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 6, 1999

On Monday, December 6, 1999, the following members of the 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)
Nic Korte, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Liyuan Liang, ORNL
Charles Reeter, Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center
Tim Sivavec, General Electric Corporate Remediation
Stephen White, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Erik Goldberg of the Interstate Technology Regulatory Cooperation Work Group and Christine Hartnett of Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG), also participated in the conference call.

NEXT PRB ACTION TEAM MEETING

The next PRB Action Team meeting is scheduled to take place February 16-17, 2000, at the Hilton Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, Florida.

Activities Planned for February 16, 2000

Presentations and Discussion Sessions

Conference call participants agreed that presentations and discussion sessions should be featured on the first day of the Action Team meeting. Bob Puls said that 16 people have expressed interest in making presentations. During previous conference calls, Puls said, the Steering Committee decided that presentations should focus on hydrology or lessons learned/installation issues. Of the 16 presentations that have been proposed, four focus on hydrology and eight focus on lessons learned/installation issues.¹ The other four presentations that have been proposed, Puls said, cover miscellaneous topics and it is not clear whether they relate to the meeting's main themes; he agreed to gather more information on the content of these proposed presentations.² Conference call participants agreed that presentations should not be included in the agenda if they fall outside of the meeting's main themes. Rather, these presentations should be offered at future meetings or they should be summarized and presented as posters. (See below for information on the Action Team's poster session.)

Steering Committee members were generally enthusiastic about the list of proposed presentations. A couple of conference call participants, however, recommended trying to add a few more presentations to the agenda. One conference call participant agreed to ask a representative from a Kansas site to give a presentation. Another participant said that he will talk to Stan Morrison about finding someone to talk about the Monticello site.

Puls said that he will create a preliminary schedule for the presentations; he will group the presentations thematically and will insert some discussion sessions into the schedule so that meeting attendees can ask questions and offer comments at certain points in the day. Puls said that he will create a preliminary agenda and send it to ERG by December 8, 1999. ERG will then distribute the agenda to Steering Committee members and ask them to provide comments to Puls by December 10, 1999. Assuming that this schedule can be kept, ERG will distribute the agenda, along with a formal meeting invitation, to all PRB Action Team members during the week of December 13, 1999.

Poster Session

Steering Committee members agreed that a poster session should be held on the evening of February 16, 2000. Puls said that two people (David Watson and Barry Lavine) have already expressed an interest in presenting a poster. Others will likely be added to the list of presenters in the near future. Liyuan Liang suggested setting up the posters early in the day so that attendees can view the posters before the formal poster session. ERG agreed to contact hotel representatives to ask how early posters may be set up. Puls suggested finding a sponsor for the session so that food and beverages can be served. He agreed to call John Vogan to ask about sponsorship. Another conference call participant agreed to contact some Battelle representatives to determine whether they are interested in paying for refreshments.

Activities Planned for February 17, 2000

ERG said that meeting room space is available during the morning of February 17, 2000; therefore, the Action Team can hold additional presentations and discussion sessions if they want to. Puls said that he was not sure whether additional presentations will be needed. Also, he said, holding presentations in the morning might conflict with the Action Team's field trip to the Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS). Puls said that CCAS representatives have agreed to send a bus to the Hilton Melbourne Airport on February 17, to shuttle Action Team members to CCAS, to show a video and give some presentations, and to allow Action Team members to visit two reactive barriers. Puls was not sure at what time the field trip will begin.

Other Activities Scheduled Around the PRB Action Team Meeting

Puls noted that two meetings are scheduled to take place at the Hilton Melbourne Airport on February 15, 2000. The first meeting, which will start at 4:00PM and end at 6:00PM, will discuss efforts to evaluate the long-term performance of PRBs. (This meeting will not be open to the general Action Team membership. Only those investigators who are intimately involved with this specific project will be in attendance.) The second meeting, which will start at 6:00PM, will be for the PRB Action Team Steering Committee.

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS

One conference call participant said that a PRB wall is being installed at one of NASA's sites; this wall, which will cost about $6 million to install, will be about 4,000 feet long.

Puls said that several new reactive barriers were recently installed in Germany.

ACTION ITEMS

• Several potential speakers have been identified for the PRB Action Team's February 2000 meeting. Puls agreed to contact some of them to get clarification on their presentation topics. (For example, Puls said that he will contact Debra Reinhart and Sandra Wood to determine whether their topics relate to the meeting's main theme. He also agreed to gather more information on the presentations that have been suggested for Department of Energy sites; Puls wants to make sure that speakers do not present redundant information.)
• One conference call participant said that he will ask a representative from a Kansas site to give a presentation at the Action Team's meeting. Another participant said that he will talk to Stan Morrison about finding someone to talk about the Monticello site.
• Puls said that he will create a preliminary agenda for the Action Team meeting. He agreed to send the agenda to ERG by December 8, 1999. ERG will then distribute the agenda to Steering Committee members and ask them to provide comments to Puls by December 10, 1999. Assuming that this schedule can be kept, ERG agreed to distribute the agenda, along with a formal meeting invitation, to all PRB Action Team members during the week of December 13, 1999.
• A poster session will be held at night on the first day of the Action Team's meeting. Liang suggested setting up the posters early in the day. ERG agreed to contact hotel representatives to ask how early posters may be set up.
• Conference call participants said that a sponsor needs to be identified to pay for refreshments at the Action Team's poster session. Puls agreed to call John Vogan to ask about sponsorship. Another conference call participant agreed to contact some Battelle representatives to determine whether they are interested in paying for refreshments.

1. Peter Kjeldsen, Baohua Gu, Arun Gavaskar, and Shawn Benner have proposed presentations that focus on hydrology. Jeff Cange, Lee et al., Tom Krug, Annie Godfrey, Grant Anderson, Will Goldberg, Hermann Schad, and Lee Matheson have proposed presentations that focus on lessons learned/installation issues. More than one speaker plans to talk about Department of Energy sites; Puls agreed to contact the speakers to make sure presentations will not offer redundant information.

2. The speakers who have proposed these presentations are Debra Reinhart, John Fruchter, Sandra Wood, and a representative from the Ground-Water Remediation Technologies Analysis Center (GWRTAC).