Non-attainment policy: A viable approach for groundwater remediation

The National Research Council recently completed a three-year study entitled open-quotes Alternatives for Groundwater Cleanupclose quotes. One of the conclusions of this study indicated that for sites with a complex geologic and hydrologic set up, existing technologies may not be able to restore contaminated aquifers to health-based standards. Therefore, the most logical approach in these cases, perhaps, could be to adopt the open-quotes non-attainment zoneclose quotes policy. The essence of this policy is to first contain the plume and stop any further migration of contaminated groundwater, and then to remove the source of contamination. This paper briefly discusses some of the problems encountered with this approach for a contaminated area at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory