UT Researchers Help Nation Assess, Revitalize "Brownfields"

by David Brill

To drivers streaking by on I-40, Knoxville's 566-acre CenterCity Business Park may not look like much--at least not at the moment.

In fact, the area comprises dozens of decaying structures, weed-choked vacant lots, and acres marred by contamination. Together, these blighted tracts and the unused or underutilized properties that adjoin them have earned the designation "brownfields."

Researchers from The University of Tennessee's (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) are determined to reverse this cycle of urban decline through participation in initiatives aimed at returning brownfields to productive use.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has selected Knoxville to receive one of 50 grants through its Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative. The EPA grant, valued at $200,000, will, in the words of Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, "assist the city in recycling its abandoned and often conta- minated inner-city industrial properties."

The EPA received more than 150 applications for the grants, which, according to Matt Robbins, EPA's Region 4 "brownfields" coordinator, reflects the level of interest in the initiative.

The two-year grant, which was awarded in 1995, has tapped the resources of UT, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville Community Development Bank, Knox County Development Corporation, and the Greater Knoxville Chamber of Commerce, as well as local community organizations.

The area targeted by the grant includes 200 acres that have been identified as potentially suitable for redevelopment and use.

WMREI Policy Director Jack Barkenbus heads up the project's Environmental Remediation Strategy Team, which will help locate contaminated sites within the CenterCity Park boundary, determine the extent and nature of contamination, and identify treatment options.

Meanwhile, WMREI Research Leader Mary English serves on the project's Redevelopment Strategy Team, which is studying development alternatives for the park, including the roles of Knoxville's economic-development agencies and a plan for the park's redevelopment and use.

Another project team is creating a positive identity and developing a marketing strategy for the park, while another is exploring ways to bolster community support and involvement, both for residents living in or near the park as well as entrepreneurs who might consider establishing businesses there.

Yet another project team is exploring opportunities for recruitment and training of

a local workforce to support growth and development of new businesses.

This past July, in a related project, English organized and convened a statewide workshop to explore the future of our nation's brownfields, which number in the thousands. The conference, hosted by WMREI, drew 30 urban planners, economic-development specialists, and regulators from federal, state, and local government and the private sector.

Workshop participants addressed issues associated with cleanup and future use of brownfields and discussed a draft report titled "The Cleanup and Reuse of Brownfields: Key Issues and Policy Choices." English authored the report with the help of graduate research assistant James Rice.

The report examines some key legal, logistical, and economic issues that must be resolved before brownfields in Knoxville and other U.S. cities can be returned to use. Among them are concerns over liability.

"Prospective developers need assurance that they will not assume unlimited liability for cleaning up contamination they had nothing to do with," English says.

Another issue centers on economic incentives. Knoxville, like other cities in the Southeast, possesses large tracts of undeveloped lands situated outside the city's central zone. These "greenfields," as they are called, often pose a more inviting investment opportunity for businesses.

To reverse this trend, urban redevelopers may seek incentives in the form of state and local community-development grants and loans and tax breaks.

"What's more, we need to determine how clean these sites need to be to accommodate various future uses," English says.

Lands slated for future industrial use may be remediated to levels sufficient to remove exposure risks to workers and the surrounding community but not so rigorous and costly as to discourage prospective buyers.

"If we're going to keep these properties affordable for redevelopers, they can't all be cleaned up to background levels; the costs would be prohibitive," English says.

It's a foregone conclusion, for instance, that some brownfields that were former industrial sites will not be used for kids' playgrounds.

"But we need to ensure that future uses don't create new environmental problems, in effect layering new contamination on top of the old," English says.r

For more information, contact Mary English, UT, WMREI, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

UT's Clean Products Center Awarded New EPA Grants

by Kris Christen

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has earmarked almost $1 million in new grants for The University of Tennessee's (UT's) Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT), an affiliate of UT's Waste Management Research and Education Institute.

CCPCT will use the three new grants to investigate more environmentally sound technologies for use in the electronics and printing industries.

All three grants fall under the EPA's Design for the Environment (DfE) program, created in 1991 to encourage businesses to incorporate environmental considerations into their decision-making processes.

