Overview
Under its 10-year remedial action contract (RAC2) with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 3, HGL has executed work assignments at Superfund sites located throughout the mid-Atlantic region. Sites have included landfills, former manufacturing, dry cleaning, pesticide, metals recycling, and wood treating facilities, and sites with munitions and radiological contamination.
At the Safety Light Site Superfund Site in Bloomsburg, PA, a former manufacturing facility contaminated with radioactive materials including Cobalt-60, Cesium-137, Radium-226, Actinium-227, Neptunium-237, and Lead-210, HGL first searched the site buildings for documents pertaining to the site’s history and operations. HGL subsequently conducted a structural integrity assessment of the main building at the site to assess its safety prior to demolition.
For the Peck Iron & Metal Superfund Site, HGL is conducting a comprehensive RI to determine the nature and extent of PCBs, metals, dioxins, and radionuclide contamination at this former scrap metal processing facility and to assess the potential risks to human health and ecological receptors. The work included conducting a comprehensive investigation of soils, surface water, groundwater, tidal and non-tidal wetland sediments, and aquatic biota tissue (fish and oysters); performing an aquatic invertebrate toxicological study of Paradise Creek; surveying for munitions and explosives of concern (MEC); conducting a multimedia background study and a building hazard analysis; and evaluating the need for a MARSSIM investigation and conducting a gamma radiation survey with biased sampling of radiation anomalies for isotope identification. HGL performed baseline human-health and ecological risk assessments that included a food-chain analysis to assess potential hazards to on- and off-site human receptors and ecological communities. The risk assessments will be used to establish preliminary remediation goals and to evaluate remedial alternatives for the Site.
| Project Highlights | |
|---|---|
| Safety Light Site Superfund Site | |
| ✔ | Collected historical site operations documents in an abandoned building with radiological contamination. |
| ✔ | Implemented a process designed by HGL’s Certified Health Physicist to electronically scan documents at the site and ensure that no radiologically contaminated material was physically removed. |
| ✔ | Provided decontamination and demolition (D&D) support by conducting a structural condition assessment of the main building at the site. |
| Peck Iron and Metal Superfund Site | |
| ✔ | Conducted a gamma-radiation survey |
| ✔ | Identified and assessed human and ecological risks for 14 radionuclides species. |
| ✔ | Completed and sampled on- and off-site soil borings and installed and surveyed groundwater monitoring wells. |
| ✔ | Inspected three on-site buildings for structural integrity and the presence of asbestos-containing material and collected wipe samples from within the buildings. |
| ✔ | Conducted acoustical profiling of the Paradise Creek channel bottom. |
| ✔ | Completed a wetland delineation survey. |
