Over a period of eight years WSP was retained by a global chemical company to design and implement a liability management program to support the sale of a former tar distillery for ongoing industrial use.

More than 100 years of coal tar processing had left a significant legacy. Through detailed site characterization, cost-benefit assessment and a detailed sustainability appraisal, WSP coordinated a joint remedial action plan between the site owner and the regulator. 

A full-scale groundwater remediation program was designed and implemented by WSP incorporating low shear Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids (NAPL) recovery from over 200 recovery wells, segregated in to eight treatment zones. 

Remediation was sufficiently completed in 2017 enabling the transfer of the site to the new site operator and the discharge of our client’s environmental obligations. 

The project was awarded Best Conceptual Design at the Brownfield Briefing Awards.

WSP was engaged by Huntsman to assist with the management of environmental liabilities and divestment on a 36-hectare property within the western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

A systematic and controlled investigation and remediation of environmental contamination was carried out under a site-specific clean-up plan (CUP) with site works including more than 400 groundwater monitoring wells, 50 remediation wells, 2,000 soil bores, 850,000 soil analytical data points, and 275,000 groundwater analytical data points.

We assisted with community engagement activities, council interactions, and market research to determine the best and most valuable end-use for the site which aligned with the CUP.

WSP successfully implemented an innovative, efficient and sustainable treatment project and won the ALGA Annual Clean Up Project Excellence Award for “Sustainable Treatment Using C3™ Refrigerated Condensation” – a first for Australia.

WSP was retained by the KPH Turcot consortium to take on the remediation of contaminated soils at the Turcot Interchange in Montreal, used by over 300,000 vehicles each day, as part of major reconstruction works. The 200-hectare site housed industrial activities starting in the mid-20^th century resulting in a history of heavy contamination of nearly one million cubic meters of soil.

Our team of contaminated land experts, geomatics professionals and field personnel challenged traditional practices and methods to find a more efficient way to track and manage the remediation and earth moving activities.

Our solution was to build new electronic tools for contaminated soil management. We developed a cloud-based database with live interactive mapping linked directly to field tablets and made accessible to all stakeholders. This allowed efficient coordination with construction teams and reliable reporting. Adopting this innovative approach helped our client set ambitious targets to limit the overall environmental footprint of the works and generate substantial time and cost savings making the project an unprecedented success.

In 2017 the project received the Best Projects Award from PMI-Montréal.

The regeneration programme as part of the 2012 Olympics in London was one of the largest projects of its kind. Located in East London, the site had been home to numerous industrial activities including chemical works, fertilizer works, engineering works, landfills and depots leaving a legacy of soil and groundwater contamination.

As part of the site regeneration, WSP designed and implemented an extensive programme of groundwater remediation works focusing on the characterization of numerous plumes of contamination within both shallow and deep aquifers, followed by the design and implementation of various in-situ remediation solutions.

The works were carried out under challenging conditions, with short timescales and a requirement to integrate in-situ groundwater remediation with ongoing construction works. Our work included in-situ NAPL recovery, in-situ chemical oxidation, enhanced biodegradation of hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvent plumes, hydraulic containment and chemical transformation of arsenic in groundwater.

The challenging timescales and complexity of stakeholder interactions required a flexible and creative design approach throughout the works to ensure that we supported the on-time delivery of this amazing regeneration project.

Our remediation of this brownfield site in Jersey spearheads an innovative scheme to create a vibrant recreational space that will serve as a catalyst for the regeneration of the local environment.

As well as having no landfill capacity on the island, Jersey has an underdeveloped road network. This meant that our remediation design had to be sustainable and generate minimal waste and material movements.

By adopting principles of material resource efficiency, we prevented 100% of the resulting site waste from going to landfill. Segregation, treatment and reuse of the heavily contaminated soils resulted in a saving of some £6M in waste disposal and material import costs.

Thanks to our inventive approach, the tar and liquor tank from the former gasworks was cleaned, rehabilitated and converted to a 500 m³ rainwater storage tank. It now harvests rainwater and is sufficient to irrigate the entire park landscape.

Millennium Town Park is a project that perfectly demonstrates our track record of providing environmental, planning and engineering support for sites located in challenging and socially sensitive locations.

The remediation works at a former industrial site in South Carolina comprised of excavation, onsite thermal treatment, lead stabilization, and disposal/reuse of more than 10,000m³ of soil. Geological heterogeneity, co-mingled contaminant plumes and different regulatory programs further contributed to the project’s complexity.

Anticipating the unexpected, we used an online platform to create a cloud-based relational database to support a major remediation programme and allow all members of the project team, from field staff to the client manager, to have full and real-time access to all project data from any location, at any point in time.

By radically altering our traditional project management approach, the team was able to successfully implement a complex high-resolution soil management strategy, yielding more than $1M in soil treatment/disposal savings to client.

A global manufacturing company inherited a highly polluted site as part of a corporate acquisition. Plating operations on the site had resulted in the release of hexavalent chromium into the sub-surface, which was impacting local drinking water supplies.

With the aid of detailed site characterization, 3D data visualization software, complex fate and transport modelling and site feasibility trials, a global team of WSP experts devised an innovative and minimally intrusive strategy to keep the facility operational during site clean-up activities.

The clean-up involved the installation of hydraulic containment system followed by source remediation through injection of a chemical reductant using injection wells, and the construction and flooding of infiltration galleries near the ground surface.

Significant contaminant mass reduction was achieved, supported by long-term monitoring of the residual contaminant plume.

WSP has advised and provided technical support to a private secondary lead smelter in upstate New York for over 25 years for various environmental investigation, remediation, compliance and permitting activities.

Approximately 70,000 cubic yards of soil, 24 acres of surrounding wetlands and 3,500 linear feet of stream sediment impacted with lead and arsenic from historical operations at the site were remediated between 2012 and 2014. Additional off-site contamination in approximately 6,800 linear feet of affected stream sediment and 4,100 cubic yards of floodplain soil are to be addressed during the next phase of work.

Our work helped the client overcome several technical and regulatory challenges, while simultaneously enabling them to continually operate the secondary lead smelter throughout decades of environmental investigation and remediation. The successful lead stabilization pilot test changed the regulator’s previous position that all remediation waste would require off-site disposal as hazardous waste, thus reducing remediation and closure financial assurance costs by more than half.

WSP developed remediation strategies for Engen Petroleum Ltd at Island View at the Port of Durban in South Africa. The strategies were developed based on the production of specific conceptual site models, collection and appraisal of critical information, and an undertaking of robust quantitative risk assessment with supportive modelling. Subsequently, we performed an appraisal of remedial technologies and, in conjunction with Engen’s objectives, provided final engineering design and specifications for the adopted remedial system.

In Brandnäs on the scenic island of Torpön in Östergötland, wood preservation operations at sawmills between the 1920s and the 1960s resulted in dioxin ground contamination. On behalf of the County Administrative Board and the Swedish Geological Survey, WSP performed intrusive soil investigations, risk assessments and remediation.

By combining expertise in contaminated soil and ecology, we were able to meet the client’s goal of optimizing resource management while maintaining and increasing the area's biodiversity. By enhancing the area’s natural environment, something typically overlooked in standard remediation projects, our approach provided more value to the area and its residents long after the project was completed.