Is it possible to repurpose polluted land?

Ex-shipyard in Amsterdam houses shops and offices

Polluted land doesn't have to stay
abandoned, experts say.

Although Amsterdam’s latest urban experiment, De Ceuvel, is built on solid ground, there’s much that reminds its denizens — artists, entrepreneurs, designers, sustainability experts — of its past as a commercial shipyard.

Converted rowboats serve as benches, stranded houseboats are used as buildings and — raised 90 centimeters, or 35 inches, off the polluted ground — a quay-like walkway constitutes the sidewalk.

De Ceuvel officially opened this summer after a team of architects, landscapers, sustainability experts and entrepreneurs created 1,250 square meters, or 13,450 square feet, of office, studio and commercial space on a polluted plot of land in the city’s industrial north.

Besides producing its own power and minimizing waste, the design aims to create a fertile ground for community interaction, while letting the area’s physical ground recuperate from its industrial past, explained Pieter Theuws, the lead landscape architect on the project.

“Our challenge is to connect streams of waste and energy and people into a circular city model,” he said.

Commitment to urban experimentation

The project is an example of Amsterdam’s commitment to urban experimentation. A few kilometers north of the centuries-old city center, artist spaces and urban experiments like De Ceuvel and NSDM, another large abandoned industrial harbor space turned into studios, or Ijburg, a community of floating houses moored off reclaimed land, are part of the city’s innovative growth initiatives.

The physical pieces needed to create De Ceuvel were 16 old houseboats, phytoregenerative plants, bio water filters, a thermophilic compost, solar panels and the long pathway. The human contribution, its creators say, included lots of physical labor, a willingness to fight administrative bureaucracy and a desire to share the place with the public.

“All of it is to attract a lot of people, to get a lot of people here, so that they get in contact with the sustainability stories,” said Sascha Glasl, who dreamed up the project and is its lead architect.

De Ceuvel won the Frame Public Dutch Design award in October. The annual prize, ultimately decided by a voting public (both online and at the Dutch Design week) is given to innovative designers. “De Ceuvel gives the impression of a utopia that has actually been accomplished,” wrote the prize selection committee.

Project focused on houseboats

Houseboats were always the soul of the project, Mr. Glasl said. Not only were they ideally suited to be plotted, without foundation, on land best left untouched, but they could be converted into innovative spaces before being towed up harbor and placed on the site by crane. This allowed the designers leeway, since city housing permits are not required to bring houseboats on land.

The original tenants were found through an advertisement on Marktplaats, a Dutch ad site, which asked potential tenants to chose one of the houseboats on sale that week, pretend that they could buy it for one euro and explain what they would do with it.

And, in fact, most of the houseboats were acquired for that nominal sum. As Amsterdam’s canals gentrify, and moorings are being leased by wealthier and more demanding residents, old boats are being scrapped to make way for new.

The offer to take the boats for a euro proved so popular that Mr. Glasl, a principal with the Amsterdam architectural office Space & Matter, and his team had to choose among offers.

The project was funded by the city through a 250,000-euro, or $313,000, start-up grant and a further €200,000 bank loan that it guaranteed. Those funds paid for materials, plants and some of the professional services required to make De Ceuvel a reality. Both volunteers and the development partners invested hundreds of hours of work, ultimately bringing down the price tag.

The tenants, who often share the boats, pay approximately €65 per square meter of workspace each year — a song in comparison with commercially available art spaces which, in Amsterdam, can fetch that much each month. The proceeds, Mr. Glasl said, are being used to pay off the guaranteed loan over the next nine years.

While the houseboats retain their original shapes, much has been done to make the interiors suitable for modern offices. Some roofs have been raised and outside paneling renewed, in some cases using freshly felled Dawn Redwood from a nearby street enlargement.

Designed to ease pollution

Many aspects of the design are positive for the polluted land on which it sits, said Mr. Theuws, an associate at Delva, a Dutch-Belgian landscape architectural firm responsible for landscaping and choosing the area’s flora.

Grasses, fireweed, foxglove, black willow and eastern cottonwood were chosen either to digest pollutants in the ground or absorb metals left behind.

Despite all the pollution — before the area housed a shipyard, Amsterdam dumped its canal sludge there in the 19th century — the ground, he says, is actually not particularly poisonous to humans.

Solar panels have been installed on roofs and biofilters installed to clean waste water from the sinks. Each boat has been equipped with a composting toilet, making them independent from the city sewer system.

