• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-6
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• 2020

Recently, ex-situ remediation technologies has been emerging to clean up contaminated soils mainly because the in-situ techniques have limited applicability and technical difficulties in relatively small contaminated sites. Accordingly, implementation of off-site treatment and disposal have been continuously increased in soil remediation and restoration projects in Korea. However, in many cases, reclaimed soil is still not properly recycled or reused. Therefore, there is an urgent need to document the current status of soil management practices in soil remediation projects in the nation. This study presents a survey of soil contamination status and remedial approaches in Korea based on soil cleanup projects completed in 2015 - 2019, and proposes the possible options of the recycling or reusing the reclaimed soils under compliance with related regulations. The results of the soil survey showed soil contamination was most severe in gas stations, industrial facilities, and military areas. The major types of pollution were related to the petroleum-contaminated site (TPH and BTEX) with 77.0% occurrence in all the contaminated sites. The reclaimed soils were mostly reused as a ground filling-up soils in industrial facilities (60.0%) and warehouses (37.0%).

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.43-51
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• 2020

About 90% of groundwater wells in Jeju Island are reported to be under the threat of contamination by infiltration of the surface pollutants. Most of those wells have improperly grouted annulus which is an empty space between the well and the inner casing. As a remedy to this problem, some of the wells were re-grouted by filling the annulus with cement without lifting an inner casing. In order to evaluate whether this method is appropriate for the geological structure of Jeju Island, two wells (W1 and W2) were selected and this method was applied. The water holding capacity did not decrease while the nitrate levels decreased from 16.8 and 20.2 to 6.8 and 13.8 mg/L in W1 and W2, respectively. The higher nitrate level in W2 is deemed to be influenced by the livestock farms located in the upper area of the well. In addition, transmissivity of the vedose zone was higher in W2 than W1, potentially facilitating the transport of nitrate to the groundwater. The overall result of this study suggests re-grouting of wells for the purpose of protecting water quality of goundwater should take into account geological structure of vadose zone as well as appropriate source control of the contaminants.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.176-193
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• 2007

The ability to measure groundwater contaminant flux is increasingly being recognized as crucial in order to prioritize contaminated site cleanups, estimate the efficiency of remediation technologies, measure rates of natural attenuation, and apply proper source terms to model groundwater contaminant transport. Recently, a number of methods have been developed and subsequently applied to measure contaminant mass flux in groundwater in the field. Flux measurement methods can be categorized as either point methods or integral methods. As the name suggests, point methods measure flux at a specific point or points in the subsurface. To increase confidence in the accuracy of the measurement, it is necessary to increase the number of points (and therefore, the cost) of the sampling network. Integral methods avoid this disadvantage by using pumping wells to interrogate large volumes of the subsurface. Unfortunately, integral methods are expensive because they require that large volumes of contaminated water be extracted and managed. Recent work has investigated the development of an integral method that does not require extraction of contaminated water from the subsurface. We begin with a review of the significance and importance of measuring groundwater contaminant mass flux. We then review groundwater contaminant flux measurement methods that are either currently in use or under development. Finally, we conclude with a qualitative comparison of the various flux measurement methods.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.105-121
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• 1995

Nitrate contamination problems from groundwater supplies have been documented throughout many countries in the world, including Korea. Nitrate salts can induce methemoglobinemia and possibly human gastric cancer. In farmed areas. intensive agricultural activities have caused a major increase in nitrate loading to groundwater. To determine whether decision makers must take farm-management actions to control the increase of groundwater nitrate concentration and to decide the timing of such actions, it is important to predict groundwater Nitrate levels that would result over time from various farm-management practices. However, the input values such as soil, fertilizer and crop data) used to examine the effects of various farm-management practices on groundwater nitrate level are usually uncertain due to a lack of available information. In this paper. the ease of a community with a nitrate water quality problem is illustrated to examine the effects of various farm-management practices and to show bow to perform, with uncertain information. a time-series analysis on groundwater nitrate levels that would result. from each farm-management practice.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.44-52
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• 2007

Contaminated sediments more than 30 million/$m^3$ is generated from dredging work for harbours and coastal maintenance in Korea. Approximately 300 million/$m^3$ of sediments is dredged to deepen harbours and shipping lanes in US and of which $3{\sim}12million/m^3$ is highly contaminated. Although much is known about technologies for the remediation of heavy metal contaminated soil, much less is known about the treatment of contaminated sediment. In general, negatively charged fine particles will migrate towards positively charged system of electrodes under the influence of electrophoresis. However, the electrically induced migration of colloidal particles contaminated with heavy metals may be hindered by the positively charged heavy metal contaminants adsorbed onto the soil surfaces depending on the contamination level. This paper demonstrates settling behaviour of clayey soil by comparison with electrophoretic particle movement under the effects of heavy metal contamination, applied electric field strength, and its polarity changed by the electrode configuration.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.39-67
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• 2005

In order to properly define the terms such as soil, soil contamination, soil contamination site and remediation, which are the key terms under the Soil Environment Conservation Act(SECA) in Korea, we analyzed the legal definitions of the similar key words in legislations of the developed western countries. The selected countries were the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The legal definitions of these keywords were very much diversified due to different levels of soil contamination, as well as different industrial, social, and legal backgrounds in each country. However, fair suggestions for definitions of the key terms in SECA were derived from the comparative analyses of these countries. First and foremost, SECA should provide a definition of 'soil' which includes a concept of the natural soil layer produced from soil mineralization processes. Groundwater and sublayer of the groundwater would. be excluded in the boundary of the soil with regards to the Groundwater Act of Korea. Definition of 'soil contamination' of SECA should include a concept of risk assessment(soil contaminants, pathway, and receptors), purpose of land use, and the acquired limitation levels of soil contaminants. Soil contamination activity either industrial or anthropogenic in SECA article2-1, could be substituted for a concept of soil risk assessment. Definition of 'soil contamination site' could derive from amalgamating the concepts of i) soil contamination in conjunction with contaminants, ii) risk assessment, iii) a concept of land use, and iv) knowing limitation of contamination site designation. Definition of 'remediation of contaminated site' should include the objective, intention, action, methodology and limit of the remediation. These suggested definitions would increase the efficacy of soil environment conservation policies, which includes the survey of the potentially contaminated area, remediation, and removal of the site.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.50-56
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• 2010

Oil contamination soil has been one of the most environmental social issues for decades in the inside and outside of country. The law of soil environmental preservation was carried out in the 1990s and the government controlled not only soil environment management and the remediation of contaminated soil but also promoted the development of remedial technology and cleanup business of contaminated soil by national policy. In addition to agriculture areas, the main oil contaminated sites are a gas station, oil reservoir, petro-chemical complex, site of railway carriage base and military camp. The contamination-frequency of agriculture area and effect sites are low but it has significantly important area on account of producing food for human beings. Therefore, we should be concerned about oil contamination damage of agriculture area. The oil contamination damage of agriculture area influenced drop of birth and breeding since the oil directly adheres to seeds and farm products even diffusion of contaminated soil to cultivation area. The studies of the crops and the food vegetation has not enough detailed data caused by the incident of oil contamination. This study investigated the effect of oil in germination and growth of selected plant seeds. In this study, we try to verify whether the oil contamination by accidents on farmland influenced the damage of farm produce and the mutual relation both oil contaminated soil or the vegetation of crops. The impact of oil on plant development was followed by phytotoxicity assessments. The plants exhibited visual symptoms of stress, growth reduction and perturbations in developmental parameters. The increase of the degree of pollution induced more marked effects in plants, likely because of the physical effects of oil. The relationships between the phytotoxicity contents of plants and growth reduction suggest a chemical toxicity of fuel oil. In addition, while cleaned up the contaminated soil under the standard of contaminated soil we examined it was suitable for region standard and it may have practical possibility for fill material of construction of afforestation and molding soil of landfill.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.45-69
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• 2014

