Florida Airport Groundwater Impact Assessment
LOCATION
Florida
SERVICE Assessment, Remediation & Monitoring (ARM)CLIENT
Confidential
PROJECTS \ CASE STUDY
Florida Airport Groundwater Impact Assessment
Alongside one of our affiliates, Cameron-Cole was directly responsible for evaluating groundwater analytical data collected by several other consultants and designing the framework under which a major Florida airport could achieve regulatory compliance in addressing metals detected in groundwater throughout its property. Through its outside environmental counsel, the airport requested our regulatory expertise after the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) requested a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) to address this groundwater contaminant. Our expert’s involvement consisted of recommending the creation of two TPA-wide Institutional Controls and successfully arguing with the FDEP that the presence of arsenic in groundwater was due to natural and anthropogenic conditions. The presentation of technically and legally defensible data and our regulatory analysis resulted in FDEP accepting higher concentrations of arsenic in groundwater and the use of Institutional Controls to not only close a site originally thought to be the source of arsenic contamination but also to discard the RAP request and accept that the presence of the contaminant in the groundwater at the airport would not trigger enforcement or site assessment requests. The budgetary savings of not implementing remediation for arsenic throughout the airport has been estimated in the millions of dollars. Additionally, the emplacement of airport-wide Institutional Controls at over 50 airport sites will reduce the need for extended remediation.