Capturing rainwater to make drinking water was blocked by the city because that would have meant licensing the community as a drinking water provider — which was too complex and costly. In the end the community opted to bring in city water, although the ateliers are not connected to the sewer system. Commercial spaces and the cafe are connected.

Source: NY Times; Please note: The article appearing here has been edited for length.

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Chemical giant taken to court by community

Living close to a chemical company
affected their health, residents say.

The neat, modest homes of Cannon's Campground and Bellview Acres conceal tales of sickness and death.

Carcinoma, leukemia, kidney tumors — dozens of homes have a story, and very few have happy endings.

After decades of suspecting the nearby Hoechst Celanese polyester manufacturing site and its various occupants of spewing toxic chemicals into the environment, the community filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court.

The lawsuit alleges known carcinogens used at the plant have leached into ground and surface water that flows through the communities, resulting in dozens of cancer cases.

The suit seeks an injunction of all pollution-causing activities on the site as well as an order to identify and treat existing contamination and to prevent any further migration beneath private property.

The plaintiffs also seek a health monitoring program for community members to be administered by the court and paid for by the defendants. They are seeking reimbursement for lost property values and civil penalties.

In an emailed statement, Celanese spokesman Travis Jacobsen said there is no connection between contaminated groundwater at the site and the groundwater in the communities because the areas are separated by streams acting as discharge boundaries.

"Simply put, the environmental conditions at the Spartanburg plant site have not caused adverse health effects or a loss of property values in the nearby residences," Jacobsen wrote.

S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studied cancer data after residents suggested a pollution link, but in a 2011 report said a cancer cluster did not exist.

The study examined the entire ZIP code the plant is located in and not the specific area near the plant where chemicals could have migrated, critics say.

The primary plaintiff is Jay Easler, but the suit was filed on behalf of all residents living in a two-mile radius of the site at the intersection of Interstate 85 and the Pacolet River.

Easler owns property abutting a stream known to locals as "polluted creek."

At a community meeting in 2011, a Celanese spokesman said Hoechst Celanese was never cited for pollution and always adhered to existing environmental controls.

DHEC's website states many current regulations were not in place when the plant began operations in 1966. Soil and groundwater contaminants were discovered in 1990 and mitigation efforts began in 1996.

A series of wells were installed along the border of the property to pump groundwater to the surface for treatment. Several years later, when evidence of contamination remained, solutions were pumped into the ground in an attempt to dissolve or disperse the chemicals.

Despite mitigation efforts, DHEC documents cited in the lawsuit reveal rising toxicity in the contaminated soil and groundwater beneath the site and an expanding plume of contaminants reaching off the site. In 2011, the first-ever DHEC testing of private wells confirmed contaminants found at the site were also in the drinking water supply.

The chemicals were found only in trace amounts in the wells, but many people could have been exposed over prolonged periods of time. Many residents no longer use well water and have switched to the city water.

Source: GoUpstate.com

This article has been edited for length.

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EPA to reduce federal inspections

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to substantially reduce inspections and civil enforcement cases against industry over the next five years, arguing that focusing on the biggest polluters would be the most effective way to clean up air and water.

In a draft strategic plan, the EPA proposes to cut federal inspections by one-third from the 20,000 inspections it conducted in the last fiscal year, ended Sept. 30.

Moreover, it plans to initiate about 2,320 civil enforcement cases a year, compared with the 3,000 cases initiated last fiscal year, a 23% reduction.

The EPA said the shift for fiscal years 2014 to 2018 is not a retreat from enforcement but a more effective allocation of resources.

Environmental groups are alarmed
over the EPA's plans.

"From our work on the biggest enforcement cases, such as the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, to aggressively pursuing smaller cases that can reduce harmful health impacts and have the greatest environmental benefit, our enforcement work will continue to save lives and protect our environment," said Alisha Johnson, an agency spokeswoman.

Representatives from industry organizations that frequently criticize the EPA, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Assn., had no comment on the proposed changes.

Environmental groups said they were alarmed.

"It is bewildering why the EPA would pull cops off the beat who've been protecting our air and water from big polluters," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "We urge the EPA to reconsider these proposed cuts."

In the draft strategic plan, the EPA said that focusing on the biggest violators would lead to the greatest cuts in pollution. The EPA also said that it planned to emphasize real-time monitoring of emissions to prevent pollution, which, if successful, would also lead to a decline in enforcement actions.

