Soil Remediation

Soil Remediation Services Through an Innovative Approach

AEL believes that remediation of impacted soils doesn’t have to be a guessing game.

Too often, site owners are left with incomplete data for their site, requiring them to spend valuable time and money on multiple rounds of testing. Remediation traditionally involves making assumptions about the boundaries of contamination, followed by sampling at the presumed boundaries. Multiple rounds of testing occur when presumptions about the boundary of contamination are inaccurate. This process may repeat several times until a clean sample is found to indicate the border of contamination.

AEL takes an innovative approach to remediation using on-site testing and provides site owners with confidence in the management of their site(s). Our engineers and scientists take an approach to contaminated soil clean-up to reduce uncertainties through proven testing methods

What is On-Site Testing?

On-site testing employs a series of technologies that allow for real-time soil analyses for several contaminants of concern (COC). These compounds include hydrocarbons (using ultraviolet fluorescence; UVF), metals such as lead and arsenic (using x-ray fluorescence; XRF), as well as volatile organic compounds and PCBs with other technologies.

By use of on-site testing, the AEL team can immediately identify areas that require further investigation or additional soil removal. Instead of relying on presumptive site boundaries of impact, on-site testing allows for instant identification of soils that fall within acceptable concentration limits.

Subsequent to on-site testing, selected samples are sent to the laboratory for confirmation. By screening soil throughout an excavation, the AEL team is able to save our clients both time & money.

Methods of Remediation

The traditional approach to remediation is “dig and dump” or excavation/disposal remediation. As the name suggests, this method involves removing contaminated soil from a site and bringing it to a landfill for proper disposal.

Several on-site testing technologies are acknowledged as industry-standard methods in Ontario for the remediation of contaminated sites. On-site testing allows the environmental consultant to be confident that all impacted soil has been removed before backfilling the excavation with clean soil. The volume of samples taken using on-site testing allows the AEL team to accurately identify the boundaries of contamination, reducing the likelihood of disposing of clean material.

Other methods of remediation that are practiced by AEL include:

• Biological remediation, where living organisms such as bacteria are grown in the soil to metabolize or break down contaminants
• Chemical remediation, like oxidation or reduction, where impacts are chemically transformed to be non-harmful or more easily removed
• Mass transfer or air sparging, in which hydrocarbons are volatilized
• Containment or barrier treatment, is when a physical barrier is put in place to keep contamination to a limited area and prevent the spread