Basin F was constructed by the United States Army in 1956 at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, to provide for the disposal of contaminated liquid wastes from the chemical manufacturing operations of the Army and its lessee Shell Chemical Company.
As originally constructed, Basin F was equipped with a catalytically-blown asphalt liner (approximately 3/8-inch (10mm) thick) covered with a 12-inch (300mm) protective soil blanket. Basin F had a maximum capacity of 243million US gallons (920,000m3) and covered approximately 93 acres (380,000m2). Throughout the operation of Basin F, the saline concentration increased as water evaporated. The liquid formerly stored in Basin F is very salty water that contains some metals, hydrazine, wastewater, and toxic organics, which are about 1 percent of the liquid.
Interim response
The Basin F Interim Response Action began in March 1988 and involved the transfer by tank truck of 4million US gallons (15,000m3) of Basin F liquid to three 1.3million US gallons (4,900m3) holding tanks and approximately 6.5million US gallons (25,000m3) to a double-lined holding pond.
In May 1988, near the start of the project, a heavy rainfall classified as a 25-year/24-hour event occurred which increased the volume of Basin F liquid. In June 1988, a tornado touched down near the tanks and ponds. The need to inspect and repair structures and equipment affected by the twister caused a minor schedule delay.
The increased volume of liquid in Basin F caused by the heavy rainfall in May 1988 required additional storage capacity. Two double-lined holding ponds were constructed: a 5.5million US gallons (21,000m3) pond (Pond B) and an 6.5million US gallons (25,000m3) pond (Pond A). The 488,000 cubic yards (373,000m3) of basin overburden, liner, and subsoils were excavated and placed in a waste pile located within the basin area.
The basin floor was capped with 12 inches (300mm) of compact clay and 6 inches (150mm) of topsoil and revegetated with native grass. This portion of the Basin F Interim Response Action was completed in August 1989.
Once the liquid was drained from Basin F, the drying of the soils, sediments, and liner began. This project caused an odor resulting in discomfort to members of the surrounding community. Because of the Army's concern for the comfort of the local community during the soil drying, air purifiers were distributed to affected homes in the community to help alleviate the odors. When the odor problem began, the Army asked several health agencies to study the problem to determine if there were any long-term or acute health effects. Toxicologists from Colorado State Health Department, United States Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Shell Oil Company, Tri-County Health, the Army's Surgeon General's Office, and Foster-Wheeler (or previously, Ebasco, the contractor for the project) identified the compounds and determined that there were no acute health effects. The odors ended with the completion of the excavation in December 1988.
The total cost of the project was about $45 million. The decision on the final disposal of the liquid was reached in March 1990.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Project, Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works and Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
A flush toilet is a toilet that disposes of human waste by using the force of water to flush it through a drainpipe to another location for treatment, either nearby or at a communal facility, thus maintaining a separation between humans and their waste. Flush toilets can be designed for sitting or for squatting, in the case of squat toilets. Most modern sewage treatment systems are also designed to process specially designed toilet paper. The opposite of a flush toilet is a dry toilet, which uses no water for flushing.
Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 miles (3 km) east of Eureka. Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to TCDD—also known as dioxin—contamination. It was the largest civilian exposure to the compound in the history of the United States.
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado. The site was completed December 1942, operated by the United States Army throughout the later 20th century and was controversial among local residents until its closure in 1992.
A composting toilet is a type of dry toilet that treats human waste by a biological process called composting. This process leads to the decomposition of organic matter and turns human waste into compost-like material. Composting is carried out by microorganisms under controlled aerobic conditions. Most composting toilets use no water for flushing and are therefore called "dry toilets".
A chemical toilet collects human excreta in a holding tank and uses chemicals to minimize odors. They do not require a connection to a water supply and are used in a variety of situations. These toilets are usually, but not always, self-contained and movable. A chemical toilet is structured around a relatively small tank, which needs to be emptied frequently. It is not connected to a hole in the ground, nor to a septic tank, nor is it plumbed into a municipal system leading to a sewage treatment plant. When the tank is emptied, the contents are usually pumped into a sanitary sewer or directly to a treatment plant.
Fly ash, flue ash, coal ash, or pulverised fuel ash – plurale tantum: coal combustion residuals (CCRs) – is a coal combustion product that is composed of the particulates that are driven out of coal-fired boilers together with the flue gases. Ash that falls to the bottom of the boiler's combustion chamber is called bottom ash. In modern coal-fired power plants, fly ash is generally captured by electrostatic precipitators or other particle filtration equipment before the flue gases reach the chimneys. Together with bottom ash removed from the bottom of the boiler, it is known as coal ash.
A draft is the use of suction to move a liquid such as water from a vessel or body of water below the intake of a suction pump. A rural fire department or farmer might draft water from a pond as the first step in moving the water elsewhere. A suction pump creates a partial vacuum and the atmospheric pressure on the water's surface forces the water into the pump, usually via a rigid pipe or a semi-rigid hard suction hose.
Onsite sewage facilities (OSSF), also called septic systems, are wastewater systems designed to treat and dispose of effluent on the same property that produces the wastewater, in areas not served by public sewage infrastructure.
