On Wednesday, February 21, 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:

Bob Puls, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Action Team Co-chair)
John Vidumsky, DuPont (Action Team Co-chair)
Bob Gillham, University of Waterloo
Neeraj Gupta, Battelle Memorial Institute
Richard Landis, DuPont
Liyuan Liang, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Charles Reeter, U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center
Richard Steimle, EPA, Technology Innovation Office (TIO)
Scott Warner, Geomatrix Consultants, Inc.
Christine Hartnett of Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG), also participated in the conference call.

During previous conference calls, Bob Puls said, Steering Committee members talked about holding half-day RTDF sessions in conjunction with the April 2001 American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting and the June 2001 International Containment meeting. Puls asked the Steering Committee to make a final decision about whether to hold sessions at both meetings.

Call participants decided against holding an RTDF meeting at the ACS conference. They reached this decision after realizing that only a few of the Steering Committee members and neither of the PRB Action Team co-chairs would be able to attend. Call participants did decide, however, to hold an RTDF session in conjunction with the June 2001 International Containment meeting. Liyuan Liang said that she is on the planning committee for this meeting and that a spot has been reserved on the agenda for the RTDF.

Liang summarized the conference’s tentative agenda: five sessions will be held on reactive barriers. Two of these will be devoted to permeable reactive barriers, two will focus on impermeable barriers, and the last will have a hybrid format. During this last session, three papers on material development will be presented, and the remainder of the time will be used as an RTDF panel session. Liang agreed to summarize and distribute a tentative agenda for the five sessions. Part of her summary will identify the chairs for each session.

Liang said that she saw the RTDF panel as consisting of the five reactive barrier session chairs plus others who have useful information to share. Perhaps, she suggested, the chairs could open the panel discussion by giving 5-minute summaries of what was discussed in each session. Call participants thought this was a good idea. Puls agreed to work with Liang to pull the panel together.

In addition to the RTDF panel discussion, Puls said, a Steering Committee meeting should be scheduled in conjunction with the June 2001 International Containment meeting. The main topic of this session, he said, would be future paths for the RTDF PRB Action Team. Call participants agreed that it would be ideal to hold the Steering Committee meeting immediately after the RTDF panel discussion. Liang said that she would determine whether this would conflict with poster sessions. Gillham noted that the Steering Committee had started talking about paths forward at their February 16, 2000, meeting (held in Melbourne, Florida). Puls and other call participants agreed to review the minutes for this meeting to refresh their memories about what had been discussed. (See http://www.rtdf.org/public/permbarr/minutes/sc021600.htm.) In addition, call participants agreed to start brainstorming on the topic and e-mail ideas to Puls. About a week before the meeting, Puls will compile the suggestions that he has received and redistribute them to the Steering Committee members.

Richard Steimle said that PRB profiles were posted on the RTDF Web site about two years ago. A contractor will be hired to update these profiles, Steimle said, noting that TIO is interested in collecting information on new sites and updating the information that is already posted. Puls said that it would be particularly useful to obtain information about sites that are using PRBs outside the United States. Puls asked Steering Committee members to help the contractor gather whatever information he or she needs to make the profiles as complete as possible.

In September 1998, Puls said, the PRB Action Team released a document entitled Permeable Reactive Barrier Technologies For Contaminant Remediation. He asked call participants whether they were interested in updating this text. Steering Committee members agreed to review the document and make a decision at the June 2001 RTDF Steering Committee meeting.

Puls commented that it would be helpful if users could access more PRB documents through the RTDF Web site. Steimle said that he would determine whether a contractor is available to add links or documents to the site. Neeraj Gupta indicated that he has some useful links to provide.

• Liang will summarize the proposed agenda for the June 2001 International Containment meeting and distribute the summary to Steering Committee members. Puls will work with Liang to pull a panel together for the RTDF panel session.

• Gillham plans to present a paper at the June 2001 International Containment meeting. He will submit an abstract soon.

• Call participants agreed to send Puls suggestions on potential paths forward for the PRB Action Team. (To refresh their memories about suggestions that have already been made, call participants agreed to review the minutes from the February 16, 2000, Steering Committee meeting. See http://www.rtdf.org/public/permbarr/minutes/sc021600.htm.) About a week before the June 2001 International Containment meeting, Puls will compile and distribute the suggestions he has received.

• Steering Committee members agreed to review Permeable Reactive Barrier Technologies For Contaminant Remediation (available at http://clu-in.org/download/rtdf/prb/reactbar.pdf) before the June 2001 RTDF Steering Committee meeting. During this meeting, they will be asked to decide whether the document should be updated.

• Steimle will arrange to have a contractor update the PRB profiles. He will also determine whether the contractor can add links or documents to the PRB Web page.

• ERG agreed to set up the next PRB Steering Committee conference call for April 18, 2001, between 11:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.