CALLISON: What is the relationship between LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)and Southern California Edison in regards to underground dynamic stripping? What was it like working with them?

WEIDNER: Well, I believe that Southern California Edison and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have a unique relationship. It’s a relationship between a company that really is interested in doing the right thing environmentally. We got in contact with Lawrence Livermore and have come to know and appreciate a group of very talented scientists.

And we took off from their original process and tried to apply it with a whole new set of chemicals. It’s been very interesting. The Livermore scientists are incredible people. Very knowledgeable and really helped us, along with our own people who had a long history with steam, which was the interesting thing.... that’s lousy. I’m getting way too long.

CALLISON: Lets try again.

WEIDNER: I think that the relationship between Southern California Edison and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is really unique. We’ve taken some top-flight scientists who used to make bombs, obviously we would rather see them doing the things that we are involved in, and teamed them up, their knowledge and experience, with Southern California Edison which has a very long history in making steam in a whole different way. We construct and operate steam power plants. So this was something we know about, steam, something that was sort of a new area and between the two organizations, I think we’ve come up with a fantastic outcome.

CALLISON: Would it be helpful for groups if the government was willing to give some sort of financial backing in cleaning up these superfund sites?

WEIDNER: Obviously. I mean, not necessarily for Edison. I don’t know how you want to pose this question. But obviously any company that’s got an environmental problem would love to have some monetary help.

As you probably know we, like any other public company, have our basically, what we call our contingent liabilities. You know the downside to our company is, in term of stock and that area, is really related to environmental problems. One of the areas. So any time we can get some help that’s certainly... anybody would want to have that, because once you remove the liabilities, your company from an economic standpoint, looks healthier, from a financial standpoint. So I don’t know how you want to pose that question.

CALLISON: Would you mind making it clear what Livermore’s position was and what your, Southern California Edison, was as a group project.

WEIDNER: The Visalia Pole Yard Steam Remediation project, as we call it, was a project done between Southern California Edison, who’s really, we’re the prime designer, we did all the regulatory interface, but we had the scientific background that we brought in from Livermore. They were able to help us with the scientific aspects, the conceptual design, how we would attack the problem based on their experience and their knowledge on the chemicals that we have and how they would react to steam. So they’re really the scientific arm of this and Edison obviously was the financial part of it and did virtually all the design and managed operation of the project.

CALLISON: Can you explain how dynamic underground stripping works?

WEIDNER: Very simply, dynamic underground stripping is the introduction of steam into the subsurface. Once you introduce the steam, it effectively lowers the solubility of these chemicals, these so-called “DNAPLs”, or dense, non aqueous liquids, it lowers their solubility... I’m sorry, wrong. It lowers their viscosity and increases their solubility.

Dynamic underground stripping is essentially the introduction of steam into the subsurface which reduces the viscosity, or the resistence to flow, it increases the solubility of these chemicals - it’s a whole group of chemicals so-called dense, non-aqueous phase liquids or DNAPLs is what they’re called, those two primary...hold it.

There’s so much I need to throw in and try to keep it simple as well.

Dynamic underground stripping is essentially the introduction of steam into the subsurface. The steam lowers the viscosity of the chemicals we are interested in, increases their solubility along with many other factors volultation because of the heat, all of these factors together basically allow us to accelerate the removal of the chemical from the ground. We have a whole network of wells, where after we’ve introduced the steam, we actually pull the hot water and the chemicals out of the ground.

That’s different obviously in terms of elevating the temperature. Pump and treat is a very slow process. Dynamic underground stripping has accelerated the removal of the chemicals a thousand fold.

CALLISON: Can you explain what pump and treat is?

WEIDNER: Pump and treat is simply the pumping of the contaminated water out of the ground, bringing it to the surface, and the discharge of the treated water. The problem with pump and treat is that it’s very slow. We were only bringing out on the order of a pound a day of contaminate before we started the steam process. At the height of the steam process we were bringing a thousands of pounds per day out of the ground.

CALLISON: What is a typical day working with this process?

WEIDNER: A typical day at the pole yard, isn’t terribly typical. First of all, it’s a twenty four hour operation. Edison did make the decision to automate a lot of the operation and so that helps somewhat. But we’re still forced to have people. We have boilers going twenty four hours a day. We have high temperatures, high pressures, we have safety issues. So it’s a constant monitoring of the operation.

We have a computer operation system that shows us all of the different systems: what’s going on, what might be having a problems, etcetera, so we will be able to react quickly to it. So a typical day is really monitoring. Hopefully if we’ve designed well, really a typical day will not be too busy. Mainly just monitoring.

But we still have to change certain operations at times. The problem with this is looking at information, subsurface information, and then as part of the plant managers we have to decide, ok, what impact are we having on the subsurface? Are we doing, are we hitting the right area? So we have to make changes, management changes in terms of what we’re doing.

