Soil and Groundwater Contamination to Be Cleaned Up at Maryland Superfund Site

TerraTherm, Inc. (USA), an innovative environmental remediation company based in Massachusetts, announced today that it has been awarded a $6.9 million contract to clean up chemical contamination at the Spectron, Inc. Superfund site.

The site is located approximately six (6) miles north of the Town of Elkton, Cecil County, Maryland. From the mid-1800s through 1946, the property was occupied by a water-powered paper mill. From 1962 to 1988 the site was used as a recycling and treatment facility for wastes generated by the electronic, pharmaceutical, paint, lacquer, coatings, and chemical industries. Facility management practices resulted in impacts to soil and groundwater. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added the site to the National Priorities List (NPL) in 1994. The NPL is EPA's list of the nation's most serious hazardous waste sites.

TerraTherm will use its patented form of Thermal Conductive Heating (TCH) to heat soil and shallow groundwater at the site to approximately 100 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of water, enabling chemicals to be removed from the subsurface as vapour prior to final treatment/destruction using a thermal oxidiser. The process is expected to remove 99% of the contamination present in the subsurface.

Investigation and remediation activities are being undertaken by a group of companies whose waste was recycled at the site in the '60s to the mid-'80s. The work is being conducted pursuant to an agreement with EPA and the Maryland Department of the Environment.

David Fennimore, President of Earth Data Northeast, Inc. and the Group's project coordinator, commented, "The Group was encouraged by the success of the TerraTherm technology at other sites and looks forward to meeting EPA's remedial objectives and ultimately restoring the property to beneficial use within the community."