Case history of one of the few successful Superfund remediation sites: A site at Salinas, California, USA

In 1985, a former tire manufacturing plant surrounded by agricultural fields in the Salinas Valley was designated a Superfund Site by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The plant had been operating for seventeen years, from 1963 until 1980. When dismantling of the plant was started, it was determined that toxic hydrocarbon solvents and oils from the plant had contaminated soil and groundwater in alluvial deposits alongside the plant. It was determined later that the groundwater contamination also lay beneath the agricultural fields in a narrow groundwater plume that extends about 4.3 km downgradient from the plant. Because of the complex architecture of the aquifer system, the gradient, and extensive pumping of agricultural wells, the contaminants migrated northwestward and downward to deeper levels away from the plant.

The agricultural fields are underlain by an unconfined shallow aquifer and by a system of confined aquifers that extend to more than 180 m below surface. Aquifers are discontinuous beds of channel sand and gravel; confining beds are overbank clay and silt, and estuarine clay.

Geophysical data, logs of existing agricultural and other wells, and careful consideration of the stratigraphic architecture of the depositional environment provided the basis for a conceptual hydrogeologic model and for locating characterization wells for detailed visual and geophysical logging and hydrologic testing. Successive refinements of the characterization by sequential installation of wells indicated optimal locations for installation of extraction and monitoring wells. Validity of the concept of the hydrogeologic regime was verified by close match of predictions made by modeling with the later results of pumping from the extraction wells in a pump-and-treat system.

Successful remediation was accomplished by analyzing data from 110 agricultural wells, the few domestic water wells, nearly 200 sequentially installed stratigraphic-characterization and monitoring wells, 25 extraction wells, and by close cooperation among federal, state and local agencies, and the ranchers and growers.

Total contaminants recovered from activated-charcoal strippers of the treatment system totalled < 230 kg. Large quantities were harmlessly volatilized and dispersed into the atmosphere by air strippers and by agricultural sprinkling systems spraying water onto the fields. Crop testing showed no contamination of food crops. The activity has taken seven years and has cost more than US$22 million.