Breaking new ground in groundwater remediation

Many environmental remediation experts believe a large portion of their industry's future lies just below the surface -- in the nation's polluted aquifers. EPA estimates that more than 1.5 million underground petroleum storage tanks exist in the US, excluding the tens of thousands containing home heating oil, which are not subject to federal regulation. Since 1988, state environmental agencies have reported to EPA more than 166,000 incidents involving leaking underground petroleum storage tanks, and continue to report an additional 50,000 new releases each year. By the mid-1990s, EPA estimates states will have identified more than 300,000 USTs leaking petroleum products into soil and groundwater. Traditional methods of recovering and treating contaminated groundwater have been limited almost entirely to vertical well techniques. These techniques involve using high-pressure drills to bore vertical wells over a contaminant source and pumping contaminants to the surface for treatment