The groundwater has been a major source of water supply throughout the ages. Around 50% of the rural as well as urban population in the developing countries like India depends on groundwater for drinking. The groundwater is also an important source in the agriculture and industrial sector. In many parts of the world, groundwater resources are under increasing threat from growing demands, wasteful use and contamination. A good planning and management practices are needed to face this challenge. A key to the management of groundwater is the ability to model the movement of fluids and contaminants in the subsurface environment. It is obvious that the contaminant source activities cannot be completely eliminated and perhaps our water bodies will continue to serve as receptors of vast quantities of waste. In such a scenario, the goal of water quality protection efforts must necessarily be the control and management of these sources to ensure that released pollutants will be sufficiently attenuated within the region of interest and the quality of water at points of withdrawal is not impaired. In order to understand the behaviour of contaminant transport through different types of media, several researchers are carrying out experimental investigations through laboratory and field studies. Many of them are working on the analytical and numerical studies to simulate the movement of contaminants in soil and groundwater of the contaminant transport. With the advent of high power computers especially, a numerical modelling has gained popularity and is indeed of particular relevance in this regard. This paper provides the state of the art of contaminant transport and reviews the allied research works carried out through experimental investigation or using the analytical solution and numerical method. The review involves the investigation in respect of both, saturated and unsaturated, porous media.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.3-10
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• 2003

Soil and groundwater contamination by petroleum hydrocarbon products is only one of many environmental problems in Korea. However, many environmental consulting companies have been targeted their business on this subject because the petroleum-oil-lubricant (POL) products have been widely used product and accidental releases of the products from storages resulted numerous small and large contaminated sites throughout Korea. Therefore, many small and large companies are actively participating in environmental assessment and remediation projects for the POL contaminated sites. Remedial technologies for the POL contaminated sites have been developed for many years by government and private institutions throughout the world. Development of a new decontamination technology for the POL contaminated sites is no longer attractive issue in research community because scientific bases of most cost-effective remedial technologies are well understood and have been used in the field by commercial sector. Numerous sites contaminated by underground tanks at gas stations have been remediated by relatively small companies in this country. We should appreciate their noticeable contributions as a frontier under very difficult market environment in Korea. We heard many successful stories as well as a few failure stories. Soil-groundwater remediation of POL contaminated site is not a simple task as shown in the text books or protocols. Therefore, failure risk is always with us, which requires continuous efforts for improvement of the technologies by the users and developers. In this presentation, author will discuss technical problems encountered and improvement made during implementation of several remedial technologies applied by Samsung Environmental Team. This is not a presentation about research or case study. We want to share our thought and experience with environmental engineers actively engaged in soil and groundwater remediation projects in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2004.09a
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• pp.207-210
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• 2004

Effect of electron accepters on anaerobic degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons by an anaerobic sludge taken from a sludge digestion tank in a soil artificially contaminated with 10,000 mg/kg soil of diesel fuel was tested. Treatments of soil with 30 mL of the digestion sludge (2,000 mg/L of vss (volatile suspended solids)) were incubated under several anaerobic conditions including nitrate reducing, sulfate reducing, methanogenic, and mixed electron accepters conditions for 120 days. Treatments with the digested sludge showed significant degradation of diesel fuel under all anaerobic conditions compare to control treatments with an autoclaved sludge and without the sludge. The amount of TPH degradation after 120days incubation was the largest in the treatment with the sludge and mixed electron accepters (75% removal of TPH) followed in order by sulfate reducing, nitrate reducing, methanegenic condition as 67%, 53％, 43%, respectively. However, the rate of TPH degradation in the nitrate- and sulfate reducing condition within 105 days were comparable with that of the mixed electron accepters condition. Microorganisms in each electron acceptor condition were plated on solid mediums containing nitrate or sulfate as sole electron acceptor and several nitrate- and sulfate reducing bacteria showed effective degradation of diesel fuel within 30 days incubations. These results suggest that anaerobic degradation of diesel fuel in soil with digested sludge is effective for practical remediation of soil contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.