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

11:30 a.m.-12:30 a.m.
September 12, 2003

On September 12, 2003, the following members of the Remediation Technologies Development Forum's (RTDF's) Sediments Remediation Action Team met in a conference call:

Nancy Grosso, DuPont (Action Team Co-chair)
John Davis, The Dow Chemical Company
Kelly Madalinski, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Christine Hartnett of ERG was also present.

THE NEXT SEDIMENTS REMEDIATION ACTION TEAM MEETING

The conference call participants talked about holding the next Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting on December 9 and 10, 2003, in Baltimore, Maryland. After much discussion, they agreed to postpone the meeting for a couple of months. John Davis agreed to e-mail a list of proposed meeting dates to the Action Team leadership over the next week.

Call participants discussed the agenda for the meeting, and agreed that the following should be covered:

• EPA updates. Kelly Madalinski said that his colleagues are willing to provide information on a number of EPA initiatives, including the Agency's effort to develop a sediments-related guidance document, the Agency's ongoing remedy effectiveness review, and activities that have been performed by the Commission's Technical Advisory Group (CTAG). He guessed that the updates would take about 1½ to 2 hours. Davis and Nancy Grosso expressed particular interest in the remedy effectiveness review, noting that it would be useful to know what the Agency has done so far, where it is headed, and whether it would like to seek input from a forum like the RTDF.



• RTDF updates. Several subgroups and work teams have formed within the Sediments Remediation Action Team. These groups will be given an opportunity to provide status reports.



• Sediment Management Work Group (SMWG) update. Grosso said that she is willing to provide a 30-minute status report on the SMWG's activities. She will focus the update on topics that will be discussed at SMWG's upcoming fall 2003 meeting: managing uncertainty, selecting assessment and remediation strategies, and addressing concerns about capping remedies.



• Treatment technologies. Call participants agreed that the meeting's main focus should be on active in situ treatment technologies. They advised selecting speakers based on their ability to provide useful information relating to this topic. Call participants identified eight potential speakers, many of whom are serving as the Principal Investigators under the Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation Program, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, or the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. People working outside these programs (e.g., Louisiana State University's Danny Reible, Golder Associates' Brian Senefelder, and the Great Lakes National Program Office's Scott Cieniawski) were also identified as potential speakers. Call participants talked about the types of technologies that might be discussed at the meeting, noting that some of them have exhibited poor results in recent years. This prompted them to ask: Should the Action Team make an effort to exclude technologies that are rumored to yield poor results? Davis said that he thinks it is important to inform the public about negative results. In fact, he recommended using the meeting as a forum to evaluate technologies and release conclusions. At the end of the meeting, he proposed, a work group could be formed to perform a technical review and write conclusions about the efficacy of different technologies. Davis said that information of this sort would be useful to the public. Grosso agreed.

ACTION ITEMS

In an effort to plan the next RTDF Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting, call participants agreed to do the following:

• Davis agreed to take the lead in identifying potential meeting dates. He will peruse the Internet to find out when other sediments-related conferences are taking place. With this information in hand, he will send a list of proposed meeting dates to Madalinski, Grosso, Dennis Timberlake, and Ralph Stahl. (Grosso advised eliminating the week of February 2, 2004, noting that an SMWG meeting is already scheduled for that week. She advised honing in on the weeks of January 12 or February 16, 2004.)



• By September 16, 2003, Davis will compile a list of potential speakers and distribute the list to the Action Team leadership for review. Once the team reaches agreement on the list, efforts will be made to contact the speakers and invite them to the meeting.



• Davis will communicate with Cieniawski to gather more information about the Great Lakes National Program Office's reactive capping project.



• Madalinski will continue talking to his colleagues about the EPA updates. He will find out what topics they plan to cover and how much time they will need on the agenda.



• ERG will set up the next Sediments Remediation Action Team conference call for September 22, between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time.