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HONORABLE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS May 5, 1982 Page Fourteen The same principle is true for all the chemical elements known to man. An excess of any material applied to soil can be harmful, but with proper soil tests and monitoring, those levels can be maintained precisely within safe levels. There are more than 100 chemical elements known today. Present information indicates the essential need for 16 elements in plant growth. These are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. Other elements commonly found in plants are aluminum, arsenic, barium, bromine, cobalt, fluorine, iodine, lithium, nickel, selenium, silicon, sodium, strontium, titanium, and vanadium. This is not a complete list since practically all of the known chenical elements have been found in plant materials. Individual waste constituents are the basis for the overall site design and operation methodology so that each waste stream must be quantified on an individual parameter basis. Obviously, regardless of concentration, all compounds cannot be analyzed for in an industrial waste. This approach is based on an understanding of which parameters are important with respect to the soil system receiving the waste, which components are of particular environmental concern, and the chemical and manufacturing process inputs and products. Because of the basic pathways involved in land-based treatment, mass generation of waste components (lbs/year) is generally more important than concentration (mg/1) . Therefore , waste characterization involves obtaining an analysis of a true composite sample and generation rates that will give the annual rate of waste component generation from a specific plant waste stream. The soil loading capacity determines what waste stream components can be accomodated in an environmentally acceptable manner per unit area and per unit time. Calculation categories for soil assimilative capacity for components of industrial waste resource recovery residuals are : 1) Compounds that are biodegradable, such as oils or specific organics. 2) Compounds that are relatively immobile and non- degradative, that are permitted to accumulate in soil to a predetermined level, such as heavy metals.