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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