ABOVE THE ARCTIC: LIFT LINERS^TM USED TO MOVE CONTAMINATED SOIL FROM FORMER RADAR STATION

See More Photos >> Project site, near Cape Lisburne, Alaska, where our Lift Liners were used to package and transport contaminated soil.

Cape Lisburne is, by any definition, remote.

The tiny Alaska outpost, on the Chukchi Sea north of the Artic Circle, is closer to Siberia than it is to either Anchorage or Fairbanks. It is home to a U.S. Air Force base, a lot of caribou - and not much else.

So when we were asked last year to provide a solution for packaging 6,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil as part of the remediation of a former radar station there, we'll admit that we had to consult with an atlas to pinpoint exactly where we would be sending our products and equipment.

Working in conjunction with Emerald Alaska, an environmental services firm that is a unit of the Seattle-based environmental services and recycling company Emerald Services, our assignment was to supply the packaging and related equipment needed to prepare the soil for shipment.

While that is the type of work we do every day, this specific project presented a new set of challenges - the remoteness of the originating site. There are no roads to Cape Lisburne, no marine cargo facilities. And with no scheduled commercial air service, only charter aircraft service is available.

All of the equipment mobilized to Cape Lisburne to support the remediation project was delivered by barges that were beached near the site, with the approval of the Air Force.

We provided 500 of our 12-ton capacity Lift Liner^TM flexible containers, plus loading and lifting frames. The containers and frames were delivered first to the Port of Seattle and then shipped via barge to Cape Lisburne. We also sent Erin Grimm, the general manager of our packaging division, to Anchorage to provide product training and participate in the logistics planning with the Emerald Alaska personnel.

"The remote location certainly was a major factor in Emerald's decision to use our Lift Liners. Mobilizing and using metal containers would have been prohibitively expensive and extremely difficult to manage," Grimm said. "This project needed the ease of use and flexibility our Lift Liners offer, coupled with their durability and sturdiness to make sure they could withstand the rough journey out of the region."

Barge, with our loaded Lift Liners, arriving at the Port of Seattle.

Once packaged, the Lift Liners were taken by feeder barges (also beached on the shoreline), to larger barges waiting offshore. From there, the barges went to Seattle, where the Lift Liner containers loaded with contaminated soil were transloaded to gondola railcars for shipment to the final disposal site in Idaho. Containers with non-hazardous soil were sent via truck to disposal sites in Washington State.

Our Lift Liners, certified by the U.S. Department of Transportation for many hazardous materials, are heavy-duty containers made of multilayered woven polypropylene. They can be transported by the three primary modes of conveyance - rail, truck and marine.

The Lift Liners come in five sizes, from the smallest one that has a maximum capacity of 48 cubic feet, to the largest one that is 264 cubic feet in volume and can hold up to 12 tons of materials.

Plus, because they are disposable, users save on the expense of renting metal containers and then decontaminating them in preparation for return.

"Our Lift Liners are perfectly suited for sites with very large volumes of bulk materials to be packaged, such as contaminated soil. Lift Liners are also ideal for surgical remediation projects in small work areas where metal containers would prove too difficult to maneuver," Grimm said.

To see just how remote Cape Lisburne really is, visit www.athropolis.com/map2.htm