Environmental services: Industry standards for the environment.

• Author: Staker, Brian
• Position: Business Trends - Statistical Data Included

At the rate businesses and individuals create and consume products, there must be some standards and regulations to monitor any industry. What follows are the newest trends in environmental services and how they impact key industries locally. Many of the services overlap, such as engineering projects that need to meet planning and permitting standards, and with all industries generating some amount of waste, management of the byproducts becomes an issue.

Remediation

Engineering is not just about building new structures or moving dirt. It also involves complying with environmental standards and cleanup. At Kleinfelder, a Salt Lake City-based engineering firm, Senior Engineer Dave Rickers says there's a definite focus on permitting and compliance standards. "In addition we are involved in remediation and cleanup," he says.

Some new technology to ensure companies comply with environmental standards is anaerobic (oxygen-free) systems, machinery that isolates and cleans the worst solvent-contaminated sites. A vacuum removes the subsurface and volatilizes the contaminant. Solvents degrade faster this way.

Kleinfelder has recently partnered with Tooele Army Depot to remove soil contaminated with explosives, lead and battery acid. It is also on the closure and removal of waste-disposal sump. With the exception of one site, all removal is complete. Final remedy selection for the remainder of the sites is expected to be finished by end of 2001.

"If you don't produce the waste in the first place," says Rickers, "you don't have to clean it up." Kleinfelder has also engineered the Salt Lake County landfill voluntary hazardous waste drop-off, using composting to get rid of green waste to reduce the area of the landfill and minimize methane emissions.

CEntry, another local firm specializing in mechanical, electrical, structural and civil engineering, has helped design processes upfront to minimize cleanup. Vice President of Product Development Dean Bybee says the company has been active in the hazardous waste incineration market: "There are a lot of new regulations, and we have helped our clients get up to speed with compliance."

Recycling

"Recycling is pretty much still a manual process; dump everything out on the ground and sort it out," says Robert Payne, facilities manager at Utah Recycling in West Valley. "This isn't a real high-tech industry." One of the main issues is getting people to recycle in the first place. Salt Lake City Corporation has...