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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1989. Contaminated Marine Sediments: Assessment and Remediation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1412.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1989. Contaminated Marine Sediments: Assessment and Remediation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1412.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1989. Contaminated Marine Sediments: Assessment and Remediation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1412.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1989. Contaminated Marine Sediments: Assessment and Remediation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1412.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

CONTAMINATED MARINE S ED IMENTS - - AS S ES SMENT AND REMED TAT ION Committee on Contaminated Marine Sediments Marine Board Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems National Research Council 1989 National Academy Press Washington, D. C. r

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the panel responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress In 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Frank Press is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Robert M. White is president of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Samuel 0. Thier is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Frank Press and Dr. Robert M. White are chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council. The program described in this report is supported by Cooperative Agreement No . 14- 12 -0001 - 30416 between the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Academy of Sciences. Library of Congress Catalog Card Ht~-her 89-62967 International Standard Book No - her 0-309-04095-7 Additional copies of this report: are available from: National Academy Press 2101 Constitution Avenue, BW Washington, DC 20418 S029 Printed in the United States of America F=tPnnang,O~dxr1989 S=x~dPnn~ng,Novam~rl990

COMMITTEE ON CONTAMINATED MARINE SEDIMENTS KENNETH S. KAMLET, Chairman, Senior Program Manager, A.T. Kearney, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia WILLIAM J. ADAMS, Associate Fellow, Monsanto Company, St. Louis, Missouri A. KARIM ARMED, Environ Corp., Princeton, New Jersey HENRY J. BOKUNIEWICZ, Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Stony Brook THOMAS A. GRIGALUNAS, Department of Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island, Kingston JOHN B. HERBICH, Civil Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station ROBERT J. HUGGETT, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point HOWARD L. SANDERS, Scientist Emeritus, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts JAMES M. THORNTON, Department of Ecology, State of Washington, Olympia S taff CELIA Y. CHEN, Staff Officer ANDREA CORELL, Editor DELPHINE D. GLAZE, Administrative Secretary . · .

MARINE _ _ SIDNEY WALLACE, Chairman, Hill, Betts and Nash, Washington, D.C. BRIAN J. WATT, Vice-Chairman , TECHSAVANT, Inc., Kingston, Texas ROGER D. ANDERSON, Cox's Wholesale Seafood, Inc., Tampa, Florida ROBERT G. BEA, NAE, University of California, Berkeley JAMES M. BROADUS III, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution F. PAT DUNN, Shell Oil Company, Houston, Texas LARRY L. GENTRY, Lockheed Advanced Marine Systems, Sunnyvale, California DANA R. KESTER, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island JUDITH T. KILDOW, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts WARREN LEBACK, Puerto Rico Marine Management, Inc., Elizabeth, New Jersey BERNARD LE MEHAUTE, University of Miami, Florida WILLIAM R. MURDEN, NAE, Murden Marine, Ltd., Alexandria, Virginia EUGENE K. PENTIMONTI, American President Lines, Ltd., Oakland, California JOSEPH D. PORRICELLI, ECO, Inc., Annapolis, Maryland JERRY R. SCHUBEL, State University of New York, Stony Brook RICHARD J. SEYMOUR, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California ROBERT N. STEINER, Atlantic Container Line, New York, New York EDWARD WENK, JR., NAE, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Staff CHARLES A. BOOKMAN, Director DONALD W. PERKINS, Associate Director CELIA Y. CHEN, Program Officer (through July 1988) SUSAN GARBINI, Program Officer ALEXANDER B. STAVE Program Officer DORIS C. HOLMES, Staff Associate AURORE BLECK, Administrative Secretary DELPHINE D. GLAZE, Administrative Secretary GLORIA B. GREEN, Senior Secretary CARLA D. MOORE, Senior Secretary iv

PREFACE The problem of contaminated marine sediments has emerged as an environmental issue of national importance. The pervasive and widespread nature of the problem has resulted from decades of using coastal waters intentionally or unintentionally for waste disposal. Harbor areas in particular have been found to contain high levels of contaminants in bottom sediments due to wastes from urban, industrial, and riverine sources, as well as navigation. Legislative authority for the management of contaminated marine sediments falls largely under three statutes: the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA), and the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986, is aimed at the clean-up and remediation of inactive or abandoned hazardous waste sites, regardless of location. Superfund sites are currently ranked by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on the hazard they may pose to human health and the environment via releases to ~r~r.~+ ~ ~ - As At ^~ m; ~ ~~V~W~-G`' =~= We ~11~ Aft- Underwater accumulations of hazardous wastes in marine environments are unlikely to threaten human health except by way of food chain exposure, which is not currently addressed in EPA's hazard-ranking process. Under the 1986 Superfund amendments, however, EPA was required to modify its Hazard Ranking System to address " the damage to natural resources which may affect the human food chain and which is associated with any release (of a hazardous substance)" (Section 105(a)~2~. It is likely, therefore, that once this amendment is there will be a s ignif icant increase in the number of "underwater Superfund sites" in both coastal and inland areas. Meanwhile, the Clean Water Act of 197(), as amended by the Water Quality Act of 1987, gives EPA lead responsibility for safeguarding the quality of U.S. coastal and inland waters. This includes regulating the disposal of dredged and fill materials (shared with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under Section 404), and removing in-place toxic pollutants in harbors and navigable waterways (under Section 115~. The 1987 amendments added new authorities requiring EPA to study and conduct projects relating to the removal of toxic pollutants from Great v

