Mark Duff: Yeah, it is. Maybe a bold prediction, it’s — we have a contract, obviously, for the — to support the ride after DFLAW and the grouting of the tank farms, which is obviously a second component of the overall strategy. It hasn’t been defined specifically for us that they’re trying to find other folks have to compete with us, which is obviously in the best interest of the taxpayer. Again, as I’ve mentioned, and we’ve talked many times, we are the only regional opportunity to do that. And we have agreements with the local unions to use their services as well. We’re excited about that. And the alternative, as we’ve mentioned before, is to ship the untreated waste via tanker truck to off-site facilities that are not in the region.
It does take a long time to get a permit from the state and 10 years plus as estimated. So we feel like we’re in a really good position to provide the lowest risk approach as well as the most efficient approach. And we’re looking at advanced technologies for the grouting process and designing for the most efficient means of grouting that large volume as we expand our plant, as the volume increases as [indiscernible] plant over the year. So we feel like we’re in a great position. That seems like a no-brainer, but we’ve going to meet their objectives as well. But we’re pretty confident we’ll get the majority of that waste as it starts to be generated from the tank farms.
Howard Brous: One of the issues is shipping through tribe sacred lands and they said, no. My understanding based on the treaties that they have, the United States government that supersedes the ICC and the ability to ship it over their territory. So shipping it to Clive, Utah, I don’t see that based on the evidence and the comments, I don’t see that happening. What about Andrews, Texas?
Mark Duff: Yes, the Malheur tribes have been very vocal about shipping untreated tank waste through the reservation, which is required largely to ship a tanker off of the reservation and goes out through Oregon, and they continue to — the tribe continues to be vocal about that. That’s a political issue to deal; we have to address. But it certainly makes it very difficult and difficult for DOE to use as an option, which we’ve gotten good support and letters have been written supporting on our facility to do the grouting, ship, and solid waste form by rail, which have been supported. It’s much more stable and safer way. And if you do the accident scenarios for that number of trucks, the statistics are a lot different than by rail. So we’re pretty confident that that comment you just made will assist in recognizing the value that Perma-Fix is providing to DOE and with our local facility.
Howard Brous: Last question, and again I’ll rejoin the queue. When you talked about 2025 and PFAS, what kind of multiple, if you’re doing a couple of million dollars this year, how do you foresee this developing in 2025? And do you have the capacity to do it?
Mark Duff: Well, that’s a really tough question, Howard.
Howard Brous: All right. Sorry.
Mark Duff: Yeah, it’s okay. I’m not prepared to give a lot of detail. I knew we’d get these questions about what does it really mean to us in ’25. It’s really tough to nail it down because we don’t know our throughput yet. We are just finishing treating, what they call, firefighting foam, or AFFF in drum quantities right now in our pilot plant. And we’re nailing down the parameters for the unit. In other words, how much it can — how fast it can go, with what the mixtures need to be to optimize the system. And as I mentioned, we are getting very meaningful results. In other words, we’re meeting and demonstrating that we’re meeting despite any regulatory limit that’s been proposed out there. So in other words, we’re receiving — we’re seeing total destruction of PFAS, where most of our competitors have a waste stream coming out either an effluent or air emissions or some other type of effluent.
So we’re very excited about that. We don’t know what that really is going to mean to us next year. As I mentioned, our goal is to develop a plan for treating this AFFF at each of our locations. AFFF, we view as the lowest-hanging fruit of the market. People have hundreds and thousands of drums of AFFF stored their facilities all across the country and literally all across Europe. And basically every Air Force base and airport has trained with firefighting foam which has been one of the bigger causes of the contamination. So we’re focused on those first. We’re still trying to define what the market will bear in regard to a cost where we can charge per gallon on this versus what our costs are. So it’s really difficult for me to address that with a specific number, Howard.
I will say this as we get — we’re going to be having press releases come out in the coming months and defining this more and more and more as we get these results. It’s moving very, very quickly and we have a lot of people working on it. And it’s all been — we’ve been checking all the boxes for the parameters we meet up to this point. So we’re excited about it. And every day that goes by, we’re more and more confident that it will really hit the ground hard running when we get to our final test.
Howard Brous: Congratulations, senior management team. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question for today is from Walter Schenker with MAZ.
Walter Schenker: Thank you. Just one more point on the key facet, that’s how you pronounce and people mentioned it was nice a Barron’s article. So we can understand more about the market. Simply, because I like simply, what you have developed is a methodology to burn, to destroy the firefighting foam as the lowest-hanging fruit. Is that like the kindergarten way of looking at it?
