Terradex avoided a “disaster” threatening the potable water in Los Angeles, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The local permit agency approved the installation of a cathodic protection well. This type of deep well, used to prevent pipeline corrosion, has perforated walls and can thus allow groundwater to flow downward from a shallow aquitard to a deeper one. The permit agency did not flag the fact that a benzene contaminant plume existed in shallow groundwater at the well site. However, Terradex did proactively detect the conflict. The responsible party, alerted by Terradex, prevented an installation that would have become a conduit from the benzene plume to the deeper, potable water supply aquifer for Los Angeles.
Details of the Los Angeles alert are included in a Summary Pilot Report issued in February 2006 by the USEPA. The report’s primary focus, however, is a two-year evaluation of Terradex’s institutional controls monitoring system in California’s Silicon Valley. The multi-site case study tested Terradex’s IC monitoring at numerous contaminated sites, including Superfund sites, BRAC sites, leaking underground fuel sites and brownfield sites. An extract from USEPA’s report:
A prime example of the potential of an IC monitoring system to protect the public and the environmental from exposure to contamination occurred in January 2006. While the Del Amo Superfund site was not technically part of the pilot program, many of the same parties using the same process employed in the pilot program, detected and prevented a disaster from occurring there. Chevron had proposed drilling a 300-foot well for cathodic protection of one of its pipelines. The local permitting agency missed a conflict with a benzene plume in the area of the planned excavation and permitted Chevron to drill the well. The IC monitoring service used in the pilot program, Terradex, alerted stakeholders to the conflict and Chevron canceled the drilling. Had the well been drilled, concentrated benzene would have polluted the Lynwood Aquiifer that supplied drinkable water to Los Angeles County. Chevron is now working with regulators toward a solution that will protect human health and the environment.