Geoenvironmental protocol for site and waste characterization of former manufactured gas plants; worldwide remediation challenge in semi-volatile organic wastes

Abstract

The most common and difficult of all hazardous waste sites are those that historically produced artificial (manufactured) gas; for gas-making was international in scope and at the very core of the industrial revolution. With former manufactured gas plants (FMGPs), virtually no geologic region in the industrialized or urbanized world or its trade centers and ports escaped the gas industry. These plants applied pyrolysis of organic matter (roasting to drive off volatiles in the form of useful gases) to illuminate the world and to fuel all manner of progress. Gas was and is the universal fuel. Its prominence stemmed from the omnipresence of organic matter and the universal process for the extraction of its volatile contents to manufacture useful gas. Furthermore, for most of the century and a half-long history of manufactured gas, natural gas was unavailable to slow or daunt the production of man-made gas and the universal creation of its toxic tar residues and other harmful waste residuals. Today we face the presence of toxic organic gas manufacturing residuals as a unique threat to both the health and welfare of contemporary society, as well as being a long-term threat to the environment that is dominantly geologic in character. Most of these tar residuals are highly resistant to natural degradation or attenuation in the environment and their lives, therefore, they are measured in geologic time. Given its environmental persistence, potential problems associated with tar may exist centuries to thousands of years. Engineering geologists and geological engineers are, by training and experience, particularly well equipped to plan, manage and conduct site and waste characterization efforts for FMGPs and related coal-tar sites.