United States
                    Environmental Protection
                    Agency
Hazardous Waste Engineering
Research Laboratory
Cincinnati OH 45268
                    Research and Development
EPA/600/S2-87/087 Jan. 1988
SER&          Project  Summary

                    Compendium  of  Costs of
                    Remedial  Technologies  at
                    Hazardous Waste Sites
                    Edward C. Yang, Dirk Bauma, Linda Schwartz, and James D. Werner
                      Accurate estimates of hazardous
                    waste site remedial responses are
                    important in order to: (1) budget the
                    Superfund Response Fund,  (2) esti-
                    mate costs at specific sites,  (3) cost-
                    effectively select remedial actions, and
                    (4) effectively negotiate with private
                    response parties for private action or
                    cost recovery. Unfortunately, standard
                    engineering  costing methodologies
                    have been relatively inaccurate in
                    estimating actual response costs. This
                    is primarily due  to the uniqueness of
                    the site problems and the uncertainties
                    in  eventual  effectiveness  of  the
                    responses.
                      The purpose of the full document is
                    to record and  analyze the actual
                    expenses incurred during the remedial
                    responses for seven major  types of
                    engineering  technologies. The cost
                    documented are the  "bottomline"
                    numbers showing the ultimate cost of
                    the responses. The data supporting the
                    compendium is derived for a  series of
                    31 case studies of actual hazardous
                    waste remedial  responses.  The full
                    report also investigates the divergence
                    between actual  remedial costs and
                    estimates  from  existing  engineering
                    cost  methodologies. In addition, the
                    compendium lists  the major factors
                    that  cause the  costs' movements.
                    Because of the  scope of the report
                    coverage and the small sample size, the
                    data  provided are to be viewed as
                    ' 'bench marks"  for estimating future
                    reponse costs.  Users are urged to
                    examine the specific site conditions
                    underlying the reported costs by con-
sulting the case studies from which
these estimates are derived.
  This Project Summary was devel-
oped by EPA'3 Hazardous  Waste
Engineering Research Laboratory. Cin-
cinnati, OH, to announce key findings
of the research project that is fully
documented in a separate report of the
same title (see Project Report ordering
information at back}.


Introduction
  Response cost information is critical to
several aspects of implementation of the
Comprehensive Environmental  Re-
sponse, Compensation and Liability Act
of 1980 (CERCLA), known as Superfund.
These aspects  include:

• Selecting cost-effective response
  alternatives
• Documenting  reasonable costs  for
  cost recovery
• Budgeting for fund balancing

The purpose of the Cost Compendium is
to summarize  existing information  for
these uses. Actual expenditures  and
estimated costs are both given to assem-
ble data from all available sources into
one data base. The immediate use of this
centralized source of cost information is
to provide consistency in various site-
specific costing tasks such as: remedial
alternative  costing  as required in the
Feasibility Study Guidance Document
(FSGD), and budgeting or immediate and
planned removals. The full compendium
should be viewed as the first installment

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of an outgoing data base, which will be
updated periodically as more cost infor-
mation  becomes  available  from com-
pleted Superfund  responses. Cost data
in the compendium are organized accord-
ing  to related  technologies, such as
"Surface Water Controls," and "Ground
Water Controls." The  costs given are for
technologies that  have been most com-
monly used at  uncontrolled hazardous
waste sites, although some  rarely used
technologies are given because  of the
paucity of data. Typically, however, the
number of estimates and the depth of
background  information  are often pro-
portional to the frequency of use of the
technology. In  addition to the organiza-
tion of cost data  according  to  technol-
ogies, several other features of this cost
compendium merit highlighting.

Discussion
Actual  Expenditures Versus
Estimates
  Most available cost information is from
engineering estimates. Few such esti-
mates have been  field tested, however.
Preliminary  comparison  of  these esti-
mates  with actual expenditures  has
shown significant differences  in many
cases. Since merging these two types of
data would be misleading to the reader,
the compendium separates, ex ante,
engineering  estimates  from  actually
observed expenditures. Although actual
expenditure data, which  has been
"ground truthed," are generally  more
reliable than estimated  cost data, esti-
mates are useful  because they broaden
the  range of site charcteristics  and
technical circumstances  for  which costs
are  available.  The factors  that  were
included in deriving the cost estimates
may reflect a situation that more closely
parallels the intended use of the cost data
than  any of the situations for  which
actual expenditure data are available.

