ACEC Washington Best in State Silver Award Winner: Riverside Property Cleanup

Mark Sadler (2nd from right), City of Everett, joined Aspect project team members at the awards banquet.

Mark Sadler (2nd from right), City of Everett, joined Aspect project team members at the awards banquet.

For our technical guidance on the Riverside Property Cleanup, Aspect received a Best in State Silver Award for Social/Economic Sustainability at the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Washington 2013 Engineering Excellence Awards banquet on January 18.

The cleanup of the 90-acre Riverside property on the Snohomish River in Everett was conducted collaboratively through a public-private partnership between the City of Everett and Kimberly-Clark Worldwide - the Riverside Environmental Team (RET). With the RET relying on the technical analysis to drive the process, Aspect's deep understanding of MTCA regulatory requirements and strategic application of cleanup design and engineering steered the comprehensive cleanup of the former industrial property.

Aspect worked with the RET and Ecology to develop an efficient, focused approach and practical, cost effective engineered solutions that went beyond conventional industrial cleanup. Employing innovations including backfilling with available dredge sands and installing a subsurface drain system for use in groundwater treatment, Aspect oversaw a cleanup program of complete soil removal and active groundwater treatment that resulted in non-detect contaminant levels and six No Further Action (NFA) determinations for soil and groundwater.

Achieving unrestricted cleanup standards at the former Sawmill site preserved opportunities for a full range of future redevelopment options, not limited by capped contamination or deed restrictions.

The project was previously recognized with a 2011 Association of Washington Business (AWB) Environmental Excellence Award for Kimberly-Clark.

Aspect Consulting in Action: Now on Google Street View!

​It's a point of pride in this modern age, isn't it? Getting captured by one of Google's roaming car cameras is a badge of honor we'll wear proudly.

Aspect staff can be found onsite at remediation and monitoring projects state wide. Remediation engineer Eric Geissinger was captured--monitoring the Air Sparge/Soil Vapor Extraction (AS/SVE) system at the Dolarway site -- by a roving Google street view camera in Ellensburg.

The jury is still out on how worried we should be that Eric will leave Aspect to pursue a career in modelling.​

Dan Haller Speaks at Washington Water Law Conference

Aspect’s Dan Haller spoke at the Water Law in Washington conference on August 27 in Seattle, WA.

In a session on New Tools in Water Resource Management, Dan discussed how the Washington State Department of Ecology uses the Washington Irrigation Guide to determine water duty and extent and validity of irrigation water rights.

Celebrating Summer with Service

August 3, 2012.

Aspect again celebrated summer by combining our annual picnic/bbq with civic service. This year we sent volunteer crews out to two projects. Our beach crew worked with Puget Sound Restoration Fund sorting oysters growing on the organization’s Bainbridge Island community shellfish farm.

Our trail crew built a boardwalk at Heritage Park in Kingston to finish trail work we had first undertaken at our 2010 summer event.

With dogged perseverance under the midday sun, Aspect volunteers had the shellfish sorted and back in their grow bags well before the high tide came in to cover the farm area.

Meanwhile, the trail crew overcame creative differences in design to construct 50’ feet of 6-foot wide boardwalk over a streambed to replace a muddy section of the trail.

After successful completion of the projects, both groups convened in a backyard overlooking the Sound for a summer bbq of lobster, tri-tip, and (of course) fresh oysters.

One Site. Four Sources. One System.

​The groundwater beneath an eight-acre shopping center exhibited chlorinated solvent impacts from four different source areas of varying ages.

To sort out the complexities of multiple sources with multiple responsible parties, Aspect hydrogeologists distinguished the relative solvent contribution from each historical source and developed a site conceptual model that was used to reach an equitable cost-sharing agreement. At the same time, our remediation engineers pilot tested an in situ chemical oxidation system for groundwater treatment without disruption to the active retail facility.

The final remediation system treats all source areas through one air sparge and soil vapor extraction (AS/SVE) system consisting of 16 soil-vapor extraction wells and 47 air-sparging wells spread over an acre of the property.