Gulf Coast Oil Spill Clean-Up Efforts

In May, Waste Management was asked by BP to assist in cleanup activities resulting from the leak at its Deepwater Horizon MC252 oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The leaking oil and gas constitutes one of the worst environmental disasters ever to affect the United States, and oil has landed across hundreds of miles of Gulf Coast shoreline. Our work is being performed under a contract with BP, and is part of the overall recovery effort led by the Unified Command Center in Mobile, Ala.

For more information about our cleanup efforts, please visit http://www.wm.com/gulfcoastoilspill

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Waste Management
• Gulf of Mexico
• Gulf Coast
• oil spill
• BP
• Deepwater Horizon
• oil cleanup
• oil disposal
• tar ball
• oily waste
• oily sand
• oily trash
• oil trash
• trash from spill
• oily booms
• waste characterization
• groundwater contamination
• Pecan Grove Landfill
• Chastang Landfill
• Springhill Regional Landfill
• Springhill Landfill
• Magnolia Landfill
• Jefferson Parish Landfill
• Central Landfill
• River Birch Landfill

[jesshez]

Waste of Management is a more appropiate Name for this company

[wastemanagement]

@OILEDVOICES To your second question about sand, we have begun to stockpile oily sand at the Springhill and Baldwin County landfills. This way, instead of putting this material in the landfill, WM is experimenting with biotreatment, composting and land farming options to clean the sand so that it can be beneficially reused.

Hope this information is helpful!

[wastemanagement]

@OILEDVOICES Once the leachate has been collected via the piping system, a sump-pump pumps it to an above ground leachate storage tank. The leachate from the storage tank is then pre-treated as necessary and sent to a publicly owned treatment works facility.

[wastemanagement]

@OILEDVOICES Thanks for clarifying your question. In the video, we discuss the piping included in any modern engineered landfill. This system is put in place at the bottom of the landfill to collect leachate, which is primarily rainwater that passes through the waste. It is almost like the water that percolates through coffee in your coffee maker...

[OILEDVOICES]

@wastemanagement importantly, the Propylene Glycol amounts that are sure to be there considering the high ppm that is showing up in samples of tar? Also, how are you handling the loads of oil-tainted sand? And, if indeed there is a Vaporizing facility operational, is that an option? Thank you for responding

[OILEDVOICES]

@wastemanagement Let me clarify my question. I was referring to your video on the process used at the LANDFILL. It says that there is a layer of pipeing underneath the landfill and that any fluids there are extracted and stored or treated. What type of facility would this be stored in? I understand the cleaning properties that the soil is capable of but if you have excess fluids comeing out of the bottom to deal with, how would you "treat" that product considering it contains the COREXIT or...

[thegorilla69]

i feel a lot better now..........thx oil barons!.....devils



[thegorilla69]

BP = BS

[wastemanagement]

@OILEDVOICES ... Alternatively, if the oil particles are too small or diffuse to remove from the water, we will add ash and clay, in order to stabilize the material into a solid form. Only then would we place this material in a landfill. To be clear, we do not place liquids of any kind in solid waste landfills.

I hope this answers your question.

Best,

Lynn

[wastemanagement]

@OILEDVOICES Thanks for posting. My name is Lynn Brown and I work with Waste Management, so I wanted to be in touch to address your comment.

To answer your question, we deal with any water that is brought in along with tar balls in one of two ways. First, if we are able to remove the tar from the water, we will send the tar materials to BP for their use. We send the water to a treatment facility...