NATURAL NEW APPROACH
TO AN OLD PROBLEM:

 


FROM LEFT: Richard Yeates, Dr Ari Ferro, Dr Roger Stuart, Steve Rock and Bill Albright

Recent WMAA seminars explored how parts of America are using trees to reduce the environmental impacts of landfills.

By staff writers

The Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) recently conducted a two week seminar tour to the five mainland States by three leading US experts in the new area of ‘phytoremediation’ – the use of trees and other plants to remediate waste and soil and water contamination. They were joined by at each seminar by a panel of Australian experts.

‘Vegetative caps can provide superior and cheaper alternatives to conventional ‘impermeable’ landfill covers in many situations.’

The objective of the seminars was to demonstrate to stakeholders in the Australian waste and remediation industries that Phytotechnologies can provide cost-effective alternatives to conventional technologies, drawing on the past decade of US experience in the use of phytotechnologies as useful environmental and waste engineering tools.

Participating organizations represented included landfill and other site owners, chemical and petroleum companies, the Environment Protection Agencies of four States, major consulting engineering companies, university and government research organizations and horticultural companies and nurseries.

Our Panel Of Experts

The panel of US Phytotechnologies experts featured at the WMAA seminars comprised:

· Mr. Steve Rock, Senior Environmental Engineer with the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) and a leading expert in the development and application of Phytotechnologies in the USA and in related regulatory issues;

· Mr. Bill Albright, Research Hydrologist at the University of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute and a leading researcher on the hydrologic impacts of waste facility design; and,

· Dr Ari Ferro, President, Phytokinetics Inc, a pioneer in the commercial implementation of phytoremediation solutions, particularly for groundwater pollution and organic toxins in soil.

During the past decade Steve Rock and Bill Albright have led the influential US ‘Alternative Covers Assessment Program’, which was established to provide definitive quantitative comparative testing of the performance of conventional, vegetative and other landfill capping systems. Since 1994 Ari Ferro has undertaken phytoremediation jobs for a wide range of US clients, including USEPA, BP and other major organizations. Between them, these three experts have been responsible for much of the testing and applying Phytotechnologies as cost effective alternatives to conventional approaches.


At each seminar the US experts were joined by a panel of Australian experts who provided commentaries on the US presentations from an Australian perspective and also presented relevant case studies and details of research and development activities underway in Australia.


The panel covered an in-depth exploration of a wide range of topics, including:


· How vegetative caps can provide superior and cheaper alternatives to conventional ‘impermeable’ landfill covers in many situations;

· How scientifically selected and located trees can act very effectively as ‘biopumps’ to control contaminated groundwater flows;

· How plant root systems can be used to degrade organic soil contaminants such as petrochemicals and to ‘hyperaccumulate’ some heavy metals such as arsenic and nickel; and,

· How to establish research and field trial programs that can authoritatively demonstrate to all stakeholders (including EPAs) whether or not Phytotechnologies are superior in particular applications and locations.


Many participants – predominantly from the Australian waste and remediation industries – declared the seminars illuminating, with a number telling WMAA officers that they were now going to consider using Phytotechnologies.


 Comments at the seminars, at bilateral meetings and via questionnaires completed by participants reveal that the seminars had a big impact. One reported that the presentations, discussion and over 400 megabytes of information provided to participants on a CD would “cut 5 years from the learning curve” for the Australian industry. Another reported that he was “genuinely excited to learn that trees could be used in a calculated and predictable way like conventional engineering technologies.”
WMAA CEO Val Southam told WMAA News that “an enthusiastic response and excellent outcomes from the seminars” had more than vindicated the Association’s judgment that this was idea whose Australian time had come.

The tour was co-sponsored by AusIndustry and 16 industrial, government and research organizations and managed by Australia’s first dedicated phytoremediation company, PhytoLink Australia.

Tour Manager Richard Yeates, who founded PhytoLink Australia three years ago with partner Dr Roger Stuart, said that he was fortunate to have been able to engage not just one, but three of the US’s top experts. He added that the quality of and response to the seminars was beyond his expectations and ‘had clearly established phytotechnologies as a credible alternative approach that Australian stakeholders could now add to their ‘toolboxes’ or further develop and adapt to Australian conditions’.

Val Southam says the very strong interest generated by the seminars had convinced her the WMAA should explore the possibilities for some of the follow-on activities that had been proposed by seminar participants. Two of these are the establishment of an Australian version of the Alternative Covers Assessment Program and the establishment of a “phytotechnologies information network”.

“Based on all the available evidence, these are initiatives that would generate a great deal of interest from, and be of benefit to, many of our members,” Ms Southam told WMAA News.