SUMMARY OF THE REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPMENT FORUM
SEDIMENTS REMEDIATION ACTION TEAM
CONFERENCE CALL

2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
August 14, 2002

On August 14, 2002, the following members of the Remediation Technologies Development Forum's (RTDF's) Sediments Remediation Action Team met in a conference call:

Nancy Grosso, DuPont Corporate Remediation (Action Team Co-chair)
Kelly Madalinski, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Ralph Stahl, DuPont Corporate Remediation

Bruce Duncan of EPA and Christine Hartnett of Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG), were also present.

THE OCTOBER 2002 SEDIMENTS REMEDIATION ACTION TEAM MEETING

The next Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting will be held in Seattle, Washington, on October 29-30, 2002. A variety of topics will be discussed during the meeting, including activities at the Anacostia River, progress that has been made compiling case studies on monitored natural recovery, and efforts that are underway to formulate a sediments management decision framework. In addition, a workshop will be held to discuss ground-water/surface-water interactions. This conference call was held to discuss the workshop's agenda. The following was agreed upon:

• The workshop should have a clear focus. Nancy Grosso asked call participants what they hoped to gain from the workshop. Bruce Duncan suggested setting the following goal: develop a conceptual model that integrates ground-water, surface-water, and sediment systems, and accounts for the dynamic aspects (e.g., temporal and spatial changes) of these systems. If a conceptual model is created, Duncan said, it could be applied to specific sites. Grosso, Kelly Madalinski, and Ralph Stahl expressed interest in this idea.



• A few key questions should be identified. Duncan and Grosso recommended asking workshop presenters to address specific questions. Doing so will ensure that the workshop is focused and that speakers provide relevant information rather than providing a string of disconnected talks. Call participants thought this was a great idea. They agreed to identify questions over the next few weeks and to discuss the matter again on their September 6 conference call. Before leaving the topic, Grosso asked Duncan for an example of the type of information he hopes to gain from the speakers. Duncan expressed interest in learning about tools that are used to evaluate the surface-water/ground-water interface. He also expressed interest in learning about the impact that temporal and spatial changes have on organisms. Information of this type, he said, may provide valuable insight on when and how to perform evaluations.



• Speakers from a variety of disciplines should be asked to participate. Call participants agreed that people from different disciplines are likely to have different ideas about what is most important to consider when evaluating ground-water/surface-water interactions. As a result, they agreed, it would be beneficial to include speakers from a variety of backgrounds.

ACTION ITEMS

• Call participants will do the following in an effort to identify speakers for the Sediments Remediation Action Team:



• Madalinski will contact Dick Willey or representatives from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to speak about diffusion samplers. Madalinski will also ask Dennis Timberlake to contact Bob Lien for a list of potential speakers.



• Grosso will invite Brewster Conant and representatives from USGS (e.g., Thomas Winter) to participate as speakers. She will also contact Danny Reible to find out whether he (or one of his colleagues) can attend the Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting and provide an update on the Anacostia River capping pilot project. Grosso will also contact John Davis to make sure someone from the Natural Recovery Subgroup plans to attend the Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting.



• Duncan said that he is willing to identify speakers for the meeting. He had to leave the call, however, before specific action items could be assigned to him. Grosso expressed interest in having Duncan invite speakers (e.g., Chad Gubala). Duncan will be asked to follow up on this action item.



• Stahl will ask Steve Ells to recommend questions that would be useful to address during the ground-water/surface-water workshop.



• Call participants agreed to communicate via e-mail about progress that has been made in identifying meeting speakers and workshop focus questions.



• Madalinski and ERG will work together to put together a meeting announcement. This will be distributed to the entire Sediments Remediation Action Team during the week of August 19, 2002.



• ERG will set up the next Sediments Remediation Action Team conference call for September 6, 2002, between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Call participants will identify the workshop focus questions during this call.