In 2001, 65% of the expenditures for groundwater and soil remediation will be outside the United States. Other countries will spend $4.5 billion on consulting, testing and other services to characterize contaminated sites.
Approximately $1.3 billion will be spent on remediation hardware such as pump and treat systems, and $8.7 billion will be spent on labor and materials involved in the actual cleanup of these sites. These are the conclusions reached in Site Remediation World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company, Northbrook, IL.
Problems throughout the world are greater than those of the U.S. Up to 94% of Asian farmland suffers from problems such as chemical contamination, acidity, salinity, and poor drainage. Aluminum contamination in 17% of the farmland worldwide is so high that is toxic to plants.
The new ten year environmental action plan of the European Commission emphasizes the importance of protecting soil quality. Voluntary initiatives will be supplemented by penalties and taxes. Eastern Europe and Russia will require enormous remediation investments. Kaliningrad (a former Soviet military area) will require $3 billion in investments over the next 4 years for cleanup of nuclear waste, industrial pollution and untreated sewage. In Yugoslavia and Kosovo, pollution has been increased by the effects of war, including radioactivity from depleted uranium shells. This adds to industrial contamination such as that caused by the Zvecan lead smelter.
Japan is considering stricter standards for soil contamination. The most prevalent contaminant at industrial and residential sites is trichlorethylene. There are more than 100,000 contaminated point sources in Australia which will result in expenditures of $4 billion. In Brazil there are an estimated 35,000 underground storage tanks. Many of them are leaking, contaminating both soil and groundwater.
Source: McIlvaine Company
