The oft-mentioned construction project at Selfridge is coming to a surprising halt in the next few weeks....it's going to require a bit of an explanation as to why.
I guess the place to start is the start (hah!).....when you suspect an environmental problem exists, you begin with a site investigation. Sounds pretty simple, you go out, you do some sort of invasive investigation (drilling, test pits with an excavator) and you collect samples, which you test for impact (a better word than "contamination"....much like landfill sounds better than "dump"). Depending on what you find, you do more investigation, and more, until you think you've defined the problem, where you move onto proposing a solution, and then designing the solution and well, doing the solution.
The project I've been working on has been the last two, designing and doing. We began work on the project after multiple firms did the investigating (times three!) and proposed the solution. Since I've started working at the new employer, I've been working on this project, finishing the design, creating the construction documents, bidding out the project to contractors, and construction (moving dirt, as referenced earlier) has been going on for almost two months.
The short version of the project is that we are excavating impacted materials from three different areas and consolidating them in one area, and then capping those materials with clay to reduce/infiltration from rain and prevent/reduce groundwater impacts. And we've been excavating....and excavating, and have come to find out that the investigating part of this project wasn't very accurate. Or more precisely, was lacking some detail.
The investigation was based primarily on analytical data, you go out, you drill (geoprobe is the actual term, but, think 'drill' and you've got the concept) a bunch of holes and collect samples. Using these sample, the previous firms 'defined' the area to be excavated by splitting the difference in distance between 'clean' borings and 'dirty' borings. This approach would work pretty well in a situation where someone dumped something (like gasoline) and the impact is spread around in the soil, but, wouldn't be visible in the soil as you excavated it. Sadly, it doesn't work so well in a suspected landfill. As we reached the limits of our excavation, you could still see trash and other materials in the sidewalls of the excavation. So, of course, the State of Michigan would like that material cleaned up to. And, our excavations are getting larger.
Turns out now, that our excavations are so large, that we've almost doubled the predicted amount of material we were going to excavate. And we're still not at the end of it. What we are at the end of are the funds that have been allocated to complete this project. So, we're going to have to 'mothball' the project in the coming weeks and wait until next year (when more monies can be allocated to complete the project) to finish it.
Had a first-hand look at the excavation of trash on Wednesday and Thursday....there's an access road that bisects the Site, a lot of the excavated material is to the north of this road, the landfill where it's being consolidated is to the south. The 'investigation' doesn't have any borings in the road to check for impact; the defined limits show the road is clean.
We've dug up over 350' feet of the access road......trash (mostly construction and industrial debris) is buried at 4-6' all through it.
At least I know I'll never want for work....this is how the United Stated did things in the 60's and 70's, and this is how most of the rest of the world still does it today.....take the trash to low areas, place it there, cover it with dirt, move on.