Still, some former EPA lawyers questioned the strategy. They said the EPA has long proposed real-time emissions monitoring but industry has successfully stymied implementation.

Eric Schaeffer, a former director of the EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement, said that tough enforcement in many ways was the most effective deterrent.

"They want to get at prevention, but the government in general is measured by what it does, and that is enforcement," said Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington research and advocacy group.

"If this is signaling some kind of wind-down in the bigger enforcement cases and bigger pushes that only EPA as the federal regulator can do, then it's worrisome," he said.

In the draft strategic plan, the agency cites budget constraints as a factor in reshaping its approach.

Source: Los Angeles Times

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Toyota, China University jointly studying air pollutants

Source: The Japan Times

The Toyota Motor Corp. and China’s Tsinghua University are conducting joint research on fine particle pollution. The research is focusing dangerous particulates with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns that are causing serious air pollution and health problems in China.

Toyota and Beijing-based Tsinghua, one of the most renowned Chinese universities in engineering and technology education, intend to complete the research by March 2015, the officials said, adding that some interim results may be released earlier.

Under the project, Toyota, known for its hybrid vehicle technology, is providing data related to exhaust emissions and other information on automotive technology to Tsinghua. Based on the automaker’s data, Tsinghua is trying to discover the generating mechanism of PM2.5 particulates, the main cause of air pollution in China, according to the officials.

In 2009, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest auto market. As demand for cars and trucks is expected to expand for some time in China, particularly in inland areas, reducing exhaust emissions has become increasingly urgent.

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EPA Proposes Options to Reduce Toxic Pollutants Discharged into Waterways by Power Plants

Photo: John Kasawa/freedigitalphotos.net

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a range of options to help reduce dangerous pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, lead, and selenium that are released into America’s waterways by coal ash, air pollution control waste and other waste from steam electric power plants. Today’s proposal includes a variety of options for whether and how these different waste streams should be treated. EPA will take comment on all of these options, which it will use to help inform the most appropriate final standard.

Steam electric power plants currently account for more than half of all toxic pollutants discharged into streams, rivers and lakes from permitted industrial facilities in the United States. High exposure to these types of pollutants has been linked to neurological damage and cancer as well as damage to the circulatory system, kidneys and liver.Toxic heavy metals do not break down in the environment and can also contaminate sediment in waterways and impact aquatic life and wildlife, including large-scale die-offs of fish.

“America’s waterways are vital to the health and well-being of our communities,” said Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe. “Reducing the pollution of our waters through effective but flexible controls such as we are proposing today is a win-win for our public health and our economic vitality. We look forward to hearing from all stakeholders on the best way forward.”

EPA has put a focus on ensuring any final rule would protect public health while being sensible and achievable, and in line with that goal, under every preferred option proposed by EPA today, more than half of America’s coal fired power plants would be in compliance without incurring any additional cost.

The proposal updates standards that have been in place since 1982, incorporating technology improvements in the steam electric power industry over the last three decades as required by the Clean Water Act. The proposed national standards are based on data collected from industry and provide flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach and use of technologies already installed at a number of plants. Under the proposed approach, new requirements for existing power plants would be phased in between 2017 and 2022, and would leverage flexibilities as necessary.

Fewer than half of coal-fired power plants are estimated to incur costs under any of the proposed preferred options, because many power plants already have the technology and procedures in place to meet the proposed pollution control standards.

The four preferred options differ in the number of waste streams covered (such as fly ash handling systems, treatment of air pollution control waste and bottom ash), the size of the units controlled and the stringency of the treatment controls to be imposed. EPA estimates that the regulations would reduce pollutant discharges by 470 million to 2.62 billion pounds annually and reduce water use by 50 billion to 103 billion gallons per year.

EPA also announced its intention to align this Clean Water Act rule with a related rule for coal combustion residuals (CCRs, also known as “coal ash”) proposed in 2010 under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The two rules would apply to many of the same facilities and would work together to reduce pollution associated with coal ash and related wastes. EPA is seeking comment from industry and other stakeholders to ensure that both final rules are aligned to reduce pollution efficiently and minimize regulatory burdens.

There are approximately 1,200 steam electric power plants that generate electricity using nuclear fuel or fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas in the U.S. Approximately 500 of these power plants are coal fired units which are the primary source of the pollutants being addressed by the proposed regulation. Power plants that are smaller than 50 megawatts would not be impacted by these new standards, and the majority of coal-fired power plants would incur no costs under the proposed standards.

