Remediation in Capua Street: How to learn from full-scale applications

The selection process of remediation technology for a contaminated area can be highly improved by the ability to learn from previous remediation efforts in similar areas. The key factor in this learning is the identification of similar cases based on past experiences. This paper reports a procedure developed to identify similar cases to the Capua Street site, Santo Andre, Brazil, taking the EPAs Cost and Performance Case Studies as a reference. This site is contaminated with hexaclorocyclohexan (HCH) and just a few similar cases were found in the EPAs database. The research question is: Can we learn from other remediation cases with similar contaminants and site profile? The definition of similarity in this procedure is based on an analogy with medical treatment: patients (contamination sites characteristics) and pathologies (types of contaminants and process of contamination). The adopted procedure identified more than ten contaminants similar to HCH present at Capua Street site. A search in EPAs database revealed around ten remediation cases in which only two technologies (thermal and biological treatments) were used. Remediation costs and technologies performance reported for these cases are also important inputs for the present selection process.