Pump & treat is one of the oldest remediation techniques.  Some older refineries installed product collection sumps as far back as the early 1900s.  This cleanup method is still quite prevalent today, but one really must question why?

P&T is often used under the perception that it is an effective free product removal technique.  In reality for the majority of cases, it is not at all an effective remediation technique.  Its ability to remediate aquifers has been called into question by top scientists since the late 1980s.  Like in oil reservoirs, a significant fraction of oil is unrecoverable using hydraulics.  AVI's advanced analysis work has shown at many sites that it is unusual to be able to recover more than 10% of the mass in-place.  The unrecoverable 90% presents the same risk/liability context as was present before recovery (in the majority of cases).

When properly designed, P&T is effective at one thing only: containment.  But, because the majority of legacy LNAPL plumes are stable (assuming years in the ground & no new inputs), containment is already present naturally.

AVI has developed a number of techniques to:          a) Estimate volume in-place; b) Estimate recoverable fractions; c) Estimate costs over time;  d) Estimate the net benefit of P&T; e) and a variety of other inter-related technical analyses.  All of these tools lead to highly refined optimization and a reduction in non-beneficial expenditures.