on how sustainability could be integrated into traditional remediation projects. This paper revisits the 2009 white paper, providing an overview of the early days of the evolving sustainable remediation practice and an assessment of the progress of sustainable remediation over the last 10 years with a primary focus on the United States. The current state of the sustainable remediation practice includes published literature, current practices and resources, applications, room for improvement, international progress, the virtuous cycle that applying sustainable remediation creates, and the status of the objectives cited in the 2009 white paper. Over the last decade, several sustainable remediation frontiers have emerged that will likely be a focus in advancing the practice. These frontiers include climate change and resiliency, weighting and valuation to help better consolidate different sustainable remediation metrics, programmatic implementation, and better integration of the societal impacts of sustainable remediation. Finally, as was the case for the 2009 white paper, this paper explores how sustainable remediation may evolve over the next 10 years and focuses on the events and drivers that can be significant in the pace of further development of the practice. The events and drivers include transformation impacts, societal influences, and the continued development of new technologies, approaches, and tools by remediation practitioners. The remediation industry has made significant progress in developing the practice of sustainable remediation and has implemented it successfully into hundreds of projects. While progress has been significant, an opportunity exists to implement the tenets of sustainable remediation on many more projects and explore new frontiers to help improve the communication, integration, and derived benefits from implementing sustainable remediation into future remediation projects.
This analysis focused on evaluating the environmental consequences of remediation, providing indicators for the environmental quality pillar of 3 “pillars” of the Portland Harbor Sustainability Project (PHSP) framework (the other 2 pillars are economic viability and social equity). The project an environmental impact and benefit analysis (EIBA) and an EIBA‐based cost–benefit analysis. Metrics developed in the EIBA were used to quantify and compare remedial alternatives’ environmental benefits and impacts in the human and ecological domains, as a result of remedial actions (relative to no action). The cost–benefit results were used to evaluate whether remediation costs were proportionate or disproportionate to the environmental benefits. Alternatives B and D had the highest overall benefit scores, and Alternative F was disproportionately costly relative to its achieved benefits when compared to the other remedial alternatives. Indeed, the costlier alternatives with larger remedial footprints had lower overall EIBA benefit scores—because of substantially more air emissions, noise, and light impacts, and more disturbance to business, recreational access, and habitat during construction—compared to the less costly and smaller alternatives. Put another way, the adverse effects during construction tended to outweigh the long‐term benefits, and the net environmental impacts of the larger remedial alternatives far outweighed their small incremental improvements in risk reduction. Results of this Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA)‐linked environmental analysis were integrated with indicators of economic and social impacts of remediation in a stakeholder values–based sustainability framework. These tools (EIBA, EIBA‐based cost–benefit analysis, economic impact assessment, and the stakeholder values–based integration) provide transparent and quantitative evaluations of the benefits and impacts associated with remedial alternatives, and should be applied to complex remediation projects to aid environmental decision making. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:22–31. © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
Remediation of environmental sites is of concern across the rail industry. Impacted sites may result from releases of chemicals to the environment along active rail lines or in rail yards; historical activities; or through acquisition of impacted property. Management of these liabilities may require investigation, planning, design, and remediation to reduce risks to human health and the environment and meet regulatory requirements. However, these investigation and remediation activities may generate unintended environmental, community, or economic impacts. To address these impacts, many organizations are focusing on the incorporation of sustainability concepts into the remediation paradigm. Sustainable remediation is defined as the use of sustainable practices during the investigation, construction, redevelopment, and monitoring of remediation sites, with the objective of balancing economic viability, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, and the enhancement of the quality of life in surrounding communities (Sustainable Remediation Forum [SURF]). Benefits of considering and implementing measures to balance the three pillars of sustainability (i.e., society, economics, and environment) may include lower project implementation costs, reduced cleanup timeframes, and maximizing beneficial while alleviating detrimental impacts to surrounding communities. Sustainable remediation has evolved from discussions of environmental impacts of cleanups (with considerable greenwashing), to quantifying and minimizing the environmental footprint and subsequent long-term global impacts of a remedy, and currently, incorporating strategies to address all three components of sustainability — environmental, social, and economic. As organizations expand their use of more sustainable approaches to site cleanup, it is beneficial to establish consistent objectives and metrics that will guide implementation across a portfolio of sites. Sustainable remediation objectives should be consistent with corporate sustainability goals for environmental performance (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, or waste generation), economic improvements (i.e., reduction of long term liability), and community engagement. In the last decade, there have been several Executive Orders (13423, 13514, 13693) that provide incrementally advanced protocols for achieving sustainability in government agency and corporate programs. Resources for remediation practitioners are available to assist in developing sustainable approaches, including SURF’s 2009 White Paper and subsequent issue papers, ITRC’s Green and Sustainable Remediation: State of the Science and Practice (GSR-1) and A Practical Framework (GSR-2), and ASTM’s Standard Guide for Greener Cleanups (E2893-16) and Standard Guide for Integrating Sustainable Objectives into Cleanup (E2876-13). These documents discuss frameworks that may be applied to projects of any size and during any phase of the remediation life cycle, and many provide best management practices (BMPs) that may be implemented to improve the environmental, social, or economic aspects of a project. Many of these frameworks encourage a tiered approach that matches the complexity of a sustainability assessment to the cost and scope of the remediation. For small remediation sites, a sustainability program may include the selection, implementation, or tracking of BMPs. A medium sized remediation site may warrant the quantification of environmental impacts (e.g., air emissions, waste generation, etc.) during the evaluation and selection of remedial alternatives. Often, only large and costly remediation sites demand detailed quantitative assessment of environmental impacts (e.g., life cycle assessment), economic modeling, or extensive community or stakeholder outreach. However, if a tiered approach is adopted by an organization, components of each of these assessments can be incorporated into projects where it makes sense to meet the needs of the stakeholders.
All active remediation results in both desirable and undesirable environmental, economic, and social impacts. Balancing such impacts through sustainability assessment poses normative questions-not just objective and science-based, but those rooted in societal values, requiring engagement and a careful consideration of diverse stakeholders' priorities. Regardless of the site complexity, these priorities should be integrated into assessment approaches, a necessary evolution of sustainability for sediment remediation projects. We explore how analyses of environmental, social, and economic sustainability can be tailored for different tiers of assessment for sediment remediation projects, ranging from simple to complex. Tiers (1, 2, and 3) can be used to categorize evaluations of sediment projects across a range of complexity. Site size and complexity, availability of data, time, resources, expertise, and the level of engagement of various stakeholder groups may dictate the appropriate complexity, tools, and metrics to be used in a Remediation. 2020;31:29-44. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rem | 29 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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