Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering (BBGE) and URS start work next week on testing an innovative new technique to clean up an area of highly contaminated soil in Shawfield, part of the Clyde Gateway regeneration area in the East End of Glasgow and South Lanarkshire.
BBGE - leading ground engineering specialists and part of the Balfour Beatty group - has been appointed by engineering and environmental consultants, the URS Corporation, to conduct the trial. URS is developing a remediation strategy for Shawfield on behalf of the Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company, a multi-million pound partnership over a 20-year period involving Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire Council and Scottish Enterprise, with funding from the Scottish Government.
The project will test the use of calcium polysulfide, a chemical from the agricultural industry, as a way of remediating land contaminated with Chromite Ore Processing Residue (COPR), a common problem found in many former industrial locations around the world.
The residue contains the highly toxic chromium Cr(VI). Traditional methods of remediating Cr(VI) contaminated land have had limited success in converting the chemical to the less harmful Cr(III). If successful, the BBGE trial could have significant implications for the remediation of Cr(VI) contaminated land worldwide. The project is being closely observed by the environmental think-tank CL:AIRE.*
BBGE’s GeoEnvironmental Director, Ian Gatenby, said:
“BBGE companies have a long history of developing cutting edge ground engineering solutions and this latest project is no exception. It is exciting that through innovation we can combine an agrochemical with a proven technique from the ground engineering industry and develop a bespoke solution to a very complex remediation problem. As far as I am aware this is the first time this method has been trialled in the UK and it has huge potential for our industry if it goes well. We are all looking forward to seeing the results.”
BBGE’s ground improvement company, Pennine, will carry out the test on the Shawfield site. Using a modified Wolton rotary rig, the Pennine team will bore ten metres deep into the ground and simultaneously inject and mix the calcium polysulfide within a representative test area of contaminated soil. URS will take before and after samples from the soil and Pennine will sample theground water as part of the project’s evaluation.
* CL:AIRE – Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments
