David Palmerton joins SCS Engineers as a Project Director specializing in environmental services for industrial water management, due diligence, and remediation. Palmerton serves clients in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Mid-Atlantic region.
“David joins SCS with an excellent performance record and credentials serving industry clients. Our consulting engineer teams include scientists with field and business experience to create solutions that meet and remain compliant with local, state, and federal policies while economically and socially practical,” states Vice President Denise Wessels.
Palmerton is a Certified Professional Geologist in five states and brings expertise developed supporting Fortune 100 and 500 firms throughout North America, keeping project teams on schedule and budget.
Today’s sustainable industrial operations, including those for oil and gas, mining, manufacturing, energy, and solid waste, consider the environment and human health during operations. It is good business to run sustainably, supporting both communities and shareholders, which has been SCS’s mission for over 50 years.
Palmerton brings decades of experience working with stakeholders to bring project strategies from concept to successful completion using a holistic combination of environmental field management, construction quality control, and sound economic practices. His project experience includes litigation support, site assessment, remediation, due diligence, and risk reviews for private industry, CERCLA and RCRA-regulated sites.
Palmerton is a published author and speaks at industry and association educational events. He is certified by the American Institute of Professional Geologists and is a USACE Certified Quality Control Manager. He earned his BS at the State University of New York College at Buffalo.
Expand your environmental career and make a difference in your community too!
Establishing a site-specific groundwater monitoring protocol sensitive to changes in the groundwater chemistry related to potential leakage and also sensitive to natural variability will be imperative for developing cost-effective and robust testing and monitoring plans.
In CCUS projects, a site-specific testing and monitoring plan is mandatory to ensure the protection of underground sources of drinking water (USDWs) from Class VI injection well practices. As these projects have long durations with multiple phases, it is imperative for the groundwater monitoring program to be cost-effective with a robust sensitivity to detect any leakage.
Previously demonstrated changes in pH, carbonate chemistry, and certain trace elements (i.e., those that form strong-complexing anions) are geochemical indicators of initial CO2 leakage in relatively dilute aquifers. In this case study, SCS Engineers examine the sensitivity of dilute aquifer chemistry (major and minor cations and anions) to the leakage of CO2 and brines from the injection formation. We use an inverse thermodynamic modeling approach to simulate the effect of the progressive intrusion of CO2 and brines from the injection zone on the geochemical composition of the overlying dilute aquifer waters. From this, we can infer which geochemical parameters are most likely to be affected by the potential intrusion of CO2 and brines.
To attend this live presentation of Geochemical Effects of CO2, register for the upcoming National Carbon Capture Conference on November 8-9 in Des Moines, Iowa. Visit SCS Engineers at booth 120. Meet Kacey Garber.
EPA permit requirements for Class VI injection wells explicitly include incorporating a Testing and Monitoring Plan to optimize protection of USDWs – Underground Sources of Drinking Water. The regulatory requirement is for periodic monitoring of groundwater quality above the confining zone that may result from injection fluid movement through the confining zone. Testing and monitoring plans usually implement an antidegradation strategy. Take sufficient background data to characterize the statistical distributions of groundwater quality parameters before operation. Then the same water quality parameters are sampled periodically during and after injection and compared to the background. Any statistically significant increases over the background are investigated as a possible result of injectate migration above the confining zone.
To make the detection monitoring program more robust, there is a tendency to increase the number of well/parameter pairs in the monitoring network. This is done by adding additional wells to decrease well spacing and by adding monitoring parameters to make sure that nothing gets missed. Paradoxically, this tendency decreases the statistical power of the groundwater monitoring network by increasing the sitewide false positive rate (i.e., the number of false positive detections increases, often to an unreasonable degree). Each apparent statistically significant increase involves a costly investigation with greatly increased complexity. In this talk, we examine the sitewide false positive rate for sitewide groundwater monitoring networks and its relationship to the number of well/parameter pairs and discuss how hydrologic and geochemical knowledge and characterization can be used to build a more robust and cost-effective groundwater monitoring plan that is protective of USDWs near Class VI injection wells.
To attend this live presentation, register for the upcoming National Carbon Capture Conference November 8-9 in Des Moines, Iowa. Visit SCS Engineers at booth 120. Meet Charles Hostetler.
Did you miss the 2022 Annual GWPC & UIC Conference in Salt Lake City? We welcome you to view SCS Engineers’ presentation by Kacey Garber entitled “Sensitivity of Aquifer Chemistry to Changes in Carbon Dioxide Partial Pressure: Implications for Design of Groundwater Monitoring Protocols,” where Kacey discusses permitting requirements for groundwater monitoring for carbon sequestration and storage sites.