Through the DfE program, businesses are provided with the information they need to make environmentally informed choices in the design and manufacture of their products.

Results from past DfE research projects can be found on the DfE program's homepage at http://es.inel.gov/dfe.

The recent CCPCT grants include the following:

n CCPCT will evaluate the new flat-panel-display (FPD) technologies increasingly being used in the electronics industry. Researchers hope to determine whether these technologies are more environmentally benign than the tried-and-true cathode ray tubes (CRTs), which currently dominate the market.

While it's generally believed that FPDs are advantageous from an environmental standpoint because they are more energy efficient during use, the life-cycle environmental benefits--or costs--of FPDs are not known, says Lori Kincaid, CCPCT's project manager and principal investigator on the FPD project.

Meanwhile, CRTs contain lead, which is used to cover the computer screen, Kincaid says. The lead protects consumers from radiation during the computer's use, but it also poses a disposal hazard as well as a potential occupational hazard for those working with the glass.

n Through a second DfE grant, CCPCT will evaluate the environmental benefits of alternative surface-finishing techniques for printed wiring boards (PWBs). In many cases, the technological push toward alternative techniques arises from consumer demand for smaller, more portable electronic devices that are as functional as their older, more cumbersome counterparts. The researchers' goal is to determine what advantages the newer PWB technologies pose over older ones.

CCPCT's Jack Geibig, who serves as co-principal investigator with Mary Swanson on this project, says that surface finishing serves two functions: The first involves aesthetics, and the second involves creation of a receptive, solderable surface for mounting tiny electronic components.

The most commonly used technologies pose potential health and environmental risks because of the use of cyanide and lead. They also generate excess solder, which has to be collected and recycled.

Newer technologies completely eliminate cyanide and lead from the manufacturing stage and generate less hazardous waste as a result. In addition, the manufacturing costs of using them may prove less expensive.

"PWBs for computers are very expensive, and because computer manufacturers want to market an attractive-looking board, they may be inclined to stick with the older technologies," Geibig says. "But if the board is installed inside a small electronic device like a cellular phone, surface solderability becomes

a more-important criterion to the manufacturer than how it looks. This period of advancing technology poses an opportunity for wider use of the newer, more environmentally benign technologies."

In a lot of cases, Geibig says, industries know that these newer technologies pose fewer environmental problems and that they perform just as well as the old ones.

"But they need solid evidence to prove it to management and/or customers before they can implement change," he says.

n Through the third new EPA grant, CCPCT will study the performance and environmental benefits of substitute technologies for applying inks during the gravure printing process.

Currently, when a gravure printing press is running, two metal cylinders roll a ream of paper between them. The bottom printing cylinder simultaneously rolls through an open well of ink where the ink adheres to a printing plate image and is subsequently applied to the paper. In the process toxic emissions from ink solvents are released into the air as they evaporate.

CCPCT research will analyze an alternative technology that uses a totally enclosed inking system, which is expected to significantly reduce hazardous emissions.

The ultimate goal of the three CCPCT projects, Kincaid says, is to make U.S. companies more competitive in the global marketplace by giving them the information they need to put environmental considerations into the day-to-day decision-making process.r

For more information, contact Lori Kincaid or Jack Geibig, UT, CCPCT, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

No Burgers at This Drive-Through

Tennessee's first permanent household hazardous waste facility will help residents dispose of hazardous wastes responsibly.

by Kris Christen

Until recently, many residents of Knoxville, Tennessee, either let their toxic household wastes gather dust in the corner of the garage or opted to dump them in the nearest storm sewer or vacant lot.

The reason: Landfills don't accept paint thinner, antifreeze, motor oil, and a host of other toxic chemicals produced by a household. Making matters worse, private toxic waste handlers often charge hefty fees to dispose of such wastes.

For instance, it can cost $800 or more to dispose of a 55-gallon drum of pesticides, depending on the chemicals they contain. These and other toxic household wastes make up about 1 percent of the overall waste stream.

Though it represents a relatively small portion of the overall waste stream, toxic household waste poses significant risks to the environment and human health.

Knoxville hopes to facilitate the disposal of such dangerous chemicals through the creation of a household hazardous waste collection center that is expected to be completed in spring of 1997. It will be the first of its kind in Tennessee.