So that’s, those are the two areas. We have the monitoring process, and then we have the monitoring of the information that we are gathering and making decisions in how we are going to change or maintain the operation.

CALLISON: Why is this technology important?

WEIDNER: As I was saying earlier, there is a whole class of chemicals, the so called dense non-aqueous phase liquids, which are, have proven over the past decades to be incredibly difficult to remove from the ground and from the ground water. In fact, the sciences have basically, before steam, have concluded that there really was no effective way to remove these chemicals. And we were really looking at sort of a band aid approach to maintain control and we’ll just have to live with the on-going control and that’s the best they felt they could do.

Obviously, dynamic underground stripping has changed all of that with removals, with accelerated removals a thousand fold. So we now believe that we can go back to the sites and effectively clean them up. And hopefully get a lot of our ground water, throughout the nation, and even the world, cleaned up.

CALLISON: How big is the potential industry?

WEIDNER: Based on our success here, we’ve looked at the market place and we’re hoping that maybe we can take it to the market place - Edison. Our analysis is that there are billions of dollars being spent on clean up. Our analysis shows that at a minimum, probably about $250 million per year on these types of cleanup for the next thirty years. So that is very significant. That’s a lot of money, that’s a lot of jobs.

CALLISON: What is the future of this technology? How do you bring it to the market place?

WEIDNER: Based on the success of Visalia, the company made the decision to look into marketing this technology. We did an internal evaluation and we concluded that if we were to team or form an alliance with an environmental consulting firm, we felt we had a chance of taking this out into the world and making a go of it.

CALLISON: I am sorry to interrupt you, but there is a beeping noise. Can you start over please.

WEIDNER: Based on the success of Visalia, we felt there was a real opportunity. Edison is a utility. In the past we were never really interested in this type of thing. We were just electricity providers. But with deregulation we realized there was a real opportunity. So the company made the decision to look out at the market place and see if there was an opportunity for us.

We did an evaluation and felt there was an incredible market for dynamic underground stripping. And in our business evaluation, concluded that the best way to do this was to form an alliance with a leading environmental consulting firm. We chose CHM2 Hill, an international environmental consulting firm, as a partner. We just basically started up that alliance in the last few months.

CALLISON: Can you tell me a little about what S.C.E. is? Do you have a background in environmental technologies or is this a new area?

WEIDNER: Southern California Edison has been an utility for over a century. In the operation, the utility operation, Edison has done things like treated poles. They actually have their own forest, and the Visalia Pole Yard was an old treating pole yard for our transmission towers. So we do have a history with environmental issues. Edison has always tried to be environmentally sensitive when we realize that we have a problem. In fact the Visalia Pole Yard, the company took the position to clean up really well before we were forced to.

Edison in general has always tried to be innovative in all of the technologies that they are involved in. And the same with environmental. We looked at a number of innovative environmental technologies and obviously dynamic underground stripping is one of those. And it’s been one of those we obviously have found to be very successful.

CALLISON: Why did SCE decide to clean up the pole yard?

WEIDNER: Southern California Edison made the decision to clean up the pole yard decades ago. We began our clean up in the middle of the ‘70's. We felt as a corporation we had a responsibility for cleaning up our environmental problems. So this site has been one of those sites that, as I said earlier, the DNAPL sites which are so tough to deal with.

And for two decades we were in a sort of hydraulic controlled band aid approach. And it was not until we learned about dynamic underground stripping that we made the decision that it was something that we should look at.

We did all the things we needed to do in terms of treatability studies and background studies. We brought in the Lawrence Livermore scientists from the very beginning to help us out. Can we do this? And formed this team that basically took us through the process of is it feasible? And then once we determined that it was feasible, can we answer all the regulatory questions? You know, what impact might steam have on the contaminates?

So we had a number of questions that we had to deal with. But we always felt that we needed to do something better than the pump and treat. I didn’t want to bring my great grandchildren here, drive by the pole yard in a number of decades, and say, yes I used to work here, and they’re still here. We wanted to get beyond that. We wanted to be able to close this up and close the books on the Visalia pole yard. So, we made the decision, basically economic, and a management decision that we wanted to get through this process and close the site.

CALLISON: How long before it is closed?

WEIDNER: Well, the pump and treat technology, well we really can’t say how long. The best estimates are between decades and centuries, realistically. If you look now at the volume of material that we have removed over the past couple of years, about 150 thousand gallons, that’s about 4 times our original estimate of what was in the ground, and we knew we would be here pumping and treating for over a century at best at that kind of volume, even with the original volume of 40,000 gallons and now we are 4 times that. So, realistically pump and treat was as we said, pump and treat forever.

With dynamic underground stripping we felt we could bring it to a conclusion within a few years. And we obviously have few years after the end of the actual steaming where we have to do the monitoring and compliance issues. We hope at best to be out of here in two to five years.

CALLISON: What happens to the stuff you pull out of the ground?

