Waste categorization reclassification – Facility Remediation

A previous owner of the client’s facility had placed a large pile of a process by-product or waste on the property approximately 40 years ago, containing a small amount of material equivalent to Agricultural Lime.

Over the period between the 1970s and 2005 different owners of the facility either ignored the presence of the material or promised to clean up the area but subsequently filed bankruptcy without doing any cleanup work.

The current owners purchased the facility out of bankruptcy in 2006 and explored options including selling the material as fertilizer or as base material for construction. In 2015 the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the facility to either sell the material for an “approved use” or to dig up the pile and dispose of it in a permitted hazardous waste landfill. They were given two years to complete the process or face heavy fines. The waste pile itself contained approximately 300,000 cubic yards of material.

Based on core-drilling of the pile and subsequent analysis of the sampling material, the Department of Environmental Protection agreed that this material was not a Hazardous Waste and agreed to allow the Client to file a Permit Modification to cover the Pile as a non-hazardous waste site.