Site History
The former Pianoforte factory site was located to the south of the village of Roade in Northamptonshire. The site was closed in 2010. The site at closure covered over 11 hectares, consisting of a range of offices, warehouses and workshops.
The site was being developed for residential purposes.
Within part of the site was the former Anodising and Plating Shop. A number of investigative trial pits were excavated which showed that the underlying soils were impacted with heavy metal and cyanide contamination, derived from former plating activities. The prime contaminant of concern was identified to be hexavalent chromium (Cr VI). Cr (VI) typically exists in an anionic form and is consequently very soluble and mobile within groundwater.
Remediation Strategy
The remediation works comprised of three distinct stages:
Stage 1 – Treatment of the residual surface contamination on the plating shop floor and walls
Stage 2 – Installation of a permeable reactive barrier system to address contaminated groundwater potentially migrating from the former Plating Shop Area and
Stage 3 – Treatment of the source contamination in the Former Plating Shop Area (predominantly contaminated soils).
Envirotreat used ChromSorb, an E-Clay specifically designed to address anionic heavy metals