An anaerobic lagoon or manure lagoon is a man-made outdoor earthen basin filled with animal waste that undergoes anaerobic respiration as part of a system designed to manage and treat refuse created by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Anaerobic lagoons are created from a manure slurry, which is washed out from underneath the animal pens and then piped into the lagoon. Sometimes the slurry is placed in an intermediate holding tank under or next to the barns before it is deposited in a lagoon. Once in the lagoon, the manure settles into two layers: a solid or sludge layer and a liquid layer. The manure then undergoes the process of anaerobic respiration, whereby the volatile organic compounds are converted into carbon dioxide and methane. Anaerobic lagoons are usually used to pretreat high strength industrial wastewaters and municipal wastewaters. This allows for preliminary sedimentation of suspended solids as a pretreatment process.
The Moab uranium mill tailings pile is a uranium mill waste pond situated alongside the Colorado River, currently under the control of the U.S. Department of Energy. Locals refer to it as the Moab Tailings Pile. In 1952 U.S. geologist Charles Steen found the largest uranium deposit in the United States near Moab, Utah. The uranium was processed by the Uranium Reduction Company and the waste slurry was stored in an unlined pond adjacent to the river. The Uranium Reduction Company was sold in 1962 and renamed the Atlas Uranium Mill.
The Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is a nuclear waste treatment facility for the United States Department of Energy's Nuclear Reservation Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina. It is was designed, constructed and commissioned by the Parsons Corporation for treatment of nuclear salt waste and became operational in 2021.
A geomembrane is very low permeability synthetic membrane liner or barrier used with any geotechnical engineering related material so as to control fluid migration in a human-made project, structure, or system. Geomembranes are made from relatively thin continuous polymeric sheets, but they can also be made from the impregnation of geotextiles with asphalt, elastomer or polymer sprays, or as multilayered bitumen geocomposites. Continuous polymer sheet geomembranes are, by far, the most common.
Dallas Water Utilities (DWU) is the water and wastewater service operated by the City of Dallas, Texas, in the United States. DWU is a non-profit City of Dallas department that provides services to the city and 31 nearby communities, employs approximately 1450 people, and consists of 26 programs. DWU's budget is completely funded through the rates charged for water and wastewater services provided to customers. Rates are based on the cost of providing the services. The department does not receive any tax revenues. Primary authority and rules for the department are listed in Chapter 49 of the Dallas City Code.
A landfill fire occurs when waste disposed of in a landfill ignites and spreads. Two types of landfills fires are generally recognized – surface fires and deep-seated fires. Surface fires typically occur in underdeveloped countries that lack capacity to properly cover waste with inert daily and intermediate cover. Modern examples of such fires include the Deonar and Ghazipur Landfills in India, Cerro Patacon Landfill in Panama and the New Providence Landfill in the Bahamas.
Sewage treatment is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding environment or an intended reuse application, thereby preventing water pollution from raw sewage discharges. Sewage contains wastewater from households and businesses and possibly pre-treated industrial wastewater. There are a high number of sewage treatment processes to choose from. These can range from decentralized systems to large centralized systems involving a network of pipes and pump stations which convey the sewage to a treatment plant. For cities that have a combined sewer, the sewers will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage treatment often involves two main stages, called primary and secondary treatment, while advanced treatment also incorporates a tertiary treatment stage with polishing processes and nutrient removal. Secondary treatment can reduce organic matter from sewage, using aerobic or anaerobic biological processes.
The Church Rock uranium mill spill occurred in the U.S. state of New Mexico on July 16, 1979, when United Nuclear Corporation's tailings disposal pond at its uranium mill in Church Rock breached its dam. The accident remains the largest release of radioactive material in U.S. history, having released more radioactivity than the Three Mile Island accident four months earlier.
A vacuum truck or vacuum tanker is a tank truck that has a pump and a tank. The pump is designed to pneumatically suck liquids, sludges, slurries, or the like from a location into the tank of the truck. The objective is to enable transport of the liquid material via road to another location. Vacuum trucks transport the collected material to a treatment or disposal site, for example a sewage treatment plant.
The former Operating Industries Inc. Landfill is a Superfund site located in Monterey Park, California at 900 N Potrero Grande Drive. From 1948 to 1984, the landfill accepted 30 million tons of solid municipal waste and 300 million US gallons (1,100,000 m3) of liquid chemicals. Accumulating over time, the chemical waste polluted the air, leached into groundwater, and posed a fire hazard, spurring severely critical public health complaints. Recognizing OII Landfill's heavy pollution, EPA placed the financial responsibility of the dump's clean-up on the main waste-contributing companies, winning hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for the protection of human health and the environment.
The Waste Disposal Inc. Superfund site is an oil-related contaminated site in the highly industrialized city of Santa Fe Springs in Los Angeles County, California. It is approximately 38 acres (15 ha), with St Paul's high school immediately adjacent to the northeast corner of the site. Approximately 15,000 residents of Santa Fe Springs obtain drinking water from wells within three miles (4.8 km) of the site.
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