A Comparison of State Ecological Risk Assessment Programs
Loren R. Dunn, Attorney, Riddell Williams P.S., Seattle WA 

Environmental and Ecological Risk Assessment of Large Scale Everglades Restoration Properties
Bob Sorvillo, BEM Systems, Inc.
Bob Kukleski, South Florida Water Management District
Robert Frakes, United States Fish and Wildlife Service

Fuzzy-Rule Based Systems for Risk-Based Decision Making
Venki Uddameri, and M. Kuchanur; Texas A&M University-Kingsville

Approaches to Calculating Media Concentrations for the Assessment of “Bright-Line” Compliance
John H. Samuelian and William R Alsop, AMEC Earth & Environmental

Risk-Based Design of Engineered Barrier at the New Bedford Intermodal Center, New Bedford, MA
Kevin J. Scully, EA Engineering, Science, & Technology, Inc.
Scott Alfonse, City of New Bedford

Dermal Bioavailability of Heavy Metals in Soil

Mohamed S. Abdel-Rahman, Ph.D., Pharmacology and Physiology Department, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Room I-681,      185 South Orange Avenue, P.O. Box 1709, Newark, New Jersey  07101-1709, Tel:  973-972-6568, Email: abdelrms@umdnj.edu
Gloria A. Skowronski, Ph.D., Pharmacology and Physiology Department, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,New Jersey Medical School, Room I-624, 185 South Orange Avenue, P.O. Box 1709, Newark, New Jersey  07101-1709, Tel: 973-972-6690, Email: skowroga@umdnj.edu
Rita M. Turkall, Ph.D., Pharmacology and Physiology Department, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Room I-683, 185 South Orange Avenue, P.O. Box 1709, Newark, New Jersey  07101-1709, Tel: 973-972-5096, Email:  turkalrm@umdnj.edu
and Clinical Laboratory Sciences Department, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Health Related Professions, Room 110, 65 Bergen Street, Newark, New Jersey  07107-3001, Tel: 973-972-5577, Email:  turkalrm@umdnj.edu

There are numerous possibilities for exposure to soil contaminated with heavy metals at hazardous waste sites, industrial facilities and in the community.  It has been the practice to estimate the potential health risk from such exposures on the basis of the quantity of metal which can be removed from soil by rigorous extraction procedures.  However, this approach may overestimate risk since it ignores complex interactions between metals and soil that can result in a reduction in the amount of metal which desorbs from soil and is subsequently absorbed by the body (bioavailability).  The aim of this research was to examine the dermal bioavailability of arsenic, mercury, and nickel, respectively, as arsenic acid, mercuric chloride, and nickel chloride.  The derived data can then be used to make more accurate assessments of health risk following exposure to heavy metal contaminated soil.  In vitro flow-through diffusion cell studies were performed utilizing dermatomed male pig skin and radioactive heavy metal compounds.  The amount of radioactivity was measured which penetrated skin into receptor fluid and also remained in skin following decontamination. Since the metals can potentially diffuse into the systemic circulation with time, total penetration was calculated as the sum of each metal in receptor fluid and skin.  For all treatments (pure, newly contaminated soil, and aged in soil), less than 0.5% of the dose penetrated skin into receptor fluid while skin represented the majority of the total penetration.  For the newly contaminated soil, the total penetration of arsenic and nickel was reduced by 78-87% versus the pure metallic compounds, but mercury was reduced by only 40%.  After three months in soil, the total penetration of all of the metals was decreased by 95-97%. The results indicate that the health risk from metal exposure can be significantly reduced by aging in soil. (Supported through funding from the Hazardous Substance Management Research Center and the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology).

A Comparison of State Ecological Risk Assessment Programs

Loren R. Dunn, Attorney, Riddell Williams P.S., 1001 4th Avenue Plaza, Suite 4500, Seattle WA  98154 Tel: 206-624-3600, Fax: 206-389-1708, Email:  ldunn@riddellwilliams.com

Washington state adopted a comprehensive regulatory program governing its use of ecological risk assessments for upland sites in February, 2001.  At the time it was conceived, the Washington program was one of the most advanced programs in the country.  While it is too early to tell how much impact the program has had in Washington, early indications are that it is working, as anticipated, to sort out of the process those sites where detailed eco-risk study is not necessary.  The record on successful use of eco-risk assessments is not yet clear.

Experiences at EPA, and for other states that have experimented with ecological risk assessment programs, have not been uniformly good.  Often such programs have gotten bogged down due to a lack of clarity in the goals of the programs, an ineffective mechanism for sorting sites out of the process, or a failure to examine the question of the ecological protectiveness of proposed remedies.  This paper examines the causes of those failures, in light of the apparent success of the Washington program.  It also identifies the key areas where more work will be needed to make eco-risk assessments a useful and productive tool for site remediation, including its impact on rapidly growing efforts by natural resource trustees, in the pacific northwest and elsewhere, to secure recovery for losses to biological resource productivity, including in the context of endangered species listings and protection programs.

