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Cleaning up the environment is complicated. Can software make it simpler?
By Martin LaMonica
The conventional approach to environmental cleanup jobs is to make sure the remediation works at the lowest possible cost. Now, it’s not that simple.
Well-run companies now consider a broader set of criteria, including environmental and social issues such as water use, public safety, the pollution and noise caused by cleanup efforts – and even whether a site has cultural significance to the local community. By taking these sustainability-related issues into account, companies are trying to avoid risks that could delay a project, such as public opposition or unexpected requests for environmental reviews from regulators.
“The landscape has been shifting. Companies are being increasingly scrutinized on the way they undertake some of their projects,” said Benoit Bourque, project manager for sustainable development and climate change at Golder, an environmental consulting company. “You want to make sure you have something there that’s robust and defensible so you can engage in a dialogue with stakeholders.”
Golder developed a remediation management tool called GoldSET, which it has used in more than 150 projects worldwide over the past two years. It’s one of a number of “green” or sustainable remediation software products that have emerged since the late 2000s to guide companies through the complicated decisions large public-facing projects entail.
These software programs provide a structured way for companies to consider a wide set of options and choose a remediation method that considers economic, technical, environmental and social factors. They have been developed by regulators such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, and by organizations with experience in large-scale environmental engineering such as the US Army Corps of Engineers. There’s even an industry professional group: the Sustainable Remediation Forum, or Surf.
Canadian rail freight company CN began incorporating social and environmental factors into its cleanup projects in 2007 as part of its corporate sustainability program. Today this is standard practice on all such projects, said Stella Karnis, the firm’s senior manager of environmental affairs.
The software “allows us to have a very consistent way of approaching these projects on our sites and that means we’re being more efficient”, Karnis said. “And it’s important to have early engagement, early communications with others.”
In one project, CN was using an energy-hungry pump to clean up soil contaminated by diesel fuel at a site in Saskatchewan, Canada. But an analysis of the long-term environmental impact showed that adding a biological soil treatment to the process would reduce waste and lower air pollution significantly. The app CN uses also helps the firm document its remediation project decisions for regulators and local communities.
At their core these types of software are decision-making tools that are not limited to evaluating the options for remediation projects. The Region of Waterloo in Ontario, knowing that its current landfill would no longer be sufficient in 20 years, used GoldSET to create a long-term master plan for municipal waste. The tool helped decision-makers weigh the costs and benefits of different alternatives such as landfills, thermal treatment or a mechanical biological process such as a waste-to-energy digester.
Landfills are substantially cheaper up front, but planners considered a number of other factors that would come with the different alternatives, such as road traffic, noise, odor potential, emissions, the impact on local green space and whether some US landfills might close in future years, said Donna Serrati, the manager of waste management engineering and programs for the region.
Waterloo completed the plan at the end of 2013, opting for thermal treatment because it offered the best score when economic, social, environmental and technical issues were considered.
The fact that it went through the options and documented its decision-making process will help the region down the road if it does build a waste-to-energy plant, Serrati said. “If we are going to construct a new facility, we will have to do an environmental assessment. So we wanted to make sure all the pre-work we did could be used in the documentation to support that process – we won’t need to repeat it later on,” she said.
The software also allowed an engineering-oriented group to communicate the pros and cons to a non-technical audience. Rather than showing reams of technical data, it presents scores for each dimension – environmental, social and economic – with simple graphics.
“The tool allowed us to take a fairly complicated decision-making process that considered a lot of different factors and boil it down to a graphic that would fit on a poster so we can communicate to politicians and the public,” Serrati said. “And if they want to dig a little deeper, we had that, too.”
Considering social and environmental factors helps companies avoid unwanted liabilities, Bourque said, and can also prod them to consider the potential upside in environmental projects. He describes one case in which a waste management company decided to clean up more of a dump than required, because it found that there would be little additional cost yet would benefit its community relations. In another case, a municipality went with a new technology for a wastewater treatment plant after an analysis found it would bring both economic and environmental benefits, he said.
For sustainability professionals, these types of software tools provide a systematic way to incorporate environmental and social practices into day-to-day operations. A spreadsheet or a word processor could also work, but specialized software can hew to the latest best practices and allow companies to track the impacts of their decisions over time.
In addition to regularly using Golder’s tool to its assess new environmental projects, CN has begun to monitor its remediation sites using the same criteria that went into the project’s original design – such as water and air quality, health and safety, cost and local job creation. The hope is that the follow-through will allow the company to track the effectiveness of certain solutions and make better decisions in future work.
The concept behind the software isn’t limited to environmental remediation projects. Many industries could benefit from the process of walking through different scenarios to solve complex problems, Karnis said. “The concept is just to be able to really look at the benefits and impacts of each option,” she said, “so you try to make the most informed decision.”
Martin LaMonica is a Boston-based reporter covering energy, technology, business and the environment. Follow him @mlamonica
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