Re: [CPEO-MEF] Military readiness

[starcompany@erols.com]

I was 1/3 of the way through Stella's message on military readiness and
was saying to myself "Stella just has to read this".  About half way
through, I said to myself, this HAS to be something that Stella has
written.  Sure enough, there at the bottom was her name.

Here, here!!!

When we started our company with the concept of developing,
demonstrating, and deploying extremely cost-effective and
technically-successful (and appropriate) site remediation technologies,
we were operating under a mis-guided concept:  We actually "thought"
that the environmental industry and its clients (and legal staffs)
wanted to clean up sites cost-effectively
in a relatively short period of time, and with greater technical
success than they were experiencing using traditional "care-taker"
approaches such as pump-and-treat technologies.  Boy were we wrong!!!!

Despite over 15 years of successful remediation projects using
innovative and cost-effective technologies, the number one obstacle to
acceptance of our advanced remediation methods, in our experience, has
been the whole-sale reluctance of site managers and environmental
remediation consultants to decrease the amount of time that they have to
spend on projects and the income/revenue (to the consultant) associated
with these efforts.  I know  of one government facility, for example,
where we could clean up a major plume in probably 3 years.  The site
manager has declined to utilize our methods on the basis that we will
clean the site up too quickly.  I understand from others that his
intention is to "retire" on this site/project.  I know of
another job where a plume must be addressed which is under a large
building.  Despite clear demonstration that we could address this plume
with minimal impact(s) and in situ remediation technologies, the
consultant/ contractor has opted for the use of vertical wells and a
pump-and-treat system.

When confronted with the obvious technical and economic inadequacy of
this approach, as well as the obvious negative impacts on the operation
of the facility, the consultant's response was "The last thing we want
to do is decrease the amount of time we have to spend at the site or the
amount of money our client pays us to clean it up!"

And I know of many, many, many sites where hopelessly inadequate,
technically inept (if not fradulent) technologies have been deployed,
usually at high cost and with little success.  My favorite was one which
failed miserably to address site contamination.  When confronted with
the poor results, the consultant's response was "Well, I guess it didn't
take! We'll have to do it again."  Guess what, the client/site actually
paid the consultant the same amount of money to "do it again".  And,
guess what, it didn't work the second time either.

Yes, the DOD, DOE, and/or anyone else who is trying to use the "war on
terrorism" as a cop-out for obeying environmental laws and regulations
and addressing soil and groundwater contamination at their site/facility
has a hidden" agenda:  reallocation of environmental budgets to fund
other actions/programs and elimination of a lot of environmental cleanup
headaches
 But, the greed and incompetence of many environmental consultants, the
willing complicity of many of the site environmental managers (for
personal reasons usually), and (in many cases) the technical
incompetency of both surely has not helped matters much.

Louis B. Fournier, Ph.D.
STAR Environmental, Inc.
10 Wilmington-West Chester Pike
Chadds Ford, PA 19317
Phone:  610-558-2121
Fax:  610-558-2112
E-Mail:  starcompany@erols.com

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