In her technical presentation, Kacey Garber of SCS Engineers discusses the great care taken in the design and operation of the injection of carbon compounds to ensure that the sequestration is effective and permanent. Each injection site also has permitting requirements for groundwater monitoring in any overlying aquifer as a protective measure. Because the injection and sequestration periods are long, CSS solutions need a cost-effective groundwater monitoring program with a robust sensitivity to detect any leakage. By establishing a groundwater monitoring protocol specific to the site, sensitive to changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and relatively insensitive to natural variability and hydrochemical facies changes, implementing optimal and cost-effective groundwater protection is possible. Using a case study, Kacey tells us how her team did this in detail.
Kacey Garber is an experienced groundwater project manager for active and closed landfills, including routine groundwater monitoring and statistical analyses; reports and permit applications; designing sampling and analysis plans; special groundwater studies; and conducting groundwater well construction planning and design.
Michael Simms – Appointed by the Governor to the Louisiana Board of Professional Geoscientists
The Louisiana Board of Professional Geoscientists oversees the approvals of hydrogeologists and like scientific professionals in the state. This is quite an honor for Mike, a hydrogeologist with more than 30 years of experience. He learned of the appointment earlier this month and just had his first meeting.
Hydrogeologists are attempting to solve some of the big questions facing the world today, including sustainable water supply, food and energy production; environmental protection; and coping with climate change. They work closely with a wide range of industries to protect groundwater and much, much more.
Congratulations, Mike!
Landfill data collection and analysis are more tactical than ever, and landfill technology provides methods to manage and use the data to create efficiencies. With the implementation of the NESHAP, NSPS/EG requirements, Landfill Operators will monitor more often and maintain more records. Data collection mechanisms will likely broaden soon to include drone and satellite data collection as acceptable for agency requirements.
Our September 23, 2021, SCS’s Client Webinar focuses on landfill gas maintenance and how Operators find efficiencies by monitoring and collecting LFG data. Using SCS eTools, the webinar includes common scenarios at landfills and answers several questions, including:
Demonstrations include:
Popular Mechanics recently published an article entitled The Pungent History of America’s Garbage Mountains. The article starts with a little-known ferryman on Lake Michigan when a storm beached his craft on an offshore sandbar in July 1886. Thus started Chicago’s open dump on today’s Lake Shore Drive, home to landmarks such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Wrigley Building, the Chicago Tribune Tower, Northwestern University, and the Magnificent Mile – all on turn-of-the-century garbage.
Transportation centers, stadiums, and even entire neighborhoods are now built on landfills. This is a fascinating, well-written article on the history and possibilities of building on remediated properties and brownfields.
“Landfill redevelopment projects tend to be real estate projects, and you know what matters in real estate: location, location, location,” says Mike McLaughlin of SCS Engineers, who specializes in brownfields and landfill redevelopment. “A landfill in an urban area might be the only piece of open land in that area. People go to extraordinary lengths to redevelop because the property is so valuable.”
SCS periodically prepares Technical Bulletins to highlight items of interest to our clients and friends. We publish these on our website.
Our most recent Bulletin summarizes and updates the TCEQ’S New Rules Implementing Compliance and Registration Requirements for Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Management. In addition, this Bulletin covers TCEQ’s development of a program for implementing the Federal rules governing CCR facilities in Texas. While TCEQ’s CCR program needs to be as protective as the federal CCR rules, there are important distinctions in Chapter 352.
SCS’ Texas-based professionals are experts on TCEQ’s new program for registering coal combustion residue (CCR) sites. We are currently working to support multiple sites needing to meet the application deadline. Our engineers and geologists know how to use site-specific design and related technical documents to complete TCEQ’s detailed application for a registration consistent with TCEQ’s new regulatory program.
For additional information on the updated regulations, deadlines, and compliance requirements, contact:
SCS periodically prepares Technical Bulletins to highlight items of interest to our clients and friends. We publish these on our website.
Our most recent Bulletin summarizes and updates the TCEQ’S New Rules Implementing Compliance and Registration Requirements for Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Management. In addition, this Bulletin covers TCEQ’s development of a program for implementing the Federal rules governing CCR facilities in Texas. While TCEQ’s CCR program needs to be at least as protective as the federal CCR rules, there are important distinctions in Chapter 352.
SCS’ Texas-based professionals are experts on TCEQ’s new program for registering coal combustion residue (CCR) sites. We are currently working to support multiple sites needing to meet the December application deadline. Our engineers and geologists know how to use site-specific design and related technical documents to complete TCEQ’s detailed application for a registration consistent with TCEQ’s new regulatory program.
For additional information on the updated regulations, deadlines, and compliance requirements, contact:
Cities like Oviedo, Fla. are investing in the cleanup of defunct brownfield sites, converting even highly contaminated properties from liabilities to assets that pump economic vitality into their communities. And municipalities are getting reimbursed for doing so. But these ambitious undertakings require the expertise of professionals with strong environmental engineering and remediation backgrounds and an understanding of federal and state regulations aimed to protect public health and the environment.
