UK Environment Chief Stresses Groundwater, Cleanup
In a keynote address to a congress of environmental industry leaders in the United Kingdom, Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, chair of the Environment Agency, stressed the importance of groundwater resources and the use of advanced sustainable remediation technologies.
“Cleanups are vital to protecting water resources,” the British environmental leader said, “and the cleanup and reuse of former industrial properties — so-called ‘brownfield’ sites — is essential to protect future water supplies and fight global warming.”
Relative to treatment approaches and technology solutions to the problem of contaminated site remediation, Lord Smith emphasized that brownfield clean-up efforts should be risk-based and focus on sustainable remediation technologies, including monitored natural attenuation and in-situ bioremediation.
“In-situ remediation allows for site cleanup without the negative impact to the environment associated with energy-intensive pumping or removal techniques,” he noted. “Companies such as Regenesis are leading this field with the development of technologies which maximize in-situ treatment whilst minimizing emissions and impact to the environment.”
This presentation and others were delivered at Brownfield Briefing’s “Special Challenges to Groundwater Remediation,” chaired by Jeremy Birnstingl, Ph.D., managing director of Regenesis Ltd. The speakers and participants examined a wide range of technologies, current and emerging remediation approaches, and regulatory drivers bearing on the task at hand -- restoring and preserving for future generations the groundwater that makes up over 70 percent of the world’s available freshwater — critical for life on the planet.
For more information, visit www.brownfieldbriefing.com.