[CPEO-MEF] Memphis Depot cleanup

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Depot cleanup going deep

Plan would put 'bugs' to work on pollutants underground

By Tom Charlier
Memphis Commercial Appeal
October 18, 2004

To clean up years worth of toxic contamination at the old defense depot, 
environmental officials plan to conduct something akin to an elaborate 
chemistry experiment 80 feet underground.

The $17 million-plus in proposed cleanup measures for the South Memphis 
facility call for injecting substances into the ground that will make 
chemical contaminants vulnerable to attack by naturally occurring 
micro-organisms that render them innocuous.

The practices, some of which have never been used in the Memphis area, 
are newly developed alternatives to costly and inefficient measures that 
involved pumping contaminated groundwater to the surface and disposing 
of it.

"This is the way it should be working. I wish we'd known about this 
(process) years ago," said Jim Morrison, technical project manager for 
the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's division of 
superfund. "We're just setting up conditions for Mother Earth to start 
mending itself."

…

for the entire article, see 
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_3262295,00.html


--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org


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