Essay On Soil Remediation

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Soil remediation is part of a broader effort known as environmental remediation. It restores previously contaminated land to an uncontaminated state and is an important part of sustainable development, especially in respect of resource management and reducing reliance on landfill (Scottish Environment Protection Agency, n.d., p. 4). Most countries around the world are actively engaged in some form of soil remediation. Each year in the European Union, several billion euros are expended on the remediation of land affected by contamination. It is important that this money is spent intelligently and appropriately (Elorriaga, 2014, p. 2).
What is soil remediation?
Remediation refers to techniques and processes for treating soil in order to contain, remove, degrade or render contaminants less harmful. These techniques directly treat the medium with the overall aim of decreasing actual or potential human or ecological risk from the contaminants (Pierzynski and Sims et al., 2000, p. 377).
If there is no immediate threat then the contaminated area may just be isolated to prevent further spreading. The clean-up is considered successful once contamination levels are reduced to background levels or those found in uncontaminated soils. In reality this is difficult to obtain and the costs may be difficult to justify against the benefits, this has led to a greater focus on the reduction of risk to an acceptable level rather than background levels (Pierzynski and Sims et al., 2000, p. 379).
There are examples of small scale soil remediation such as a home owner using remediation techniques on their land due to an increase in lead. There are also large scale examples, for instance after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster Japan ...

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...’s rapid development is putting increasing pressure on local water resources but has simultaneously deteriorated the quality of urban groundwater in many cities. Groundwater has been significantly polluted in over half of China’s 660 cities. Contamination transfer through the soil is partly responsible for this. The government has finally recognised this issue and is now spending tens of billions of Yuan each year on heavy metal soil remediation and treatment of over-exploited groundwater. The Shanghai Centre for Soil Remediation was opened in 2005 to study soil remediation technologies on industrialised areas and keep a close eye on toxic soils in China. Sino-Singapore Tianhin Eco-City is being developed on polluted marshlands; this process has so far included the removal of contaminated, alkaline soil to be filtered and cleaned and later placed back (Best, 2011).

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