Lakes bottom sediments (Section 118(c)(3)); and to identify and implement individual control strategies to reduce toxic pollutant inputs into contaminated waterway segments (Section 304~1~. In response to Title II of the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (PL 92-532) and the National Ocean Pollution Planning Act, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Marine Pollution Assessment conducts comprehensive interdisciplinary assessments of the effects of human activities on estuarine and coastal environments. Among these assessment activities is the National Status and Trends Program (NST), which attempts to create, maintain, and assess a long-term record of contaminant concentrations and biological responses to contamination in the coastal and estuarine waters of the United States. This assessment provides some insight into the extent of contamination nationally. As a result of legislative responsibility and programmatic interests, a wide variety of federal agencies have shown active interest in this subject. EPA's responsibilities under Superfund and the CWA are the source of its interests in water quality concerns and remediation of uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) is involved because of its responsibility to dredge and maintain navigable rivers and harbors. The COE also assists in the design and implementation of remedial clean-up actions under Superfund. NOAA has responsibility for assessing the potential threat of Superfund sites to coastal marine resources as a natural resource trustee as well as under its NS&T program. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has legal authority for various endangered coastal species, food chain relationships, and habitat considerations, all of which are potentially impacted by contaminated sediments. The Navy has had experience in assessing contaminated sediments and now must grapple with such problems in locating and maintaining homeports for Navy vessels. In response to this emerging problem, the National Research Council convened the Committee on Contaminated Marine Sediments. The members of the committee were selected for their expertise and to ensure a spectrum of viewpoints. Their expertise spanned the fields of aquatic toxicology, dredging technology, resource economics, sediment dynamics and transport, benthic ecology, environmental law, and public policy. Biographies of committee members appear in Appendix A. Consistent with the policy of the National Research Council, the composition of the committee reflected the competing biases that might accompany expertise vital to the study in an effort to seek balance and fair treatment of the subject. The committee convened a symposium and workshop with invited papers in order to determine the extent and significance of contaminated sediments, review the state of practice of technology for clean-up and remediationm identify and assess alternative management strategies, and identify research and development needs and issues for subsequent technical assessment. The committee agreed that contaminated sediments should not be defined simply on a generic basis or as those sediments containing some level of synthetic chemicals or background substances above normal V1

concentrations due to human activities. If so, all sediments would be defined as contaminated. However, for the sake of this report, the committee believed the following could be used as a working definition: Contaminated sediments are those that contain chemical substances at concentrations which pose a known or suspected environmental or human health threat. The committee also recognized the importance of issues related to ultimate sources of contamination and competing uses of the affected areas; however, these subjects were beyond the scope of this study. The invited papers of the symposium and workshop focused on the extent of contamination nationwide, methods for classification of sediment contamination, risks to human health and the ecosystem, sediment resuspension and contaminant mobilization, remedial strategies and technologies for handling contaminated sediments, and lastly, five case studies of the different ways in which a variety of sediment contamination problems are being handled. They included the PCB problem in New Bedford Harbor, Massachusetts; PCBs in the upper Hudson River, New York; kepone contamination of the James River, Virginia; the variety of chemicals contaminating Commencement Bay, Washington; and the Navy Homeport Project in Everett Bay, Washington. The committee met three times, including once after the two and one-half day symposium and workshop in Tampa, Florida. The symposium lasted one and a half days, during which presentations of invited papers were made. The subsequent one-day workshop was composed of two consecutive work groups. The first one discussed the extent, classification, and significance of contaminated sediments, and the resuspension of sediments. The second work group discussed the selection of management strategies and remedial technologies for handling contaminated sediments and the case studies exemplifying marine sediment contamination problems and their remediation. This report is in part a proceedings of the symposium and workshop. It contains all of the invited papers and a summary of the deliberations of the work groups. It also contains a discussion of the major findings and recommendations of the committee with regard to the issues covered in the meeting. The entire report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors, but only the summary and workshop reports have been subjected to the report review criteria established by the National Research Council's Report Review Committee. The papers have been reviewed for factual correctness. nil