The public comment period on the proposed rule will be open for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The agency is under a consent decree to take final action by May 22, 2014.

'Smog-eating' cement to curb air pollution in Chicago's industrial corridor

Source: Drew Kann
Medill Reports - Chicago, Northwestern University

Dubbed the “greenest street in America” by city officials, the technology employed in the new Pilsen Sustainable Streetscape on the West Side of Chicago is impressive to read about, and even more so to see in person.

Solar panels and wind turbines power overhanging high-efficiency streetlights.

Ninety-five species of native grasses, shrubs and trees line the sidewalks and roadway.

However, the most notable feature of the streets are the roads themselves.

The bike lanes and parking lanes that flank the main roadway are made of semi-permeable photocatalytic cement, also known as “smog-eating” cement, a compound that reacts with ultra-violet light to remove a variety of pollutants from the surrounding air.

While this type of cement has been utilized in building materials and other projects for some time, the Pilsen Streetscape represents the first-ever use on a commercial roadway. When completed, the project will span two miles of Cermak Road and Blue Island Avenue.

The active ingredient in the cement is a chemical called titanium dioxide, a compound commonly included in toothpaste and house paint for its cleaning properties.

According to professor SonBinh T. Nguyen, an organic chemistry professor at Northwestern University, its smog-fighting power lies in the microscopic size of its crystals.

“The [titanium dioxide] crystals in your toothpaste container are about 200 to 250 nanometers in diameter while the ones in the pollution fighting form are only about seven nanometers,” said Nguyen. “That’s what makes them capable of fighting pollution.”

According to Nguyen, the titanium dioxide on the cement surface absorbs UV light and uses this energy to react with water vapor in the surrounding air.

The result of this reaction is a highly reactive particle known as a hydroxyl radical.

It is these unstable hydroxyl radicals that in turn decompose a host of other compounds in the surrounding air, including nitrous oxide, a harmful greenhouse gas released in car exhaust.

The end products of this reaction are much more innocuous: water and nitrogen, which accounts for 78 percent of Earth’s atmosphere.

Exactly how effective this cement will be at cleaning the air on Blue Island Avenue, an area characterized by heavy traffic and industrial activity, remains to be seen.

David Leopold, project manager for the Chicago Department of Transportation, did say the photocatalytic cement is more expensive than regular pavement, but the city expects to see considerable improvement in street-level air quality as a result.

The cement manufacturer, an Italian-based company called Italcementi Group, claims that in closed-chamber tests, the cement reduced nitrous oxide concentrations by 91 percent.

Based on pre-installation estimates, “on a windless day up to about eight feet from the pavement’s surface, you can see demonstrated improvements in air quality,” said Leopold. “Coincidentally, that’s about the height of a person on a bike.”

Leopold said that while the city doesn’t have exact air-quality measurements to gauge the pavement’s impact since installation, the entire project has the potential to serve as a blueprint for future transportation projects in the city.

“The purpose of this entire streetscape is to look at sustainable design practices across a pretty wide spectrum -- to kick the tires, monitor it, and then get some good, solid data.”

Chevron employees could face jail time if EPA takes pollution case further

The Chevron Corp. may face more penalties including prison time for employees stemming from a federal investigation of a California pollution case.

The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating actions at the company’s Richmond, California refinery after local officials in 2009 determined that pollution controls were bypassed, according to company and local officials.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which enforces air-pollution rules in nine counties near San Francisco, discovered Chevron employees routed gas emissions around monitoring equipment then burned off the excess, violating local rules. The agency forced the company to end the practice it said was used at least 27 times in four years, said Wayne Kino, the district’s enforcement manager. Chevron paid a $170,000 penalty to settle the agency’s civil case.

“It now appears that EPA has chosen to take that case” as a criminal prosecution, Kino said yesterday in an interview.“There are indications that they are investigating, but they don’t talk about it.”

A flaring system is used in emergencies to eliminate gases that could be increasing to dangerous levels, Kino said. Refineries had been flaring gas for routine maintenance before the local air quality board imposed standards in 2004, he said.

A criminal prosecution might mean further fines or even jail time for employees involved at the Richmond refinery. A total of 249 individuals or companies were charged last year after an EPA criminal investigation. Agency prosecutions last year resulted in sending violators to prison for 89.5 years and fines of $35 million.


(Source: Bloomberg)