Increasingly, legislation embeds key concepts such as ‘Polluter Pays’, i.e. ensuring that the organisation or person responsible for causing contamination must pay for remediation or clean-up. Or, the best available technology (BAT) principle that makes it a legislative requirement for large installations to keep up with industry standards of environmental protection. Chapter 11 specifically discusses the use of the BAT approach to select appropriate mitigation for small arms shooting ranges.
Environmental management systems have been developed to aid organisations demonstrate their compliance, and implement appropriate mitigation to minimise their environmental impact. Most nations have their own versions of environmental management systems, but large organisations commonly use internationally recognised standards such as ISO14001 (Environmental Management) and 14040 (Life Cycle Assessment) that are audited by a third-party (chapter 5 and chapter 13). In addition, the system will have a continuous review process that aims to ensure that the system is a ‘living’ requirement and incorporates plan, do, check act elements [1, 2].
Environmental management for defence
Defence related activities spanning all domains are not exempt from complying with environmental law, and must therefore be managed to ensure compliance with national and international legislation. However, the benefits of environmental management for defence can extend beyond compliance; for example, these practices assist with the prevention of penalties and fines for bad practice, improve perception issues and promote best practice. In addition, remediation costs for contaminated land can be minimised and ensure that environmental risks remain low. Frequent review and updating of management systems also ensures that new legislation is identified before an activity becomes non-compliant. Under current defence policy it is essential for military activities to comply with all environmental legislation. Where compliance is not possible exemptions may be obtained for specific activities and equipment that are non-compliant as they are essential for defence.
Environmental management for military training ranges
Compliance with environmental legislation is also applicable to live-firing on military training ranges. This is especially relevant as long-term live-training with munitions can lead to cumulative environmental impacts as the heavy metals and explosives deposited are known toxins and carcinogens [3, 4]. Historically, the impact of military training with live-fire munitions has not been extensively considered and training has been carried out wherever suitable locations have been found. This means landscapes around training ranges areas can vary enormously in and between nations. For example, in Australia many training ranges are situated in areas prone to bushfires (chapter 14), while in North America training ranges may be in deserts or on Marshland (chapter 8). In the UK, where space is at a premium, training ranges may be adjacent to residential areas, and in some areas have public access. These diverse settings can make environmental management difficult and this is due to different soil types, weather and topography. However, contextualised tools such as the source-pathway-receptor (SPR) pollutant linkage concept, which describes links between contaminants and receptors in the eco-system (e.g. flora and fauna) can be used to characterise training ranges and identify where mitigation is required as described in chapter 1 and chapter 12.
Explosive residue from live-firing with munitions has been considered minimal; however, explosives such as RDX, trinitrotoluene (TNT) and nitroguanidine (NG) are frequently detected in soils at heavily used firing and impact areas [5]. It is now known that although first order detonations consume almost all the explosive material, second-order-detonations, blow-in-place and open burning may result in the deposition of significant quantities of explosives. In addition, many training ranges have hundreds or thousands of buried unexploded ordnance (UXO), which are slowly corroding and leaching their chemical contents into the environment. The behaviour of explosives in the environment is discussed in chapter 1, and chapter 6 summarises techniques for assessing the health hazards posed by munitions constituents.
Once contamination has been identified in training areas it is essential to determine the extent by soil and water sampling. However, sampling may be undertaken to varying extents of efficiency depending on resource availability and motivation. The work described in chapter 2 and chapter 3 demonstrates the importance of using a reproducible and representative sampling method in order to ensure effective characterisation of the extent of contamination on training ranges. Similar efforts have been made to identify the extent of heavy metal contamination, as discussed in chapters 9 and 10. Suitable characterisation of contamination is required to ensure that risk is not under- or overestimated, and so that suitable remediation is selected (if appropriate). Chapter 7 summarises some of the remediation techniques used by the US EPA for explosively contaminated sites. The importance of suitable and efficient analytical techniques is outlined in chapter 4.
All of the above methods have been developed based on environmental impacts from legacy explosives and munitions currently in use. Although, emerging scientific approaches are being used to design munitions that have a reduced impact on the environment (chapter 15).
A summary of contributions
| Section 1 | Identification of explosive contamination on live-fire training ranges |
| Chapter 1 | It is necessary to understand the impact of live-fire military training on the environment to ensure compliance with increasingly stringent legislation, maintain a positive public image and minimise the risk of incurring large clean-up costs. However, the impact of a particular munition product can vary significantly between sites depending on the physicochemical properties of the contaminant, the local geology and the local climate. This chapter outlines how simple conceptual models can be used to link activities to potential receptors, and summarises the computational and experimental methods used to investigate the behaviour of contaminants in the environment. |
| Principles of environmental range management (UK) | |
| I Bortone, F Coulon, W Fawcett-Hirst, M Ladyman and T Temple | |
| Chapter 2 | It is becoming increasingly important to assess military training areas for contamination in order to ensure compliance with environmental legislation, to baseline contamination and to ensure the land is safe for use, sale or redevelopment. Characterisation of the concentration of contaminants in the soil across a whole site can be daunting, and is prone to error. Poor sampling strategies can result in up to 1000% error in the results due to inappropriate choice of sampling method, area and tools. This chapter summarises the development of the multi-increment (MI) sampling approach for accurately and reproducibly characterising explosively contaminated military training ranges. The results of a comprehensive research programme into effective sampling are summarised describing how to plan and conduct site characterisation, and how to interpret the data. |
| Characterization of soils on military training ranges (USA) | |
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M R Walsh,
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