Remediation of Former Manufactured Gas Plants and Other Coal-Tar Sites

Winner of the 2013 Claire P. Holdredge Awardee for Remediation of Former Manufactured Gas Plants and Other Coal-Tar Sites.

This award, first established in 1962 by the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists, is named in honor of Claire P. Holdredge, a founding member and the first President of the Association. The award is presented for a publication by an AEG Member(s) within the 5 previous years that is adjudged to be an outstanding contribution to the Engineering Geology profession.

Remediation of Former Manufactured Gas Plants and Other Coal-Tar Sites is geared toward environmental professionals who want to design and implement gasworks remediation strategies that offer the greatest chance to successfully protect the public. Exploring the bases for selecting remedial alternatives to adequately address today's environmental wounds, this compendium of essential knowledge combines historic and modern scientific data and technology with common sense and empirical lore passed down from past generations of gas professionals, a group that is now all but extinct.

Most of the general population does not have a sufficient understanding of remediation needs. Unfortunately, there seems to be a similar lack of knowledge among some environmental professionals whose job it is to protect the public from the health threats associated with coal tar. Pitfalls in remediation are common and represent a significant risk to the public, especially when processes are based on inaccurate assumptions.

This book sifts through the existing scholarship from around the developed world to present the necessary evaluation factors used in effective remediation. Almost encyclopedic in scope, it offers 265 separate tables with checklists, hard data facts, and associations to help readers define site-specific gas plant conditions. It also includes a plethora of photographs and historic drawings, as well as an extensive glossary that is indispensible for understanding potential and actual gas plant contamination.

Useful for engineers, scientists, regulators, public officials, historians, and journalists among others, this book is intended for those who conduct remediation, as well as those involved in review and oversight. Its goal is to bring users closer to safely reclaiming land and reviving old coal gasworks sites in ways that ultimately will be sustainable for the public interest.

Allen W. Hatheway is a registered professional geologist and engineer in several states and has practiced for 50 years, half of it with prominent geotechnical and geo-environmental consulting firms. He received his baccalaureate at UCLA and graduate degrees from the School of Mines of the University of Arizona. He has held adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Southern California (Civil Engineering), Boston University (Geology), and taught Geological Engineering for nearly 20 years at the University of Missouri. His specialties are site and waste characterization and remedial engineering for environmental litigation, mitigation of geologic constraints, and for hazardous waste cleanup, particularly of former manufactured gas plants. In 1973, the American Society of Civil Engineers named him California’s Outstanding Young Civil Engineer. He is a Fellow of ASCE, GSA, the Geological Society (London) and an Honorary Member of AEG.