Who is going to clean it up?
 

Can it even be cleaned up after 100 years of operation? What a mess it must be.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-contamination-lurks-on-—-and-under-—-shuttered-south-philly-refinery/ar-BB105349?ocid=spartanntp

You know who, the taxpayers all across the country. The EPA will call it a superfund site, and spend a few hundred million. I would never want to live on that site. They should seal it off, and stay off.

Any remaining companies that are determined by the EPA to be responsible - Then the excess from Superfund.

The article seems to be trying to pump up the problem as being worse than they have any evidence for.

Superfund is a big government program that can actually show some success.

From your location it seems that you are in the area. From your PoV it's not as bad as the article states?

Lots of speculation, based on .....?

The owners, and the previous owners, are on the hook for the clean-up.
And you would be surprised at how easy it is to clean up the site of a previous refinery.
Doesn't take long and doesn't cost that much.

Example:
I worked here in the late 80s into the 90s:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581965320.jpg

They shut it down and finished tearing it down several years ago maybe 5 I'm guessing, maybe a little longer.
They then remediated the site and sold it.
This is what it looks like today:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581965735.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581965388.jpg


The cost to clean it up was a tiny fraction of what the land was worth.
Oil refineries are cleaner than most people think.

2007, refinery still intact but mothballed. They were trying to get permits to restart. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581966261.jpg

2012, most of the refinery torn down but you can still see the fractionation tower from the alkylation unit and some other misc. equipment still standing.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581966261.jpg


2016, remediation completed, new construction in progress:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581966261.jpg


2017, new buildings up and running.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1581966261.jpg


PS that refinery has been there since before WWII

Sure, it can be cleaned up. Worse projects have been accomplished and turned into high demand development. Here's an excellent article on the Sparow's Point redevelopment in Maryland that shows how it can be done if the demand for the land is high enough and the ownership is flexible enough to think outside the box.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/amazon-under-armour-and-fedex-set-up-shop-in-an-industrial-graveyard


The site was once the location of the world's biggest steel plant. The old owner went through bankruptcy and a really sharp and nimble management group bought it and figured out how to redevelop it. They'll make hundreds of millions of dollars on it, and they earned every penny of it.

As in the OP's article, the biggest barrier to redevelopment was the unknown environmental risk. The turning point in the project came when the property owners contracted with an environmental engineering company to "buy" the environmental liability from the property owners. After years of research, the engineering company was comfortable that they knew what it would take to remediate the site and how much it would cost. They had the expertise to do it themselves so they felt they understood the risks and could handle the project because they weren't depending on anyone else's judgment or expertise. The property owners then paid the engineering company to accept legal responsibility for the cleanup. They had to put up a huge bond, but the result was a project where the property owners could finally get financing and move ahead with development because they and the lenders were no longer on the hook for unknown and unlimited environmental cleanup liability. The engineering company got the job done on time and under budget and made out like bandits. The lenders got their money back plus their exorbitant interest rate. The property owners got a project that was hugely profitable. And the local government got a huge boost in their tax base.

So, yes, it can be done. But it's not going to be done if industry, the government and local neighbors insist on a 1970s-era approach to a 21st century problem.

1970s-era approach??

not possible - CERCLA became law in 1980 - "Superfund" with some big amendments in 1986

if the perps are still around and not bankrupt, they pay first; next are others who were involved (maybe even banks); finally a govt. fund

the above depends on various contingencies and whether the site is placed on the National Priorities List

it is all expensive and complicated, both the cleanup and the law

There was a local site in the city that was the site of an old gas station for many years. Evidently they had a gasoline leak in a tank, and the soil conditions were just right, or just the wrong type is more accurate. The site was sold, and a circuit city was going in. I used to drive past and saw the giant OMG hole they dug to get to all the contaminated soil. The hauled it off, and brought in a lot more new clean dirt. That had to be expensive. Circuit city went away long ago, Now it is is a grocery store.

I heard later the contaminated soil was brought to a burner, and they ran all of it through a large kiln like gizmo, and literary burned all the contaminates out, and were left with "clean" dirt.

A few decades back, the gubmint passed new regs requiring reformulated gasoline.
The way to meet those regs? methyl tertiary butyl methyl ether, MTBE.

It was an oxygenate that resulted in cleaner burning. A side benefit was slightly higher octane index.
But it was later found to be bad juju
It wasn't listed as a carcinogen but it was suspected to leak from tanks and seep into groundwater really fast and efficient-like, more than other things like gasoline. it was outlawed in the 2000's and the gubmint decided the clean-up rules that in most cases required replacing under ground tanks at stations and often doing zackly what you described. Removal and incineration of the dirt around the tank.
MTBE was replaced with ethanol, which doesn't hurt groundwater or fishes in tiny concentrations like MTBE was said to do (and ethanol doesn't leak through underground tanks like MTBE was said to do).
But ethanol also reduces the efficiency of gasoline resulting in burning more of it to do the same work. Ethanol results in more pollution than it prevents, go figure.

The money spent doing that to gas stations was in the go-zillions, which the consumer paid for at the pumps.

But that really doesn't have anything to do with refineries as MTBE was usually added by the shipper/distributor after the gas left the refinery.

I know that BP's Toledo Refinery did inline blending of ethanol but I was the RFG attestation auditor after BP stopped using MTBE so I don't know what was done before they switched over. Suspect same.

IIRC, much of their ethanol addition was splash blended at terminals on the east coast.

Yep, some refineries blended it in tanks, the ones I am familiar with blended it in shipments going down the pipeline or after receipt at a third party facility.
I never had much to do with it.

I remember the good ole days when we still had a tetra-ethyl lead blending shack on premises, that was fun.

This is what I remember.

My Mom's Dad was an operator at the Toledo Refinery and they filled trucks there in the 50's/60's. Spill? Just fire up a fag, get the hose and wash it down the drain. Easy peasy. Simpler times.

Standard privatize profit and socialize risk model for superfund site clean-up.

sometimes the PRPs (potentially responsible parties) are long gone...

the real issue is to what std. should something be cleaned up to - e.g. a place to safely raise kids (including gestation/lactation) or to an industrial park?

Standard knee jerk reaction when you don't have a clue.

He's right tho - polluters often want to cut & run. They even set up shell co.s to avoid responsibility. This was such a problem that CERCLA specifically includes statutory veil-piercing provisions.

Standard droid response when you are an idiot and literally dumb as brick.SmileWavy

la brea tar pits

who is going to clean up that oil fest.

it's been a tarry mess for tens of thousands of years.

:cool:

hmmm.. smart, or standard droid response. ^

Yeah, but what heated the kiln?

I live about an hour hour away. I don't have any direct experience with that site.

Reading the article and picking out the facts, as opposed to the speculation and opinion, suggests that it's a pretty standard industrial site from the era when it operated. Others have explained the law and process pretty well since my post - better than I could.

My previous employment was at a plant on a Superfund site. Our central building was a bronze foundry that opened in the early 1800's. There was continuous casting and machining on the site from that point on. Our site specifically was documented to have some heavy metal and oil contamination. That wasn't blooming into the groundwater and wasn't leaving the site, so we just monitored test wells and continued to work. By the way - our plant wasn't the reason for the Superfund designation - other plants in the same town had contaminated the groundwater. Over half the town including much of the residential property was in the "Plan".

I have been involved in work related to site cleanups - I have a current project supporting the cleanup over at the Naval Air Station. I also have friends at other refineries and similar historic industrial sites.

Many of those sites (including the subject of this thread) are never intended to become residential. As "brownfield" commercial or industrial sites they are preferable (to me) to developing current open space.

I do know one plant owner who is investigating cleaning up his historic site to "greenfield" status - suitable for residential or any other use. He believes it's the right thing to do and he has the resources to do it. Getting the local government and the EPA/DEP on board is a greater challenge.

I have to say that I'm disappointed to see personal attacks in this thread - they are unnecessary. Can't we get along?

There isn't much evidence of that so far.

archaeologists are cleaning up (on) the la brea tar pits

the kilns for hazardous waste run at very temperatures to ensure the toxic chemicals are broken down completely

...and that any toxic break down products are in turn broken down


they often run on NG - there is some pollution but much less toxic