The city qualified for a $500,000 funding grant through the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), which will finance the planning, design, and construction phases of the project.

TDEC also offered similar grants to Chattanooga, Memphis, and Nashville through the Solid Waste Management Act of 1991. This act, which the Waste Management Research and Education Institute had a major hand in crafting, established "a statewide program for keeping household hazardous wastes out of the waste stream and disposing of them safely."

So far, however, only Knoxville and Chattanooga have applied for and received these grants, says Paul Evan Davis, director of TDEC's Solid Waste Division.

"Knoxville is taking a positive step forward with the implementation of a permanent facility for residents to dispose of their household hazardous waste," Davis says.

According to Ed Umbach, manager of Knoxville's solid waste division, the timing was perfect.

"This collection center fits in very well with reconstruction and expansion plans already underway for our existing transfer station," he says.

The TDEC grant will cover most of the costs, but the city expects to pitch in an additional $50,000 to $100,000 to help complete the center.

This new collection center is being added onto an existing facility, transforming it into a multi-purpose solid-waste disposal center.

Once in operation, the collection center will replace the once-a-year collection drives--known as toxic-waste "roundups"--the city organized in the past to gather hazardous household wastes. In the process, it will make disposal more convenient and accessible for residents.

"Up until now, the only way folks could properly dispose of such wastes was through one-day collections, which occurred infrequently," Umbach says. "In fact, Knoxville has had only three to four over the past five years."

During these one-day roundups, between 2,000 and 3,000 vehicles showed up, Umbach says, dropping off thousands of tons of toxic material.

"The level of participation in these roundups clearly indicated the need for a more convenient means of disposing of these wastes."

The new facility will be owned and operated by Knoxville proper, with the county contributing funds to help run the center. This will allow the center to accept waste from county as well as city residents.

After it opens, a family will be

able to simply pull up to a covered drive-through at the transfer station, where family members will be asked to confirm their city or county residency. Residents will not be charged for disposal of the wastes.

"We will even unload their vehicle for them," Umbach says. "All told, it shouldn't take the resident more than five minutes to pull in, unload, and be gone."

From there, center employees will take the material to a processing area, where it will be separated into such categories as acids, bases, latex paints, fuels, oil, and pesticides.

Afterwards, it'll be properly packaged and prepared for recycling or hazardous waste disposal, depending on the material.

For example, good, clean, reusable products such as auto fluids and household cleaners that haven't passed their expiration dates will be displayed on shelves in an area resembling a small hardware store. Individuals will be able to come in and take what they can use.

On a larger scale, Umbach says, the center hopes to ease its dis- posal costs by batching latex paints into several different colors, pouring them into five-gallon buckets, and redistributing the paint to low- income housing developments, jails, county schools, and Knox County's nonprofit agencies for reuse.

Whatever can't be reused or recycled will be transferred to a water-treatment plant or collected, packed into drums, and shipped to a national contractor for disposal in a hazardous-waste landfill.

Once the facility opens next spring, it's likely that Knox County residents will take full advantage of it. In fact, Umbach says that his office receives about 100 phone calls per month from folks wondering what to do with a half-empty can of Draino, paint, or pesticide.

The city will promote the new service through public-speaking engagements at civic club meetings and by approaching realtors, urging them to make home owners aware of the collection center.

"Most people keep this stuff in their garages, and it accumulates and accumulates," Umbach says. "It's when they get ready to move that they end up dumping it down the drain or out in the yard."

The service will initially only be offered to individual households in Knox County. Within the first couple of years, the city hopes to extend the service to small businesses as well.

"But first we want to see what kind of a response we're going to get, how we're handling it, and what our costs will be," Umbach says.

Knoxville estimates that its operating costs for the center will run around $160,000 a year.r

For more information, contact Ed Umbach, City of Knoxville Solid Waste, 400 Main St., Suite 578, Knoxville, TN 37901, or call 423-215-2921.

New Technology Meets Old Threat

A CD-ROM developed by UT and ORNL researchers may ensure public safety during U.S. disposal of its aging chemical weapons.

by Kris Christen

In a bustling New York City subway car, a poisonous plume begins to seep from an abandoned duffel bag under one of the seats. People collapse, overcome by the toxic gas.