Focus on Unit-Cost
  Data are given  in a unit-cost form, in
terms of dollars per unit operation, such
as cost per square foot of slurry wall, or
cost per gallon of treated water. Since
the units used are important, consider-
ation was given to the selection to ensure
that they were useful and/or standard-
ized throughout  the  industry.  English
measure only is used  for simplicity.
These  unit costs typically  include all
related costs such as  material, labor, and
equipment and  other   capital  costs.
Operation and labor costs are given when
they are applicable and available.
Inclusion of Summary and Raw
Data
  The full compendium  organizes cost
data into two levels: (1)  summary data,
and (2)  raw data. The first level gives
summary data such as range, and when
possible, mean and standard error. This
summation of the raw data should  be
used only for very general cost screening
and budgeting, since the wide ranges of
the data  presented, and the  lack  of
background  explanation  on this  level
render it  unsuitable  for  more  specific
costing  purposes.  Such specific  cost
estimation should use raw data, on the
second level, which provides more detail
on the data compilation.  This detail can
be used for matching to the circumstan-
ces at the site for which it is to be used.
The user should compare the site circum-
stances  to the factors given in the raw
data to estimate the effect of these
factors on the estimated cost.


Factors  Found to Affect Costs
  A fundamental concept of estimating
costs of technology  is that a variety of
factors influence these costs. The com-
pendium discusses these factors for each
technology. This brief discussion of the
effects  of these  factors  reflects the
descriptive detail  given  for  each  data
source  in the table of  raw data. The
essential  site characteristics for actual
expenditure data are typically described.
These site characteristics are drawn from
a  hypothetical site scenario  that  is
usually established for making necessary
assumptions for estimating  costs. The
level of detail available  for actual site
characteristics and  hypothetical site
scenarios varied widely.


Constant 1982 Dollars
  Since the source  data, on which the
compendium is based,  originated  in
different years between 1975 and 1982,
all costs were indexed to constant  1982
dollars  using the Engineering  News
Record  (ENR)  construction cost  index.
This index reflects  the weighted cost
trend of common labor (74%), structural
steel (15%), lumber (9%), and  portland
cement (2%). Data from 1983 documents
were not deflated to  1982 dollars for two
reasons. First, most of the costs for 1983
were actually incurred in 1982 or esti-
mated  for 1982  dollars.  Second, the
change in the ENR index between  1982
and 1983 is expected to be very small.
Cost of Health and Safety
Protection
  One of the key factors affecting the
costs of responses at uncontrolled sites
is the level of protection for health and
safety of on-site workers. The level of
hazard determines the type of protective
measures the workers must take, which
ultimately  affects the  cost  of  the
response. Many of the data sources used
in the compendium, however, did not
explicitly note health  and  safety con-
cerns. The cost data for  actual expen-
ditures include whatever protective
measures were taken at the site. Often,
however, the available information on
the response action did not fully describe
the protective measures. This defect may
be corrected by further research.  Health
and safety assumptions for estimates are
usually less clear than expenditures. In
only one case did the estimator explicitly
consider the  cost effect  of  various
protective measures.
  SCS Engineers recently completed a
study on the cost of health and safety
protection for  the U.S.  Environmental
Protection Agency's Office of Research
and Development.  Six  cleanup firms
were asked to  bid  on  six hypothetical
uncontrolled site  scenarios with  five
levels  of personal  protection  for the
study. First the results, presented in the
full compendium, are from a final draft
version  of  the  SCS report. Additional
changes  may be made to  the  results.
Second,  the validity  of the   results
depends  on how seriously  the bidders
took the  hypothetical scenarios  and
whether  the bidders  were neutral in
providing the estimates (i.e., free from
motives  that  may misrepresent the
costs).

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     Edward C. Yang. Dirk Bauma. Linda Schwartz, and James D. Werner are with
       the Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC 20036.
     Douglas Ammon is the EPA Project Officer (see below).
     The complete report, entitled "Compendium of Costs of Remedial Technologies
       at Hazardous Waste Sites," (Order No. PB 88-113  477/AS; Cost: $25.95,
       subject to change) will be available only from:
            National Technical Information Service
            5285 Port Royal Road
            Springfield,  VA 22161
            Telephone: 703-487-4650
     For information Donald Satining can be contacted at:
            Hazardous Waste Engineering Research Laboratory
            U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
            Cincinnati, OH 45268
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Center for Environmental Research
Information
Cincinnati OH 45268
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use S300

EPA/600/S2-87/087
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