Since the beginning of the semester I have learned several new terms. Brownfield is one of them. As a child of the 70's I vividly remember the public service announcements for "keep America Beautiful" with the crying Indian. If you have never seen the commercials I have attached it to my blog. I encourage everyone to watch it. As a little girl I remember being so sad for this man.












 This commercial, and many others stuck with me as a child. However until now I had never attached a name to the sites of environmental contamination. It still shocks me today that not that long ago people everywhere had a sense that throwing something away, regardless of where you threw it (or buried it) made it vanish. out of site out of mind.

I was inspired by our guest speaker Chelsea Corson. Chelsea is a technical and project manager for Drake consulting group out of Mequon, WI. Drake consulting group is a small private firm of four employees, two of which, Chelsea and one other, are both Alverno Alumnae. Her knowledge and ability to visually process possible past contamination, and then use tools and connections to investigate, and asses the extent of the damage to begin the remediation and redevelopment process got me very excited.  I had truly felt for the first time since beginning my course work in environmental science, that I had found my dream job. The idea of cleaning up the mess we have made and making things right, in my opinion, is our obligation as humans. To apply the knowledge and experience we now have of the long term effects of dumping hazardous chemicals and contaminates into the ground and beginning to clean them up. The remediation and redevelopment of old abandoned properties, instead of walking away and damaging what little natural spaces we have left with some other temporary structure is exciting to me.

Since Chelsea's visit I have spent alot of time online and in the library doing my own investigating of brownfield sites in our own back yard. I found out that many of the neighborhoods I have lived in and visited all my life have had some pretty nasty things hidden in and around them, but also the many projects that have already been completed that have made a significant impact on our city.

Chelsea's firm mainly is hired by individuals or corporations looking to assess the amount of cleanup involved in a possible future building site. However, on the other end of the spectrum, I have also found that there is a significant effort by the EPA to seek out these areas of potential past contamination's, and assist in the clean up in what is known as a Superfund for sites of potential public danger. These sites are listed on a national priorities list or NPL. I have attached the link to the EPA's website that has a large amount of information on brownfields past and present all over the United States. I also want to clarify also that this clean up isn't all government funding going to the clean up of these Superfund sites. These sites are generally sites of extreme negligence by the property owners and the contamination is punishable by law and the responsible party or parties are responsible for the clean up if they are still available for prosecution.

 http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/


Growing up in Milwaukee I have also always had a soft spot in my heart for the preservation of the architecture of this great city. One of my favorite redevelopment sites is the AF Gallun tannery buildings that once sat along the milwaukee river just north of water street. Tannery row, as it was known,  was home to many historically significant businesses in milwaukee, among those are Trostel,  Pfister and Vogel, along with AF Gallun and sons. Tanneries of the past used very harsh chemicals and contaminates to process animal hides and are therefore sites of former point source water contamination along with soil contamination. Brownfield remediation and redevelopment processes have allowed us to right the wrong we have done in our past to the environment while still preserving our historical buildings. I have included several photos of the AF Gallun and sons tannery from the mid 1900's when it was a functioning tannery to present. The site has been completely cleaned up, several buildings did need to be demolished, but a significant portion of the main building and its amazing brick work have been preserved and turned into luxury loft apartments.

 

 

 

While doing further research of my own I signed up for several publications and notifications of events going on all over our state. Surprisingly, I received the following notification for a webinar on hazardous waste remediation. I will be attending (watching) this webinar, hopefully as my professional conference, and blogging about it afterward. I posted the info here for anyone else who may be interested and available to also attend.

 

 

Reminder: Webinar for Hazardous Waste Remediation

Wisconsin DNR’s Remediation & Redevelopment Program kicks off its “Issues and Trends” Webinar Series this week. Former Policy and Technical Resources Section Chief Mark Gordon will discuss “Guidance for Hazardous Waste Remediation.”

• March 6, 2014
• 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
  
• Click to Join the Live Meeting
  
• Audio will be provided via WisLine. Call 1-888-291-0312, enter passcode 5155 216#
• Pre-registration not required

The PowerPoint presentation and an audio recording of the webinar will be made available on DNR’s Brownfields Training webpage: (http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/Brownfields/Training.html).

And mark your calendars for April 16, 2014, when Paul Zovic of Endpoint Solutions leads a discussion on the new ASTM Phase-I ESA standard. More details about this and other webinars will be included in future editions of the RR Report.

Phosphates

Phosphorus is an element vital to all life on Earth. In the body it is key to cell reproduction, growth, and metabolism. Likewise in plants it is necessary for cellular growth, reproduction, and photosynthesis. Without this element neither animals nor plants could survive. 

Phosphorus, like other vital nutrients has a cycle by which it is recycled. The difference in phosphorus to some other nutrient cycles is phosphorus does not cycle in the atmosphere. Organic phosphorus is deposited into the lithosphere through the excrement and decays of animals by means of microorganisms that breakdown the organic matter, releasing the stored phosphorus into the soil for uptake by plant roots. Animals eat these plants to obtain the phosphorus needed for growth. However not all phosphorus is taken up in the roots, some of this organic material undergoes a sedimentary process, where in the presence of water it becomes a negatively charged ion of phosphorus and oxygen known as phosphate, PO4-3. Phosphate in this form is unstable by itself and seeks to attract to other elements in the sediment with opposite charges to bond to. Therefore phosphates bond to iron and calcium to form phosphate rocks.

