Environmental Site Assessments
Dangerous Goods & Fuel Storage
Waste Classification & Management
Health & Ecological Risk Assessments
Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Auditing
Permitting & Approvals for New Projects
Environmental Impact Assessments
Environmental Liability Transfer
Risk assessment is a scientific methodology endorsed in Australia and internationally to manage site contamination.
Historically, significant financial resources have been spent on trying to clean up soil and groundwater to their original conditions. It subsequently became evident that it was often not technologically or financially realistic to attain such goals.
The process of risk assessment is intended to achieve the following objectives when assessing site contamination:
- to establish baseline risks and whether site remediation or other action is necessary;
- to determine a tolerable level of contaminants that can remain in place with adequate protection of public / environmental health;
- to enable comparison of potential health impacts of various remediation techniques; and
- to provide a consistent method of appraising and recording public health risks a sites.
Risk assessment was developed as an alternative approach to manage site contamination, and can be a qualitative and/ or quantitative estimate of human health and/or ecological risks presented by site contamination.
Due to complexity involved in assessing risk in varying environments, much care is needed to ensure fate and transport models accurately represent site conditions, toxicity data is up to date, and exposure parameters are in accordance with endorsed protocols.
Considering the above complexity it is paramount that Risk Assessors are experienced in many fields including, but not limited to geology, hydrogeology, toxicology, chemistry and biology.
Reporting of risk assessments needs to be transparent as there are numerous uncertainties associated with fate and transport models, toxicological data, and data collected in the field.
Risk assessment has enormous advantages for site owners with contamination.
Risk assessment is most useful when there is extensive soil and/or groundwater contamination. In such instances risk assessment can significantly reduce cleanup costs by deriving less stringent, site specific clean up goals.
Risk assessment can be implemented at any stage of the project. OTEK encourages development of a Conceptual Site Model (CSM) during the initial stages of a contamination assessment. The CSM links contaminants of concern and potential exposure pathways by which human and or ecological receptors may be adversely affected.
This enables OTEK to design site assessments to qualify or quantify those potential risks identified in the CSM.
This approach results in significant savings to the client as the right data is collected the first time and savings are achieved through risk reduction.
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