As the subway car slides to a halt at the next station, the doors open, releasing the poisonous fumes. More victims fall to the platform. Chaos erupts, as people fight their way to the exits.

Though far-fetched, the scene is eerily reminiscent of Tokyo's subway attack in March 1995, in which terrorists released poisonous nerve gas at five locations, killing 10 and injuring scores more.

Had this occurred in the United States, it's likely that many more would have died, says John Sorensen, a researcher in the Disaster Man- agement and Mitigation Group of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The reason: lack of emergency response capability and preparedness.

The chance is haltingly small that terrorists would unleash a chemical weapon in a New York subway, as is the risk that something major will go awry as the United States begins to carry out plans to incinerate some 30,600 tons of aging chemical weapons. But the risk exists nonetheless.

These weapons are stockpiled at eight army installations around the country, including those at Hermi- ston, Oregon; Tooele, Utah; Pueblo, Colorado; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Anniston, Alabama; Edgewood, Maryland; Newport, Indiana; and Richmond, Kentucky.

In 1988, when the United States decided to incinerate the weapons, the communities surrounding these incineration sites were found to be remarkably unprepared for contending with an accidental release of a chemical agent.

To bolster preparedness among these communities' emergency planners and responders, researchers at The University of Tennessee's (UT's) Pellissippi Research Institute (PRI) have helped ORNL scientists develop a CD-ROM-based training program. PRI is a unit of UT's Energy, Environment, and Resources Center.

The research team has completed the Command and Control disc, the first of seven CDs that will make up the Emergency Planner's Companion Series. This first disc provides users with an overview of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), a program developed to complement the army's Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program.

While the latter program seeks to destroy the weapons, the former is responsible for seeing that communities are ready to respond if something goes wrong in the process.

According to PRI researcher Wolfgang Naegeli, who serves as technical advisor on the project, the goal of the CD-ROM training series is to provide simple, accessible guidance to the planners who devise emergency response strategies and train personnel.

"This planning involves identifying who will be in charge of overall response, who will handle specific response activities, and how various agencies and jurisdictions will coordinate their efforts," says PRI's Barry Shumpert, the project's technical leader who shaped the disc's content. "These things must be worked out beforehand if response is to be speedy and effective."

Other PRI researchers involved in the project include programming specialist Allen Smith; Ed Lapsa, who played a key role in trouble shooting; and Alice Pate, who lent graphic support. ORNL staffers Cynthia Coomer and Barbara Vogt also supported the effort.

In a real sense, the CD-ROM training program grew from limitations of more traditional instructional materials. In fact, before the idea for the CD-ROM series was conceived, Sorensen's group at ORNL had developed a 400-page document targeting emergency planners.

"The document was published in June 1994, but it became clearer and clearer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the planners weren't comprehending it, which meant they weren't able to implement it effectively," Sorensen says, "and that's why we initiated the CD-ROM program."

According to PRI's Philip Wolff, who serves as project leader for the first disc in the series, it didn't take researchers long to select the CD-ROM format as the best medium for the training program.

One key advantage that the CD has over the old paper manuals, Wolff says, is its search function.

"You can search a workbook only with your thumb, which can be a frustrating and time-consuming venture," he says. "On a CD, you can type in any word or phrase, and it will immediately search through the entire guide or a single chapter and find what you're looking for."

CDs are also much cheaper than workbooks to reproduce. Wolff estimates the reproduction cost of paper manuals at around $30 to $40 per copy, whereas a CD costs only about $5 to $7 to reproduce.

To bring the cost down even further in the future, the group hopes to provide updates via the Internet.

Despite the clear advantages of electronic versus paper training guides, the researchers couldn't take anything for granted, mainly because many of the local emergency responders are not particularly savvy when it comes to operating computers.

In fact, Sorensen insists that during one practice session, some participants had to be taught the right way to insert a CD into their computer drives.

To enhance the program's ease of use, developers installed a "live" tutor to guide users through the disc's lessons. And to give the CD an authentic home-town feel and make it more engaging for trainees, researchers used images of actual people and scenes from the eight incineration sites in piecing together the program.