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The committee would like to express its gratitude to a number of individuals whose assistance has been of great benefit in the development of this report. The committee thanks each of the invited speakers whose informative papers were the focus of the symposium and workshop. A special thanks is also extended to Walter Kovalick, Jr., Deputy Director of EPA's Office of Emergency and Remedial Response for his delivery of a stimulating and informative luncheon address. Appreciation is also conveyed to the rapporteurs of each work group, Dr. Michael Palermo of the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station and Dr. Jack Anderson of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, for their assistance in preparing the workshop summaries. The committee also thanks all of the workshop participants (listed in Appendix B) for their participation and valuable remarks during the workshop discussions. Finally, the committee extends its thanks to the government liaison representatives whose participation in the committee meetings, the symposium and workshop, and contributions to this report were invaluable: Robert R. Bersson, Naval Facilities Engineering Command; John Cunningham, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Kim Devonald, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Norman R. Francingues, U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station; David B. Mathis, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Andrew Robertson, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; John Rogers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and, Christopher H. Zarba, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. viii r

CONTENTS Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . Extent of Contamination, 4 Classification Methodologies, 6 Risks to Human Health and the Ecosystem, 10 Mobilization and Resuspension of Contaminants, 12 Contaminated Sediment Management Strategies, 14 Remedial Technologies, 15 Remediation and Source Control: Economic Considerations, 18 Workshop Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Work Group I--Extent, Classification and Significance of Contamination, 20 Work Group II--Assessment and Selection of Remedial Technologies, 28 Case Studies, 34 Presented Papers Extent of Contamination. . . . . . . . . . . . . National Perspective on Sediment Quality, 38 Chistopher Zarba National Status and Trends Program for Marine Environmental Quality, 47 Andrew Robertson and Thomas P. O'Connor Classification of Contaminated Sediments . . . . . . . . . . . . . Use of Apparent Effects Threshold Approach (AET) in Classifying Contaminated Sediments, 64 Robert Barrick, Harry Belier, Scott Becker, and Thomas Ginn The Use of the Sediment Quality Triad in Classification of Sediment Contamination, 78 Edward R. Long A Review of the Data Supporting the Equilibrium Partitioning Approach to Establishing Sediment Quality Criteria, 100 Dominic M. Di Toro ix . 20

Marine Sediment Toxicity Tests, 115 Richard C. Swartz Significance of Contamination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Effects of Contaminated Sediments on Benthic Biota and Communities, 132 K. John Scott Sediment Contamination and Marine Ecosystems: Potential Risks to Human Health, 155 Donald C. Malins Mobilization and Resuspension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Predicting the Dispersion and Fate of Contaminated Marine Sediments, 166 Y. Peter Sheng Computer Simulation of DOT Distribution in Palos Verdes Shelf Sediments, 178 Bruce E. Logan, Robert G. Arnold, and Alex Steele Assessment and Selection of Remedial Technologies. . . . -- Strategies for Disposal of Contaminated . . . 131 . . . . 199 Management _ O_ Sediments, 200 M. R. Palermo, C. R. Lee, and N. R. Francingues Alternatives for Control/Treatment of Contaminated Dredged Material, 221 M. John Cullinane, Jr., Daniel E. Averett, Richard A. Shafer, James W. Male, Clifford L. Truitt, and Mark R. Bradbury Developments in Equipment Designed for Handling of Contaminated Sediments, 239 John B. Herbich Monitoring the Effectiveness of Capping for Isolating Contaminated Sediments, 262 Robert W. Morton Remedial Technologies Used at International Joint Commission Areas of Concern, 280 Ian Orchard Economic Considerations of Managing Contaminated Marine Sediments, 291 Thomas A. Grigalunas and James J. Opaluch Case Studies .................... New Bedford Harbor Superfund Project, 312 Allen J. Ikalainen and Douglas C. Allen Physical Transport Investigations at New Bedford, Massachusetts, 3S1 Allen M. Teeter PCB Pollution in the Upper Hudson River, 365 John E. Sanders x

Contamination of the Hudson River--The Sediment Record, 401 Richard F. Bopp and H . James Simpson Kepone and the James River, 417 Robert J. Huggett Assessment of Contaminated Sediments in Commencement Bay (Puget Sound, Washington), 425 Thomas C. Ginn St. Paul Waterway Remedial Action and Habitat Restoration Project, 440 Jerry K. Ficklin, Don E. Weitkamp, and Ken S. Weiner Dredging and Disposal of Contaminated Marine Sediment for the U.S. Navy Carrier Battlegroup Homeport Project, Everett, Washington, 462 Edward Lukjanowicz, J. Richard Paris, Paul F and Gregory L. Hartman Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Biographies of Committee Members Coastal States Survey, 486 Workshop Participants, 488 Agenda, 491 xi , 483 . Fuglevand, r

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The pervasive, widespread problem of contaminated marine sediments is an environmental issue of national importance, arising from decades of intentionally and unintentionally using coastal waters for waste disposal. This book examines the extent and significance of the problem, reviews clean-up and remediation technologies, assesses alternative management strategies, identifies research and development needs, and presents the committee's major findings and recommendations. Five case studies examine different ways in which a variety of sediment contamination problems are being handled.

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