TITLE:
Interstate Comparison of Soil Remediation Standards among Six Mid-Atlantic States, USA
AUTHORS:
Robert P. Blauvelt, Mathew Sweet
KEYWORDS:
Regulatory Standards, Soil Remediation, Look-Up Tables, Ranking, Socioeconomic Consequences
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.10,
July
24,
2014
ABSTRACT: To address and help mitigate potential public health and ecological
impacts associated with contaminated soil, most state environmental agencies
have promulgated cleanup standards or action level criteria that are based
broadly on US Environmental Protection Agency risk assessment methodologies.
These standards or criteria often are assembled into easy-to-use look-up tables
that allow responsible parties (RPs) to determine quickly the extent of
remediation that could be required simply by comparing site investigation data
to the listed cleanup goal or standard. This paper compares and contrasts soil
remediation standards and criteria for 20 common soil pollutants taken from
state environmental agency look-up tables for five Middle Atlantic States: New
York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. We examine
the differences between numeric remedial goals for these pollutants and propose
a relative rank for each state based on the overall degree of soil cleanup
standard or criterion stringency. In order to identify and rank the stringency
of the residential cleanup goals or standards published by the six Mid-Atlantic
States, a three-step process was used that included compiling in one data set, the
numerical (mg/kg), residential or unrestricted use look-up values published by
state for each of the 20 contaminants; organizing and grouping those values in
numerical sequence into one of three categories ranging from lowest (Most
Restrictive) to highest (Least Restrictive); and then ranking each state by the
number of first place finishes in each stringency category: Most Restrictive,
Moderately Restrictive, and Least Restrictive. The socioeconomic consequences
of these ranks were examined relative to their effects on gross state product,
unemployment, and health.