TtEC successfully remediated and restored 5,000 acres of rice fields and subsurface soils contaminated by light crude oil, overcoming a 100-year flood event to complete the project in just one year. In the course of drilling an oil exploration well in northern Italy, Agip, S.p.A. (Agip) encountered a high-pressure zone that resulted in a blowout. The blowout caused four million gallons of light crude oil, as well as natural gas, to spew to heights of 500 feet for a 36-hour period. The oil mixed with up to two inches of rain that fell intermittently through the 36-hour blowout and settled on the rice fields and irrigation canals surrounding the oil well. The oil had infiltrated into the underlying sand and gravel soils and, ultimately, to the water table aquifer.

TtEC restored these fields to rice production through an integrated bioremediation program. TtEC designed, constructed, and implemented an aggressive remedial program, utilizing various forms of bioremediation including land farming, controlled environment biopiles, bioventing, and bioslurping. This project involved the most sophisticated and largest ex-situ biopiles in the world and also required the mobilization of a large number of tractors for land farming. Tetra Tech hired the same local farmers whose fields were damaged by the blowout as subcontractors to plow and fertilize the fields, providing an innovative, low cost solution to land farming.

Project Highlights

• Successfully remediated and restored for cultivation 92% of rice fields (approximately 5,000 acres) in one year.
• Executed remediation activities under the most adverse weather conditions (i.e., 100-year flood, November-December 1994).
• Employed an innovative, low cost solution to land farming by hiring the same local farmers whose fields were damaged by the blowout as subcontractors to plow and fertilize the fields.