SUMMARY OF THE REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPMENT FORUM
PERMEABLE REACTIVE BARRIERS ACTION TEAM
STEERING COMMITTEE CONFERENCE CALL

11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
May 2, 2001

On Wednesday, May 2, 2001, the following members of the Remediation Technologies Development Forum’s (RTDF’s) Permeable Reactive Barriers (PRB) Action Team Steering Committee met in a conference call:

John Vidumsky, DuPont (Action Team Co-chair)
Richard Landis, DuPont
Liyuan Liang, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Tim Sivavec, General Electric Corporate Remediation
Richard Steimle, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Technology Innovation Office (TIO)

Also participating in the call were Incheol Pang (filling in for Charles Reeter of the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center), Carolyn Perroni from Environmental Management Support, Inc. (EMS), and Michelle Arbogast from Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG).

PRB ACTION TEAM MEETING

The RTDF PRB Action Team plans to meet on June 12, 2001, in conjunction with the International Containment and Remediation Technology Conference and Exhibition that is being held in Orlando, Florida. Liyuan Liang, one of the meeting’s organizers, said that talks relating to PRBs will be presented over three sessions on June 12, 2001:

• 10:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.: Jackie Quinn and John Vogan will lead a session called “PRB Best Practice for Design and Implacement.”
  
  
• 1:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.: Liang and Neeraj Gupta will lead a session called “PRB Field Case Studies—Hydraulic and Geochemical Measurements, Contaminant Removal.”
  
  
• 3:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m.: Three talks will be presented, and then a five-person panel will convene to summarize the day’s session and discuss additional issues.

Liang said that a PRB Steering Committee meeting has also been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on the night of June 12, 2001. Call participants agreed to postpone discussion on the Steering Committee meeting’s agenda, but they did identify one agenda item: review Steering Committee membership.

PRB PROFILES

Perroni said that she has been asked to update and expand the site profiles that are posted on the RTDF Web site. For those sites already posted, Perroni said, she is asking for updates and requesting information on lessons learned. In addition, Perroni hopes to include information about at least 28 new sites, some of which are located in Germany, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and Canada. Information has been trickling in slowly, but profiles have nearly been completed for about six or seven new sites. Perroni agreed to send these completed profiles to Steering Committee members so that they can comment on them. In addition, Perroni plans to complete several more site profiles before the June 12 Steering Committee meeting. At the meeting, attendees will receive a table of contents that lists the new sites, along with information on where the site profiles can be found on the Internet.

Perroni said that the RTDF Web site is being modified to make it easier for users to enter new profiles directly. She also said that the Web site has a search feature; thus, users can find site profiles in specific categories, such as “funnel and gate” or “continuous wall.” Conference call participants said that they are eager to analyze the sites to determine whether wall types and construction methods are changing over time. John Vidumsky said that he would not be surprised if the analysis shows that walls are being installed at deeper depths and using more complex reactive materials than they were six or seven years ago.

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS

Richard Steimle asked whether any walls had been installed in fractured bedrock media. Conference call participants did not know of any sites that fit this description. Vidumsky did say, however, that he has performed work at a site with fractured rock. Walls were not installed into this zone, but iron was pumped into it. The results were not favorable: pumping the iron into the fractured bedrock zone caused changes in the subsurface flow regime. Iron filled the fractures, which caused a decrease in permeability and made water flow around, rather than through, the fractures.

ACTION ITEMS

• Perroni agreed to send about six or seven new site profiles to Steering Committee members for their review. If she does not receive feedback within a week, she will assume that the profiles are acceptable for posting on the RTDF Web site.
  
  
• Perroni agreed to send Steering Committee members a list of all the new sites that she hopes to include in the site profile database.
  
  
• Richard Landis agreed to send Perroni site profiles for sites in California and North Carolina.