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Q: Does the Toxics Program work with industry?
A: Program information on the environmental occurrence and persistence of alternative industrial compounds, as
well as variations resulting from alternative-use practices, is useful for decision-making by industry as well as resource
managers, regulators and the public. In some cases, common interests in an issue result in a formal collaboration between
program scientists and industry; such a partnership is established through a
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). The
CRADAs and collaborations often last several years, and are integral to many of the Toxics Program's research and development
activities. The following are examples of formal and informal partnerships with industry:
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In 2007, USGS scientists from the Amargosa Desert Research Site (ADRS),
Nevada, research team provided information on techniques for sampling and monitoring unsaturated-zone
vapor for tritium to personnel from the consulting firm Radiation Safety
and Control Services (RSCS). Sampling techniques also were demonstrated for RSCS personnel during a
field-site visit to the ADRS. RSCS is evaluating the potential for implementing such a monitoring approach
for use as an early warning system at nuclear power plants. The objective of the system would be to detect
tritium or other radionuclide contamination before the contamination can reach ground water. RSCS in under
contract to the Electric Power Research Institute.
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Toxics Program scientists partnered with the U.S. Navy's Naval
Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), ECOR Solutions,
Inc., and GeoSyntec Consultants on a pilot test involving
injection of nutrients (an electron donor) and bacteria into the subsurface to stimulate the biodegradation
of trichloroethylene (TCE) in fractured sedimentary rock at the Naval Air
Warfare Center (NAWC) Research Site, West Trenton, New Jersey. This collaborative effort, which started
in 2004, is monitoring the performance of the biostimulation/bioaugmentation injection and assessing its
ability to bioremediate contaminants in the host rock (rock matrix) and in fractures. USGS involvement
includes collecting and analyzing rock cores; monitoring concentrations of TCE and its degradation products
(dichloroethylene (DCE) and vinyl chloride (VC)); installation of multi-level monitoring devices; collecting
water samples for bacterial DNA, geochemistry, and isotope chemistry; and evaluating the long-term
performance of the pilot test. The long-term collaborative efforts on this biostimulation/bioaugmentation
test address the broad objective of the partnership, which is to develop a better understanding of the
processes controlling natural and enhanced biodegradation of TCE in fractured rock. In 2007 scientists
initiated work under the Strategic Environmental Research and Development
Program (SERDP) project "A Comparison of Pump-and-Treat, Natural Attenuation, and Enhanced Biodegradation
to Remediate Chlorinated Ethene-Contaminated Fractured Rock Aquifers (ER-1555)."
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Toxics Program scientists and engineers from
Malå
Geoscience, Inc. formed a CRADA in 2002 to test and develop borehole radar technology.
Borehole radar is a minimally invasive method for characterizing
subsurface for physical properties, and monitoring changes caused by injecting fluids to enhance the
remediation of contaminants.
- The CRADA allowed Toxics Program scientists and Malå Geoscience engineers to test the ability
of borehole radar tomography to image the performance and utility of injecting vegetable oil to enhance
the biodegradation of ground water contaminated with chlorinated solvents at the
Naval Industrial Reserve Ordinance Plant (NIROP),
Fridley , Minnesota. This effort was in partnership with the U.S. Navy's
Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC).
- The CRADA also resulted in the development of a slim-hole borehole radar antenna capable of being
used in 2-inch-diameter monitoring wells cased with PVC (polyvinylchloride) pipe. The advantage of a
slim-hole antenna is that scientists and engineers will no longer need to specially drill large-diameter
PVC monitoring wells in order to conduct geophysical monitoring and characterization surveys at
contaminated sites. The need to drill large-diameter wells has been a significant impediment to the
routine use of borehole radar technology.
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Beginning in 2001 Toxics Program scientists from the
USGS Mercury Research Laboratory
collaborated with Frontier Geosciences Inc. and
N-Con Systems Inc. to develop a wet deposition (rainfall) collector
suitable for collecting samples for sensitive analysis of mercury concentrations in rain. The advantage of
the N-Con collector over standard collectors is that it uses an
optical sensor to detect rainfall rather than an electrical detector. The optical detector allows the N-Con
sampler to capture small rain events that standard samplers miss. Small rain events often have high
concentrations of mercury, and not collecting data from these events underestimates the load of mercury from
rain. The N-Con collector has been deployed in the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program's
New England Coastal Basins Mercury Deposition
Network as part of a long-term study of the atmospheric transport of mercury from urban source
areas.
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- Toxics Program scientists collaborated with the American Petroleum
Institute (API) to conduct research on the behavior of methyl
tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in the unsaturated zone and to
explain why MTBE is typically found at much higher concentrations than
BTEX (the toxic components of regular gasoline) in shallow ground water
beneath such spills. The collaboration was accomplished through a CRADA, which started in 1999. The research
employed a computer model R-UNSAT to track vapor transport in soils. The effect of variable soil conditions
and product composition was analyzed. It is reasonable to expect that unsaturated-zone degradation of BTEX
would increase the percent of MTBE concentration in contaminated recharge water over what would be predicted
based on solubility and compositional effects alone. The model
R-UNSAT was developed by USGS scientists and is available
for public use.
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- Toxics Program scientists developed and
patented (patent no. 6,013,254) a process that uses bacteria (Aminobacterium ciceronei, strain IMB-1)
to enhance the oxidation of methyl bromide, a pesticide that is used during the fumigation of agricultural
crops. The IMB-1 strain is a naturally occurring bacteria that the scientists isolated from soils. The
oxidation process involves applying a concentrated solution of cultured IMB-1 cells to fumigated soils to
remediate residual methyl bromide. In 1998 the scientists developed a CRADA with
TriCal Inc., a fumigation company, to develop a commercial application for
this new technology.
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