In the first half of the 20
th century, the trains were lit with gas lamps. This gas was produced at the 'Vetgasfabriek', a gas plant based on oil heating process.
Oil and tar waste were then discharged on the soil at infiltration ditches and basins near the train station. As a result, the subsurface is highly contaminated at 3 locations, with pure tar and oil infiltration.
In 1995, the site was classified by the Dutch government as a
serious case of contamination based on spreading risks and as a priority remediation project, due to the very significant annual increase of contaminated groundwater above the intervention value. Several key stages then followed. In 2000, the remediation plan project was approved for the area and a monitoring system was implemented onsite. In 2019, the teams evaluated the metrics and entered into a new phase of the project, with the removal of the potential risks, including the mobile pure product from the former basins.
Removal of a complex pollution, a new milestone in Amersfoort’s project
One of the most important and challenging aspects of this project was
to organize and extract the tar contamination. To do so, the municipality has chosen SUEZ to conceive and implement appropriate solutions.
This part relies on 3 key steps:
- The construction of underground facilities
- The design phase, based on the organization of a construction team, to conceive the tar removal process, with associated measurement and control systems. Its mission is to choose the best and the latest technology available on the market to remove and pump the tar pollution on a larger scale
- And the execution of the process in the field.