 

In the natural environment geologic uplift moves the rock back up to the surface. These rocks are weathered and will eventually release the phosphorus back into the ground; however this process takes place over geologic time. This process is too long to support the large amount of agriculture grown all over the world. Therefore, phosphate rocks are mined and processed to produce phosphoric acid that is used in fertilizers to maximize growth and yield from crops.

There are several locations in the World that have large deposits of these phosphate rocks that we are currently mining. The United States is the largest producer of phosphate rock in the World with 75% of the phosphate mined in the U.S. coming out of mines in central Florida. The majority of this phosphate rock is then exported, mainly to China. Many worry that at the rate we are mining and exporting our own supply of phosphate rock, we will soon no longer have an available supply for our own agricultural support. Scientists once estimated the rate of depletion of the U.S. supply at over 300years, however in recent years this estimate has dropped as low as 30years!!

This extreme and unsustainable depletion of this vital nutrient is only one cause for alarm in this process. The phosphate rock is mined through a process of strip mining. Strip mining removes 20 to 40 feet of the surface area to get to the rock. The rock, under the surface naturally contains some levels of uranium and radium. The toxic elements are not harmful when contained in the rock under the surface. However, once the rocks are mined they undergo a “wet processing” to remove the phosphorus. One of the by-products of this wet process is waste clay slurry that contains high levels of this now exposed uranium and radium. This waste cannot be disposed of so it is stored in huge settling ponds at the site of the mine. These settling ponds pose great risk to the environment as they collect rain water that initially would have recharged the local water table, along with the occasional spill or leak that has happened, and directly contaminated the local water supply. Waste clay settling ponds are only one of the toxic results of this process. Phosphogypsum, or gypsum, is another toxic result of the phosphate wet process.

 

 

The phosphate rock, once removed, is sent further to a processing plant where the rock is mixed with sulfuric acid. The product of this chemical reaction is phosphoric acid that is easily assumable by plants. The by-product of this stage of the process is phosphogypsum. Phosphogypsum is a radioactive material that also cannot be disposed of; therefore it is stored in a mound system that results in huge mounds, 200 meters high, of radioactive material. These mounds are referred to as “gyp stacks”. In Florida there are currently 20 of these gyp stacks, over a 600 acre plot of land and more are being built. Both the gyp stacks and the settling ponds have failed in containing the toxic matter and have contaminated the surrounding ecosystems. This vital nutrient that is needed to support strong growth of plants is damaging and toxic in the process of removal, and in the application process to the very agriculture it is mined to benefit.

Once the phosphate rock is processed into phosphoric acid it is used in fertilizers. These fertilizers however are being applied in a manner in which the plants are receiving the needed nutrients in excess. The result of this process is excessive run off of phosphorus into our water ways. What does phosphorus do? It promotes plant growth. In our water ways in such high levels phosphorus causes rapid growth of aquatic plants such as algae. The overgrowth of plant life in water ways causes multiple problems in the ecosystem of the water. This process of obtaining phosphorus faster than nature intended is one that has toxic and damaging repercussions from start to finish; however it is also needed to maintain maximum growth of our agriculture.

This vital nutrient is both necessary, and scarce in its natural process. There is no doubt that this process of retrieval is not sustainable, but a solution that is sustainable, I feel is going to take a global effort, and patience.

 

1/22/14

GE410 – 1/22/14

BIF’s, banded iron formations. Until class I had never heard the term. To hold in my hand a piece of this oxygenated iron from the Precambrian age is amazing to me. We visit museums to attempt to grasp the past, fascinated with even the slightest glimpse of what life was like before our life time. Yet, the earth below our feet sets the stage for all and every period of time, every significant event, since the Planet Earth was formed. I am fascinated with rocks, and sometimes wonder why anyone would ever utter the words “it’s just a bunch of rocks”, when it is way more than that!

Watching the video on the Anthropocene era, the era of our life time, I wonder what the layer we leave will look like. Will it look more like one of Chris Jordan’s art pieces? Or will it be a turning point in long term sustainability.

The Art work of Chris Jordan actually made me feel like there was a pit in my stomach. I have been unusually aware since our first class of the amount of waste and garbage we accumulate in a day. Even when recycling properly, everything comes in disposable containers!! I wonder what really happens to all of the recycled items we discard each week. Maybe an idea for field trip either in class or on my own is to visit a recycling plant and see how things are really being disposed of. Since class the idea of finding more ways of using less packaging, and recycling/reusing on the individual level is at the fore front of my daily activities.  I am excited and anxious at the same time to learn all I can about what is and isn’t working and collaborate with like minds to significantly impact our future, and our sediment layer, for our future generations.