| EXAMPLE PROBLEM |
RCGRD technology has been applied at a number of field locations. Where applicable, there is no cheaper design. Enormous amounts of money have been saved. A site in Toms River, New Jersey is considered as an example where it was possible to reduce the project costs by $100,000,000. A chemical manufacturing plant encountered groundwater contamination on site and somewhat off-site in the early 1980's. An aggressive field investigation followed including the development of a model of the groundwater flow system on site. Difficulties arose when the company attempted to find a receptor for the treated water that would be generated by the proposed pump-and-treat groundwater remediation system. When all other alternatives failed the company faced the prospect of using reverse osmosis to bring the treated water to water quality standards suitable for discharge into the nearby river. The estimated cost for this alternative was $130,000,000. Faced with these enormous costs, the company elected to examine the alternative of recharging all of the treated water on site, an alternative that had been earlier rejected by consultants for the company as impossible to design. Using the optimal design approach, a successful recharge alternative was realized. The cost of this alternative was $30,000,000 with a resulting net savings of $100,000,000. The following excerpt from a letter from the Director of Environmental Affairs to RCGRD attests to the success of this least-cost-design application: "Previous investigations had indicated that recharge was not a feasible option which resulted in a substantially more expensive surface water discharge alternate. Your optimization software was able to develop a recharge option which met all the constraints imposed by the agency and public groups. Cost estimates indicate that overall project savings in the range of $100,000,000 (net present value) will be achieved by this revised remediation strategy" |