This spring, after over two years of working closely with SCS Engineers and the development team, the City of Oviedo will unveil its redevelopment project: a 3.7-acre public park with a walking and jogging trail. The loop trail will be part of a larger trail system interconnecting through the City and the Cross-Seminole trail, with the latter running throughout the county.
The walking and jogging path surrounds a pond with a dual purpose: to serve as an added feature to this peaceful retreat and part of an enhanced stormwater management system that will allow business owners to convey drainage from their properties via an underground stormwater management system. Along the park perimeter, historical displays will tell the story of the nearly century-and-a-half-old City’s past.
SCS helped the City navigate regulatory issues associated with redeveloping environmentally impacted land, ensuring safe and environmentally sound practices, and maximizing financial reimbursement through the Florida Brownfields Program.
In the 1940s, the site operated as a farm but lay idle and overgrown with vegetation decades after. When SCS came in to complete the environmental assessment, the team confirmed that years of pesticide application did leave arsenic behind in the soil.
“It appears that the pesticides were used appropriately, but with the change in land use and to meet the state’s environmental criteria, we need to address the residuals to redevelop the property as a park. It would otherwise remain as unusable land without this cleanup,” says Kirk A. Blevins, SCS senior project manager.
SCS completed site assessment activities according to Chapter 62-780 FAC, which includes additional testing to delineate the extent of arsenic-impacted soil further and evaluate groundwater conditions. Assessment activities indicated that while not impacting groundwater, the soil contained arsenic above acceptable regulatory levels. In its next step, the team designed a remedial action plan with multiple considerations for success.
“Given that the site would include both a stormwater management pond and a public park, we recommended that rather than cap the soil to reduce potential exposure, the City meet the strictest cleanup criteria. This option is the most protective of human health and the environment,” Blevins says.
The plan included removing approximately 47,000 cubic yards of arsenic-impacted soil, then placement of clean import fill for areas open to the public. Blevins and his team proposed excavating to the property boundary, and they provided technical guidance to the City contractor on how to efficiently and safely execute this undertaking. “It was important to excavate to the property boundary to assure removal of the impacted material so that the City would receive unconditional closure approval from the regulatory agency,” explains Blevins.
Concise reporting of the work is key to securing that approval, so SCS documented the excavation of impacted soil to the appropriate depths and lateral extents, managing it appropriately onsite, and transporting it to an approved landfill for disposal.
The team worked with the City’s environmental counsel to bring the site into the Florida Brownfields Program and prepared its voluntary cleanup tax credit (VCTC) applications for submission to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). All expenses and payment, confirming the expenditures “integral to rehabilitation,” are documented. With this validation, the City of Oviedo is getting back about half of its $1,432,000 related investment. It will receive another 25% bonus once FDEP issues a letter stating that no further action is required.
Documentation and communication with the state regulators is an ongoing process requiring a detailed review of contractor proposals, invoices, pay applications, proof of payment, and a summary of progress each year over the project’s life. “In particular, a line-item review of invoices can sometimes establish additional actions that are critical to remediation that otherwise might have been overlooked and not captured. This process is vital to maximize reimbursement,” Blevins explains.
Cost, as always, is a client priority. So, SCS and the remedial team focused on minimizing offsite disposal of the impacted soil, proposing over-excavating the pond, using the unimpacted soil as the onsite fill, and placing a portion of the impacted soil at the pond’s bottom.
“This was possible because testing indicated that the impacted soil would not leach arsenic into the pond water at a rate that would adversely affect water quality. We confirm that arsenic concentrations are below the strictest regulatory level before any soil from over-excavating the pond can be of beneficial reuse onsite. Safety of people and environmental protection always comes first,” Blevins says.
The ultimate outcome: Oviedo has a regional stormwater pond suited for potential commercial operations to use for drainage, maximizing available land for economic development, as well as a recreational park for the community and visitors.
SCS’s technical expertise was crucial to successfully remediating this site, attests Bobby Wyatt, Public Works Director at City of Oviedo, Florida.
“The team easily navigated and sped up the permitting process for the arsenic removal and provided continuing assistance with monitoring during construction. The process for completing the specific remediation/permitting was unfamiliar to City staff, and SCS provided efficient and competent assistance to get us where we needed to go.
Their experience provided a sense of confidence that we were going to be able to make the park project successful,” Wyatt says.
SCS has worked on brownfields projects and voluntary remediation across the U.S. for over 45 years. We convert once nonproductive commercial and industrial properties into revenue-generators and affordable housing.
Resources:
Brownfields and Voluntary Remediation
