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

3:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
December 4, 2001

On Tuesday, December 4, 2001, the following members of the Remediation Technologies Development Forum's (RTDF's) Permeable Reactive Barriers (PRB) Action Team met in a conference call:

Bob Puls, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Action Team Co-chair)
John Vidumsky, DuPont (Action Team Co-chair)
Arun Gavaskar, Batelle
Bruce Sass, Batelle
Tim Sivavec, General Electric Corporate Remediation
Matthew Turner, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
Also participating in the call was Christine Hartnett from Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG).

NEXT PRB ACTION TEAM MEETING

The next PRB Action Team meeting will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, during the first half of August 2002. Call participants agreed that the meeting should include 1 or 2 days of presentations, a panel session, a poster session, and a tour of Lynn Roberts' laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Call participants identified the following themes for the meeting:

Long-term performance. Bob Puls noted that Roberts may have some interesting data to present.

Monitoring. Call participants identified two subtopics to pursue. First, they expressed interest in identifying speakers who can talk about the difference in scope between monitoring efforts performed for research purposes and those performed for full-scale application. In addition, call participants expressed interest in finding speakers who can talk about "smart" monitoring techniques (i.e., techniques that offer a cheaper, faster, and better solution for sites).

The impact that PRBs have on downgradient water quality. John Vidumsky noted that clean downgradient ground water is the true measure of a PRB's success. All too often, however, a wall's efficacy is measured by examining contaminant concentrations in the wells that immediately surround the PRB. Vidumsky said that it is time to take a hard look at downgradient ground-water data to determine how well PRBs are performing.

Site design. Speakers will be sought to discuss design methodology (e.g., probabilistic design tools). The idea will be to discuss design decisions, such as wall thickness, that have significant impacts on cost and efficacy.

Vidumsky will take the lead in identifying speakers for the last two topics. Puls and Tim Sivavec agreed to contact people outside the United States to determine whether they are willing to impart information on lessons learned abroad. The remaining Steering Committee members will also be expected to identify speakers and to forward suggested names to the Action Team co-chairs (Puls and Vidumsky), who will put together a draft meeting agenda. This draft will be circulated to Steering Committee members for comment and revisions. PRB Steering Committee members will meet via conference call on January 31, 2001, to discuss the meeting logistics in greater detail.

CREATING A PUBLICATION TO SUMMARIZE THE STATE OF PRB TECHNOLOGIES

During the last Steering Committee conference call, Puls noted, call participants talked about writing a document that summarizes the state of PRB technology. Puls said that he will find out whether EPA can contribute funds to such an effort. He hopes to report back to the group regarding this possibility after the first of the year.

IMPLEMENTING A NEW MONITORING PROJECT

The PRB Steering Committee is considering performing a monitoring project. Sivavec said that funds might be available for the project through the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), which recently issued a call for proposals titled Diagnostic Procedures To Evaluate Remediation Performance at Chlorinated Solvent Contaminated Sites. Sivavec agreed to distribute information about SERDP's call for proposals to the Steering Committee members. Subgroup members will meet via conference call on December 10, 2001, to determine whether the Steering Committee will submit a proposal.