WEIDNER: The material that we remove from the ground is stored temporarily in tanks in a contained area in our water treatment plant. In accordance with the hazardous waste management regulations we remove that material and incinerate it in a permitted facility off site.

CALLISON: Do you think that environmental technology could end up being a high jobs creator?

WEIDNER: I see a lot of job opportunities for environmental technologies. Both in the United States and world wide. My understanding is that if you think we have problems, the rest of the world is a lot worse off. If we can apply this technology and other technologies that are applicable, if we can apply them around the world, I think there’s a huge amount of jobs available, for decades.

CALLISON: Do you have anything to add?

WEIDNER: Did I make the bit about LLNL clear? Did you get what you needed?

I don’t know how to phrase this. I do want a message to come across that there are some incredible talent, scientific talent in our government, and it’s been a pleasure working with these people, and I’m glad that they were able to apply to what most people feel is a positive area as opposed to making nuclear bombs. Nobody wants to see that.

But it has been quite a pleasure for us, quite a learning experience dealing with the top-flight people that our government has employed. I am glad to see that they are doing something to help us as opposed to destroying countries. But I don’t know if you guys want to say that kind of stuff.

CALLISON: How often do contractors get to work with the government in the relationship that you are working with now?

WEIDNER: Never. I mean if you think about what those people do. First of all, it’s top secret, or very secret, classified, all that, you know, the normal guy doesn’t even get to go on the property at Lawrence Livermore unless you’re invited. We were able to get onto the property and was very obvious that there’s classified top-secret stuff going on there still. But at the same time, it’s nice to know that there are opportunities to work with the scientists on something positive.

CALLISON: Do you think that this type of partnership between private companies and government should happen more often?

WEIDNER: I think the relationship that was developed between Edison and Livermore was very unique. There are not many companies, I believe, that are able to work with the scientists at Livermore. This is a government agency that in the past was involved in weapons development. So obviously not very many companies get to work with that level of scientist. So we’re really pleased that we had - [interruption]

I don’t want to make this sound too unique because this technology transfer stuff is what Livermore does. If there is cool stuff that can be put into the commercial sector that will help us, they want to do that. And it’s in a number of different areas. We just happen to be involved with the dynamic underground stripping.

I think it was a unique experience for a commercial utility, a private company to work with the government. The national lab historically has been involved with weapons development which is something very few companies or individuals are involved in. So we’re really happy that we were able to work with some really top-flight scientists and utilize their knowledge and work with them with our unique knowledge and have an outcome like the Visalia steam Remediation Project.

It’s been a fantastic success. And we’re glad that we were able to work with them. We hope that in the future we can not only utilize their expertise in the environment but in many different ways.

CALLISON: My follow up question is: based on the experience you had, would it be beneficial for other private companies to be able to work with government laboratories and scientists to address common goal problems?

WEIDNER: I believe that there have got to be a number of fantastic opportunities for working relationships between the private sector and the government for the future. As I’ve said, you’ve got some of the best minds in the world working on nuclear and other weapons development. There’s got to be a number of different opportunities in different areas and whatever they may be, I would definitely support any - [interruption]

Based on the experience that we had at the Visalia Steam Remediation Project, I would definitely support collaboration in the future between the private sector and the national laboratories. I think that the scientists that they have there are incredible and they are top-flight people, they’ve come up with a lot of great ideas and I’m sure there’s a lot out there in the private sector, the commercial sector, that they can add for everybody.

CALLISON: How long have you been working in the environmental industry and what kind of changes have you seen?

WEIDNER: I’ve been working in the environmental field, for the most part, for the last twenty five years. What I have seen over those twenty five years is the development of environmental technologies, some of them haven’t worked that well, others have been fantastic, and I see a lot more opportunities for environmental technology development in the future.

I think one of the areas that we have to work a little harder at is trying to bring the regulatory community up to speed with these technologies. I think the technology innovation office from EPA is an important group. I think they have helped up a lot with dynamic underground stripping, to help us bring that to the market, bring it to the regulatory committee and raise the comfort level with the regulatory community.

In the past the regulators have not necessarily wanted to take risks, which obviously is required. When you’re trying a new environmental technology there are some risk taking. You have to go out and do some things that cause some comfort level problems.

CALLISON: What happens to the ground after the steam has been pushed into the soil?

WEIDNER: Remember, this is a subsurface phenomenon so when you talk about crops being impacted, theoretically you would, the steam introduction will change the soil chemistry somewhat. And physically, some of the soils will change somewhat, but in terms of the impact it might have on agriculture: I don’t think it’s out of bounds of any other type of soil. You will temporarily sterilize the soil, but that’s only temporary. Obviously you will remove some of the chemicals and you may remove some of the organic materials, you would lower the organic content of the soil somewhat, but typically it’s very low anyway and you’re dealing with the subsurface and such that it’s not the soil that’s going to be critical to crop management.