| Abstrakt: |
Sustainable remediation demonstrates that the benefit of undertaking remediation is more significant than its impact, and the optimum remediation solution is selected through a balanced decision-making process. Assessing sustainable remediation is site and project-specific and is strongly multifactorial across a wide range of categories, which may or may not be readily quantifiable. The applied socio-economic survey framework is based on the 2020 SuRF-UK guidance. The assessment was carried out in three steps. A small core team, an interim evaluation by the project of all beneficiaries, and a final assessment including the views of a broad range of external stakeholders developed an initial "pilot" sustainability assessment. The sustainability assessment process compared options across 45 individual criteria in 15 overarching "headline" categories: environmental, social, and economic. Members selected suitable criteria and the individual rankings of the project consortium from research, service providers and the site owner. The assessments compared Wetland+ with the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and no-intervention scenario. Wetland+ outranked the use of WWTP, and both performed significantly better than the no-intervention scenario. The quantitative data from LCA confirmed the results devoted to environmental impact. Practical Applications: Remediation of contaminated sites is site-specific, and each site requires a specific targeted approach that should take into account not only the environmental benefits of the measures but also economic and social aspects. In the case of water contaminated with hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) substances, there are various methods of dealing with it, ranging from removal and relocation to a secure site-to-site encapsulation to various methods of contaminated water treatment. In the case of mega-sites, the solution often reduces to water treatment, as other solutions are not acceptable, especially economically, but also environmentally (transporting large volumes of materials) and socially (large construction and material handling). The present paper gives guidance on the selection of the most accepted water treatment option from a sustainability point of view. A three-step process based on a multiparametric assessment shows how the subjective approach of technologists, activists, or the public can be eliminated. The paper shows that a wetland-based solution is accepted significantly more than a WWTP or a no-action scenario. The approach will be further applied to similar localities with HCH contamination but can be generalized to a much broader set of contaminated sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
