Dublin Port Tunnel excavated former landfilled areas in Fairview Park and Alfie Byrne Road to facilitate the construction of the tunnel. The excavated fill was subsequently required to be re-instated to act as ballast over the tunnel. Due to the nature of the material, there were health and environmental concerns around re-using the fill in Fairview Park. AWN were requested by Dublin Port Tunnel to undertake a site investigation to assess the nature of the stockpiled fill and prepare an assessment of possible risk of exposure to users of Fairview Park, to substances in fill material being placed on top of the Port Tunnel in Fairview Park. Project work included the following:

• Desktop assessment to establish current & historic site uses;
• Once a background assessment was completed, a site specific contamination investigation and classification programme was designed;
• Site investigation comprised a comprehensive soil sampling programme, with sampling conducted at 38 no. sampling points across the soil stockpiles;
• Soil analysis was carried assess contamination and classify the existing soil for the purposes of reuse and landfill disposal as inert, non-hazardous or hazardous waste;
• Generation of a remediation strategy;
• Supervision of segregation and removal of hazardous fractions of the stockpile;
• Human health risk assessment model using RISC HUMAN to predict groundwater concentrations and human health exposure risks associated with placement of the inert/non-hazardous fill as ballast over the tunnel;
• Prediction of groundwater concentrations using soil/water partitioning coefficients;
• Waste permit application to allow soil to be re-used as ballast;
• AWN represented DCC at public consultation meetings, and;
• Preparation of literature for circulation to residents' associations.