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

9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.
October 29, 2003

On October 29, 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)
Dennis Timberlake, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Action Team Co-chair)
John Davis, The Dow Chemical Company
Kelly Madalinski, EPA

Christine Hartnett of ERG was also present.

THE NEXT SEDIMENTS REMEDIATION ACTION TEAM MEETING

The next Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 18–19, 2003. The meeting will feature a workshop on in situ treatment technologies for contaminated sediments. In addition, speakers will provide updates and discuss general business items that are relevant to the Sediments Remediation Action Team.

Before the conference call, Kelly Madalinski distributed a draft meeting agenda to the Action Team leaders. Call participants thanked him for doing so and used the draft agenda as a launching pad for their discussions. They agreed that the workshop portion of the meeting should consist of formal presentations and roundtable panel discussions. The goal of the latter, call participants agreed, would be to allow consultants and users to provide a critical evaluation of a particular technology. For example, a panel (consisting of representatives from Weiss Associates, Tommy Meyers of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Randy Parker of EPA) could form to discuss experiences gleaned using ElectroChemical GeoOxidation.

Call participants agreed that it would be useful to develop a list of questions for speakers to think about when they are developing presentation materials for the workshop. To start the dialogue on this topic, John Davis distributed a list of proposed questions to the Action Team leaders on October 24, 2003. Call participants said that they liked the questions, but that—depending on the stage of the project—some speakers would be better equipped to answer the questions than others. Nancy Grosso advised adding a few additional questions to the list: (1) How can the technology’s application be expanded? (2) What are the limitations? (3) What recommendations do you have for future work? and (4) What is required to push this technology forward?

REVIEWING THE NATURAL RECOVERY SUBGROUP’S PAPERS

The Natural Recovery Subgroup recently presented papers at a meeting in Venice, Italy. The Subgroup is interested in having these papers reviewed by EPA and posted on the RTDF Web site. Madalinski and Dennis Timberlake suggested setting up a conference call to discuss this idea. Davis said that he would contact Subgroup members to find out when they are available to participate in a conference call with EPA.

ACTION ITEMS

• ERG will sign a contract with a hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, to secure meeting room space and sleeping rooms for the February 2004 Sediments Remediation Action Team meeting.
  
• Madalinski will revise the meeting invitation and send it to ERG. By November 3, 2003, ERG will send the invitation to all of the people on the Action Team’s mailing list.
  
• ERG and Madalinski will work together to ensure that the meeting invitation is advertised through a variety of Web sites.
  
• The Action Team leaders agreed to contact people, invite them to speak at the meeting, and ask each to submit an informal abstract to Madalinski over the next 2 or 3 weeks. The following assignments were given:

  — Madalinski will contact Leah Evison, Steve Ells, Brian Senefelder, Tommy Meyers, Max Haggblom, and Dick Luthy.

  — Grosso will contact Rich DeWan, Ash Jain, Larry McShea, and representatives from Weiss Associates.

  — Davis will contact Peter Adriaens, Jeffery Talley, Kevin Garner, and Danny Reible.

  — Timberlake will contact Randy Parker.

• Madalinski will send call participants a case study that describes a project performed in Charleston, South Carolina. Once the Sediments Remediation Action Team leaders have a chance to review the case study, Madalinski said, they will need to decide whether to invite Craig Zeller to the meeting to discuss this project.
  
• ERG will set up another conference call for the Sediments Remediation Action Team leadership to continue discussion about the upcoming meeting. ERG will set up the call for November 17, 2003, between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
  
• Davis will communicate with members of the Natural Recovery Subgroup to find out when they are available to participate in a conference call. (November 12, November 13, and November 20 were proposed as potential dates.) Davis will communicate the results to Madalinski, who in turn will arrange for the call.