On Monday, June 9, 2003, 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)
Tom Krug, GeoSyntec
Bob Gillham, University of Waterloo
Stephen White, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Also participating in the call were Laurie Stamatatos and Christine Hartnett from ERG.
Call participants discussed the logistics of the next PRB Action Team meeting, which will take place in Canada on October 15 and 16, 2003. Laurie Stamatatos, who had been asked to search for hotels in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario, said that she could not find a hotel large enough to accommodate the meeting. She had, however, been able to find viable hotel options in St. Catherines, the next town over. Bob Gillham and Tom Krug said that St. Catherines would be a suitable location, but that Niagara Falls, Ontario, would be better because it is closer to the U.S. border and easy to get to from the Buffalo airport. Stamatatos agreed to research hotel options in Niagara Falls and report her findings to the PRB Steering Committee. The Steering Committee will make a final decision about the meeting location by June 16, 2003, Bob Puls said; an invitation for the meeting will be distributed by June 23. In addition to advertising the meeting, Puls said, the invitation should ask people to send abstracts to Stephen White if they are interested in presenting posters during the evening of October 15, 2003. An official meeting agenda will be distributed by mid-July 2003.
Call participants discussed the meeting agenda. During a previous call, they noted, the Steering Committee identified the following three topics:
Source zone remediation. Gillham, who agreed to chair this session, has two talks lined up. DuPont will deliver one talk and the University of Waterloo will deliver the other one. Gillham asked for other recommendations. Krug said that GeoSyntec could present information on NASA’s work with emulsified zero-valent iron (ZVI). Puls advised including a paper on efforts that are underway to remediate source zones with dithionite.
Hydraulic effects. John Vidumsky, who agreed to find speakers for this topic, indicated that this session would probably fill one-quarter of a day. He said that one speakerCMichelle Thomson of URS CorporationCis lined up to present a paper on vertical flow effects observed at a PRB site. Vidumsky also said that he has contacted Stan Morrison and John Vogan for speaker recommendations. Stephen White recommended contacting John Moylan as well.
Novel applications. Krug, who will chair this session, plans to line up speakers to talk about (1) biological activity that has been observed with ZVI walls, (2) efforts that have been made to clean up TNT and RDX sites, (3) a project that involves bubbling carbon dioxide into a gravel-filled trench in an effort to address high-pH water, and (4) efforts that have been made to use woodchips or peat as treatment media. Call participants thought these topics sounded interesting. Puls said that he knew of a site where hay is being used, noting that this might be an interesting site to discuss. Vidumsky said that DuPont would be interested in presenting a paper on its work using steel mill slag to treat arsenic in ground water. Gillham recommended contacting David Blowes to find out if he is interested in presenting a paper.
ERG will set up the next PRB Action Team conference call for July 8, 2003, between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
The next PRB Action Team meeting will be held in October 2003 in Canada. The following action items will be executed to plan and advertise the meeting:
ERG will contact hotels in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in an effort to identify a facility that can accommodate the meeting. ERG will report its findings to the PRB Steering Committee.
By June 16, 2003, the Steering Committee will make a final decision about where the meeting will be held.
ERG will prepare a meeting invitation and send it to the Action Team co-chairs for review. The invitation will be sent to the entire Action Team by June 23, 2003.
Those who have been assigned to coordinate the meeting’s thematic sessions will continue identifying speakers for these sessions.
An official meeting agenda will be distributed by mid-July 2003.
Puls will try to get the meeting advertised on the RTDF and CLU-IN sites.
Krug will try to get the meeting advertised on the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program Web site and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Web site.
Vidumsky will contact Matt Turner to find out whether the meeting can be advertised on the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council Web site.
Gillham will let the Solvent Consortium know about the meeting.
Steering Committee members will generate a list of people who should be invited to the meeting. This list will be sent to ERG, which will distribute invitations.
Call participants agreed that it would be nice if a sponsor provided refreshments during coffee breaks and/or the poster session. Gillham agreed to contact one group to find out if they would be interested in sponsoring these events.