VLS Environmental Solutions is an environmental services company specializing in hazardous and non-hazardous chemical waste management. After developing a breakthrough technology to sequester mercury with deep well injection, VLS is expanding steadily and selectively, helping customers stay safe, compliant, efficient and sustainable.
How is VLS’s multi-year expansion progressing?
We have grown through both organic investment and acquisitions across multiple verticals in the environmental services space, including hazardous and non-hazardous waste management, deep well injection, recycling and resource recovery, industrial and specialty cleaning and rail and marine logistics. I Squared Capital has supported the expansion of our geographic footprint and service capabilities. Our goal is to become the leading provider of integrated environmental solutions across North America and grow globally where infrastructure for waste, power and other areas is expanding. The acquisitions and organic growth projects we have completed over the past several years, with the financial backing of I Squared Capital, are helping us create a platform that combines local responsiveness with national scale.
What is the role of VLS’ two Texas Molecular facilities?
VLS Texas Molecular Deer Park and VLS Texas Molecular Corpus Christi are strategically located on the Texas Gulf Coast, the largest concentration of refining and petrochemical production in the United States. Together they are among the most important assets in the VLS portfolio. The Deer Park facility, just outside of Houston, combines advanced chemical processing expertise, hazardous and non-hazardous waste management capabilities. I would go so far as to say it is the most advanced Class I hazardous waste deep well facility in North America.
Deer Park is one of the highest-volume hazardous waste disposal facilities in the country. Nobody else handles the volume we do, and that capacity is the result of decades of deliberate investment in our infrastructure.
We provide permanent disposal for waste streams that often have few practical alternatives. These are difficult-to-manage materials – wastes that many conventional treatment or disposal methods may not be able to handle safely, efficiently or in compliance with applicable requirements. Our customers span refining, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemical, mining, manufacturing, energy and government, and they rely on us to help support compliant waste management for challenging liquid waste streams.
Class I deep well injection is a highly regulated, EPA-authorized disposal method. At our permitted facilities, liquid waste is injected thousands of feet underground into approved injection zones that are isolated from underground sources of drinking water by confining geologic formations. For restricted hazardous wastes, EPA’s no-migration exemption process requires a demonstration, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that hazardous constituents will not migrate from the injection zone for as long as the waste remains hazardous; regulations define that demonstration period as 10,000 years.
And our record speaks for itself. Zero recordable injuries. Zero reportable spills. Zero impacts to groundwater. And a TCEQ compliance score of 0.0—which, in our industry, is a perfect score.
So, when people ask whether Deer Park is important, I would put it differently. This is essential national infrastructure. It is permanent, proven and protects communities and water supplies for generations.
If you have a waste stream with no good answer, that is exactly the problem we were built to solve.
Why is VLS’ mercury processing technology such a breakthrough?
Elemental mercury has never had a permitted final disposal pathway in the United States. Once recycling markets vanished and the 2008 Mercury Export Ban Act ended export, generators were left to store a growing backlog on site with no way to permanently dispose of it. This has left generators with an ongoing financial and environmental liability and uncertainty regarding future management requirements. Long-term storage of mercury is no longer necessary. We have a first of its kind, patent-pending, fully permitted solution for a proven and effective technology to permanently remove elemental mercury from the biosphere. This will eliminate the risks our customers are taking by continuing to store mercury on site. Our mercury processing and disposal process is conducted under an EPA-approved No Migration Petition and the RCRA and UIC authorizations issued by TCEQ, our state regulator.
We realized our Texas Molecular facility could dispose of elemental mercury if we could first chemically convert it and turn it into an aqueous salt. We developed a process and worked closely with our federal and state regulators to ensure full permit compliance. Now, we are the only domestic mercury waste processing solution in the U.S., giving industry, government and numerous other stakeholders a long-term outlet for mercury disposal that was previously unavailable.
How does VLS’ mercury processing and deep well injection work?
It all starts above ground.
Before anything is injected, the waste is processed and physically conditioned, so it meets the specifications established in our permit, including parameters like density and acidity. Once verified, it is injected into a permitted Class I hazardous waste injection well approximately 7200 feet below the surface into a deep, geologically isolated formation that has been extensively characterized for this purpose. Most importantly, that injection zone is separated from the lowest underground source of drinking water by thousands of feet of impermeable rock and multiple confining layers.
A Class I hazardous waste injection well is one of the most engineered and highly regulated disposal systems in the world. One of the most unique permits available for Class I hazardous waste injection wells is the EPA's No-Migration Petition. Before a hazardous Class I well can receive approval for disposal of certain hazardous wastes without meeting the land disposal restrictions, the operator must demonstrate—using detailed geologic characterization, hydrogeologic modeling, geochemical analysis and site-specific data—that the injected hazardous waste will not migrate out of the injection zone in hazardous concentrations for 10,000 years, or that it will become non-hazardous before any migration could occur. That is not simply an engineering objective, it is a regulatory standard built directly into the permitting process.
So, when someone asks whether this process is safe, my answer is this: it is engineered for permanent isolation, verified through continuous monitoring and routine integrity testing and regulated under one of the most rigorous environmental permitting programs in the United States. Every aspect—from the geology and well construction to the operating conditions and long-term performance—is designed with one objective: protecting underground sources of drinking water and permanently isolating the waste where it belongs.
How does the acquisition of Merichem’s caustics business fit into VLS’s sustainability goals?
We repurpose Merichem’s sulfidic caustic – a hazardous, large-volume byproduct of refining. Paper mills use the caustic in their manufacturing process. This is real recycling–taking by product and finding markets to be used instead of virgin chemicals. The acquisition complements our other sustainable solutions, such as blending plant waste with high-BTU materials to create specification fuel for cement kilns as a replacement for expensive fossil fuels. We also own rail and marine infrastructure to more sustainably move waste. These divisions are also working daily doing high quality cleaning, qualification and repair work. Finally, our ability to move large volumes efficiently differentiates VLS from nearly every competitor.
How is the current regulatory atmosphere affecting environmental services?
None of our customers have backed off environmental compliance. They are often going beyond what is necessary to stay compliant. Companies with strong sustainability standards continue to maintain them, whether that means reducing landfill use, lowering carbon emissions or improving overall environmental performance. Lately, customers are coming to us about how to reduce Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions. We have several technologies where generators can claim a reduction in their carbon footprint. I think in general people want to do the right thing. We are very proud to help customers achieve this goal.
How do you envision the future of VLS?
More than half of our business is waste management, which is critical to every industrial sector. We support manufacturing, mining, pharmaceuticals and many other sectors across the United States and Mexico. We have been particularly investing actively in the Southwest and California, a market all its own. We are well-entrenched in the South and Southeast and will continue to grow in the Midwest and Northeast.
We are not trying to just add dots on a map but really give the market what it needs with an integrated network that allows customers to solve multiple environmental and compliance challenges through a single partner. Whether that means processing a waste stream no one else can or offering alternative waste derived fuels, we are helping customers find safe, compliant and sustainable answers.