Though emergency responders began using the training disc in September, it's clearly much too early to assess its effectiveness. In fact, the only true test of the training program's efficiency would be an actual chemical-weapon emergency, something all involved hope never occurs.

However, based on early feedback he's received, PRI Director Don Alvic maintains that state and local planners have been suitably impressed with the technical capabilities of the CD-ROM format. Maybe even a little too impressed, at least initially.

He claims that some trainees were so bedazzled by the medium's flashiness and vast menu of capabilities that they weren't adequately focused on the message.

"The gee-whiz, gosh, golly stuff is neat in and of itself, but now they're starting to look at the actual materials, and they're responding to it very favorably," Alvic says.

Among the technical hurdles the team had to surmount in producing the training program, the most challenging involved creating a CD program that would work properly on the PCs normally found in the state and county offices near the incineration sites.

"We designed everything on the Macintosh because it's the preferred platform when you're dealing with pictures or videos," Wolff says, "but then we had to change much of the coding so that the program would also run on nearly all PCs."

In other words, the researchers had to create a disc that would run using all the major flavors of Windows--Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and Windows NT.

"The behaviors on the PC are very different when it comes to these operating systems, and what works on one doesn't always work on the others," Wolff says. "Ultimately, however, we were able to devise a program that would function on most systems."

All in all, the development and production costs for the first CD stand at around $500,000, Sorensen says. Costs of subsequent CDs are expected to decline to between $100,000 and $150,000.

"Development of computer-based training is initially two to three times more expensive than the traditional paper manuals and workbooks," Sorensen says, "but if you look at the life-cycle costs, they are dramatically cheaper."

The reason: Use of interactive CDs that come complete with on-screen instructors saves emergency-response planners the time and expense of hiring a trainer every time a new recruit joins the team.

Indeed, new personnel simply sit down in front of a computer and

work their way through the CD at their own speed.

Though similar in format, the remaining six discs in the series--which will cover such themes as public education, protective action, communications systems, decontamination, and emergency medical support--will be much more interactive than the first one.

According to Sorensen, subsequent discs may actually support simulation-type exercises involving numerous players who will interact through a central server. In the simulation, as in an actual emergency, one player's decisions will influence the actions of another.

"This could dramatically reduce the cost of staging training exercises," Sorensen says, "because in normal exercises, people have to travel to a central location."

Though the CSEPP discs have not been widely circulated, they have already begun attracting considerable attention.

In fact, Sorensen's group has re- ceived requests from New York's transit system, which is interested in helping law-enforcement officials and emergency responders recognize the signs and symptoms associated with exposure to a chemical agent.

Sorensen sees an even wider market for the CD-ROM training series, expecting that it will help emergency planners and responders mobilize in response to other emergencies, including floods, earthquakes, or tanker spills.

"About 95 percent of the information on these CDs is generic and applicable to any type of hazard," Sorensen says. "With some minor editing, they could be utilized in responding to any large-scale dis- aster."

For more information, contact Philip Wolff, UT, Pellissippi Research Institute, 10521 Research Dr., Suite 100, Knoxville, TN 37932, or call 865-974-8410, or contact John Sorensen, Energy Division, ORNL, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6206, or call 423-576-2716.

CEB Moves to UT Campus

In October, the Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB), the technical research arm of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute, moved from its former headquarters near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the newly opened Science and Engineering Building on the Knoxville campus of The University of Tennessee.

According to CEB Director Gary Sayler, the move poses increased opportunity for collaboration with a number of campus departments, including ecology; chemical, civil, and environmental engineering; microbiology; geology; and life sciences.

"There's no substitute for being able to engage a fellow faculty member on a daily basis in the hallway, at a seminar, or over coffee," Sayler says. "We believe this more immediate contact will greatly stimulate research interactions on all fronts."

While Sayler is inclined to emphasize the benefits that will result from the move, he acknowledges one liability. Several of CEB's senior research staffers are awaiting office space in the new facility. For the time being their desks occupy space in the hallways.

"Other than that," Sayler says, "the move went very smoothly, mainly because it was planned so thoroughly by our staff."

For more information, contact Gary Sayler, UT, CEB, 676 Dabney Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-1605 or call 865-974-8080.