Opinion

Rethinking redevelopment

Innovative thinking on remediation of contaminated land can deliver major savings and enable more brownfield development says Dr Ian Ross of ARCADIS.

Ian Ross EC Harris/Arcadis

In September the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE ) called on the UK government to do more to encourage development on brownfield land. It argued that greenfield development was increasing while construction on previously developed sites was declining.

Unfortunately it said that national planning policy is acting as an obstacle to development on brownfield land with out of date local planning documents failing to realise the potential of such sites. At the same time CPRE also said that developers considered brownfield unviable because of perceived high risks, costs and complexity associated with its development.

“We are the first to bring technologies and new methods in to the UK and often that is because we are very strong in the US where the market is more technically mature.” Ian Ross

“Often if you are not involved in remediation it can seem really complicated, so we use the experience that we have as a company looking at this on a day to day basis to simplify it,” says Dr Ian Ross, a partner in the environment division of consultant ARCADIS and an expert in the assessment and remediation of contaminated land.

“It is always about management options for the sites, it is not always about remediation,” he says explaining that the level of treatment required will depend on both the local regulations and the end use planned for the site. “We can come up with goals which have greater potential than the site owner expected and that means that remediation costs come down/are significantly reduced,” says Ross.

“For example we are doing a project where domestic properties are planned on top of a large spill of chlorinated solvent. If the developer moves the car park and puts that over the spill they can have much more attractive targets which means less remediation and saves a lot of money,” he says.

Smart management is a key feature of the work that ARCADIS does both in the UK and worldwide. In late October it won its 6th consecutive Brownfield Briefing award for its work on verifying the remediation of an oil terminal, where it proved that the degradation of residual oil was fast enough that the risks could be sensibly managed. The method is called natural source zone depletion and is already used in the US. Guidance for its use is still being written in the UK.

“We are the first to bring technologies and new methods in to the UK and often that is because we are very strong in the US where the market is more technically mature,” says Ross pointing to high resolution real time investigation as being one of the tools that the company has been using ahead of its competitors.

“We can come up with goals which have greater potential than the site owner expected and that means that remediation costs come down/are significantly reduced" Ian Ross.

“We can put probes in the ground that can tell us within three minutes what is down there. We have probes that send down lasers that fluoresce hydrocarbons and can characterise and give some idea of their concentration instantaneously. As well as using traditional methods such as a drill rig to collect soil and groundwater,” he says.

The results speak for themselves. In 2012 the company won a multitude of awards for an innovative method developed by Ross which saw the world’s first in situ remediation of a solvent called carbon disulfide (CS2) using activated persulfate.

In the past the highly volatile and flammable solvent would have been mixed with a bentonite slurry and sent to landfill, but the new method saw persulfate added to groundwater to safely chemical oxidise CS2 in situ, breaking it down and detoxifying it. Used in situ on site the method saved the client £20M and with many further sites to consider, via reserves set for environmental remediation the overall cost savings to the client were very significant. 

That so much innovation is underway will be welcome news to developers. Ross says that he is seeing increased interest from chemical, pharmaceutical and automotive industries looking to divest assets.

At the same time a recent study by ARCADIS highlights that surplus property is acting as a barrier to growth for firms as capital is tied up in non-revenue generating assets. Some good investigation and sound planning could mean that redevelopment costs less than owners think, and breathe some new life into brownfield sites.

ARCADIS Surplus Property report:
http://www.arcadis.com/disposal_surplusproperty.aspx

More on the CPRE Waste of Space campaign: http://www.cpre.org.uk/how-you-can-help/take-action/waste-of-space

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.