Risk Management Strategies
The question “How clean is clean?” has been asked for more than twenty years but there is still disagreement over the answer. Simplistic regulations, the complexities of ecological interactions, and sometimes overriding emotional responses on the part of regulators or the public can drive remedial actions beyond the point strictly necessary to protect human health and the environment.
AMEC’s risk assessment and brownfield strategy specialists:
- Understand the basis for stringent soil and groundwater clean-up standards and can use the underlying principles driving these standards to develop more favourable remediation goals
- Perform realistic, appropriately scaled risk assessment taking into account site-specific conditions that may mitigate potential exposure and risk
- Consider fate and transport to understand whether contaminant impacts are actually available to human or ecological receptors, and
- Work with planners and developers to understand the balance between the possible benefits of risk reduction and the future uses for the property.
Many historical brownfield sites have been idle and underutilized for many years, and remediation and redevelopment costs may have been developed many years ago and have become accepted by everyone involved. AMEC’s risk management tools and strategies can provide these properties with new cost-benefit analysis that often allow seemingly uneconomical properties to become successful new ventures.