Are Peat Moss Filters a Permanent Treatment For Hazardous Effluents?
The ITA asserts that pollution will not travel offsite because of the intended use of peat moss filters (Crawford 2002 p. 42). This treatment has high initial costs and maintenance costs and may be adversely affected by dynamic changes in the sinkholes. Peat moss filters can be temporarily effective at trapping some contaminants (KEEP 2002b pp. 9-10). At issue here is their capacity to capture industrial chemicals, fuels, machinery cleaners, BTEX, anti-icing compounds and similar toxic spills effluent from the proposed airport, trucking, rail, and heavy industrial areas of the Transpark. The high construction and maintenance cost of filters and their short renewal/replacement life has not been budgeted, and they are vulnerable to the same structural shifting as other hard infrastructure. The ITA has provided for mitigation of these failures by advocating construction of a storm sewer system to carry industrial effluent to the Barren River. The Bowling Green sewer system is facing feder
