Introduction

UtahSpatialRisk is a skeleton R package to search Utah for contaminated sites or other historical environmental hazards in the R statistical environment. Version 1 of UtahSpatialRisk includes a database, I assembled and geocoded of most active and archived sites investigated by the US EPA’s Superfund program (It does not include sites without an address. For instance, Hill Airforce Base sites could not be geocoded). Future versions could include different spatially explicit databases such as:

Examples

The package is comprised of some functions to enable commandline search by address. Here is an examples of its use.

require(devtools)
## Loading required package: devtools
setwd("/Users/Maru/Desktop/GitProjects/UtahSpatialRisk")
devtools::load_all("UtahSpatialRisk")
## Loading UtahSpatialRisk

Load the database

require(sp)
require(ggmap)
setwd("/Users/Maru/Desktop/GitProjects/UtahSpatialRisk")
CERCLA_spdf <- readRDS('data/CERCLA_spdf.rds')

Search by a familiar address

slc_query <- get_k_nearest_sites_by_address("1125 Michigan Avenue Salt Lake City, UT", 
                                            database = CERCLA_spdf, 
                                            k = 5)

View list of nearby sites

slc_query
##           EPA.ID                          SITE.NAME   ZIP       lon
## 361 UTD980959746 OLD DUMP/FILL, SUNNYSIDE/800 SOUTH 84105 -111.8510
## 167 UTN000802825                  EAST SIDE SPRINGS 84102 -111.8647
## 45  UT9360090038      SALT LAKE CITY MEDICAL CENTER 84148 -111.8394
## 398 UTD988066155    OLD SALT LAKE CITY FIRE STATION 84101 -111.8721
## 307 UTD094674595                 UNIVERSITY OF UTAH 84112 -111.8523
##          lat   STATUS  Easting Northing    meters
## 361 40.75091 ARCHIVED 428156.3  4511455  713.5914
## 167 40.76203   ACTIVE 427016.3  4512700 1628.0469
## 45  40.75577   ACTIVE 429146.5  4511984 1835.7526
## 398 40.76437 ARCHIVED 426391.0  4512966 2134.5259
## 307 40.76710 ARCHIVED 428064.3  4513252 2174.7503

Make a quick map of the results

map_individual_result(address ="1125 Michigan Avenue Salt Lake City, UT 84105",
                      result = slc_query, 
                      type = "satellite",
                      label = TRUE)

We can do the exact same thing for a randomly selected LDS ward house in Ogden

ogden_query = get_k_nearest_sites_by_address("350 22nd Street; Ogden, Utah 84401")
ogden_query
##           EPA.ID                                SITE.NAME   ZIP       lon
## 480 UTSFN7577494                       GRANT AVENUE PLUME 84401 -111.9743
## 35  UT0012950252 22ND STREET AND PINGREE AVENUE VOC PLUME 84401 -111.9769
## 2   UT0000248997                        OGDEN GAS COMPANY 84401 -111.9759
## 412 UTD988074381                         OGDEN IRON WORKS 84401 -111.9760
## 122 UTN000802412                   OGDEN IRON WORKS SOUTH 84401 -111.9761
## 48  UTD000716407                      OGDEN RAILROAD YARD 84401 -111.9846
## 297 UTD073089708            SWIFT ADHESIVE & ESCHOM, INC. 84402 -111.9859
## 376 UTD981549066                    WEBER COUNTY LANDFILL 84401 -111.9900
## 1   UT0000098244                                IRS-OGDEN 84401 -111.9813
## 44  UT9210020922                OGDEN DEFENSE DEPOT (DLA) 84407 -111.9900
##          lat   STATUS  Easting Northing    meters
## 480 41.23049 ARCHIVED 418348.2  4564802  348.0299
## 35  41.22795   ACTIVE 418126.9  4564522  430.1345
## 2   41.23034   ACTIVE 418214.7  4564787  432.0153
## 412 41.22488 ARCHIVED 418195.7  4564181  497.6128
## 122 41.22281   ACTIVE 418188.8  4563951  680.6296
## 48  41.22976   ACTIVE 417481.8  4564730 1095.0297
## 297 41.22293 ARCHIVED 417364.4  4563974 1313.0034
## 376 41.21946 ARCHIVED 417016.5  4563592 1799.9424
## 1   41.21035   ACTIVE 417732.0  4562573 2117.8583
## 44  41.24445   ACTIVE 417050.3  4566366 2380.5739
map_individual_result(address ="350 22nd Street; Ogden, Utah 84401",
                      result = ogden_query, 
                      type = "satellite",
                      label = TRUE)

Data Sources

Here are a couple plots that give you an idea of where Superfund investigations have taken place in Utah as well as the # of investivations per zipcode.

Many contaminanted sites are no longer managed under the USEPA Superfund program, yet may provide useful information about historic environmental exposures. I scraped all of the UT coded Superfund investigation site names and addresses from the List-8R archived sites .pdf document. I combinded these with list of active sites and used google’s geocode service to asign a spatial coordinate to each based on the listed site address.

## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile 
## Source: "data-shp/ZipCodes.shp", layer: "ZipCodes"
## with 300 features
## It has 6 fields

Active EPA Superfund Sites in Utah

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/list-8r-active-site-inventory

The Active Site Inventory Report displays site and location information at active SEMS sites. An active site is one at which site assessment, removal, remedial, enforcement, cost recovery, or oversight activities are being planned or conducted. NPL sites include latitude and longitude information. For non-NPL sites, a brief site status is provided.

Archived EPA Superfund Sites in Utah

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/list-8r-archived-site-inventory

The Archived Site Inventory displays site and location information at sites archived from SEMS. An archived site is one at which EPA has determined that assessment has been completed and no further remedial action is planned under the Superfund program at this time."