Environmental and Ecological Risk Assessment of Large Scale Everglades Restoration Properties

Bob Sorvillo, BEM Systems, Inc., 930 Woodcock Rd., Suite 101, Orlando, FL 32803 , Tel: 407-894-9900, Fax: 407-894-1089
Bob Kukleski, South Florida Water Management District, 3932 RCA Boulevard, Suite 3210, North Palm Beach, FL, Tel: 561-625-5157, Fax: 561-691-8540
Robert Frakes, Ph.D., United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 1339 20^th Street, Vero Beach, FL 32960, Tel: 772-562-3909 ext. 242, Fax: 772-562-4288

As part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program (CERP), the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is acquiring large tracts of land that will be utilized as stormwater treatment areas, water storage reservoirs, and other components of the CERP. BEM Systems, Inc. (BEM) and the SFWMD have developed methodologies to conduct the pre-acquisition environmental assessments necessary to determine if the properties can be utilized for their proposed future land use. BEM and the SFWMD have modified the typical property acquisition Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs) and coupled them with ecological risk assessments (ERAs) to assess the potential risk associated with flooding the property.  These methodologies have been utilized on properties ranging from 2,000 acres (St. Lucie County citrus groves) to over 20,000 acres (Allapattah Ranch) with land uses including former and active citrus groves, cattle ranches, agricultural farms, and industrial facilities.  As a result of the former and current land uses, environmental media at the properties have been impacted with residual pesticide, metal, and petroleum contamination. The development of the methodology, project review and approval have been conducted in coordination with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).  The USFWS has responsibility for protection of Federal trust resources under the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.  As such, USFWS has requested the additional soil analyses, bioassays, and ERA work in conjunction with CERP projects.

Fuzzy-Rule Based Systems for Risk-Based Decision Making

Venki Uddameri, Ph.D. and M. Kuchanur; Department of Environmental Engineering, MSC 213; Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Kingsville, TX 78363. Ph: 361-593-2742; Fax: 361-593-2069, Email: vuddameri@tamuk.edu

The successful application of risk-based decision making protocols hinges on how exposure via multiple pathways and associated risks are quantified and communicated to all the stakeholders involved in the project.  Significant advances have been made in recent years with regards to understanding the pertinent fate and transport processes and developing innovative strategies for assessing exposure and risks.  However, the communication of these results still poses a significant problem at many sites. The challenge in communicating modeling results and analysis is greatly exacerbated as stakeholders often possess diverse educational background, values and interests and many times are not fully conversant with the scientific underpinnings and uncertainties associated with fate and transport modeling and risk-based decision making process.  Knowledge management paradigms indicate that effectual decision-making is successfully achieved when all the stakeholders possess pertinent knowledge underlying the processes.  Information technologies and artificial intelligence techniques are seen to provide a suite of useful tools that can be used for effective risk-based decision making.  One such technique, namely the fuzzy rule-based decision making, could be especially useful as this technique can incorporate the often conflicting preferences of various decision-makers and result in linguistic representation of the outputs that are easy and intuitive to understand.  This study will demonstrate how fuzzy rule based modeling can be used to in the risk-based decision making process to obtain exposure and risk estimated and also to communicate the same.

Approaches to Calculating Media Concentrations for the Assessment of “Bright-Line” Compliance

John H. Samuelian, AMEC Earth & Environmental, 15 Franklin St, Portland, ME  04101, Tel: 207-879-4222, Fax: 207-879-4223
William R Alsop, AMEC Earth & Environmental, 239 Littleton Road, Suite IB, Westford, MA 01886, Tel: 978-692-9090, Fax: 978-692-6633

 “Bright-line” criteria – such as air and water quality standards, media-specific screening values, preliminary remediation goals, or risk-based cleanup goals for soils or sediments – are used to evaluate empirical data for regulatory compliance.  Each of these values has been derived from a specific set of underlying assumptions (e.g., frequency and duration of exposures).  States and federal agencies have different approaches to assessing compliance with these “bright-line” criteria, often varying by media and regulatory program within the same agency.  The comparisons to the “bright-line” may include (1) direct comparison of individual sample results, (2) comparison using different metrics of central tendency (e.g., arithmetic, geometric or harmonic means) of the sample results, and (3) comparison using statistical parameters (e.g., upper confidence limits, tolerance limits, or probability bounds) of the sample results.  The process is further complicated when: (1) composite samples (and not individual samples) are used, (2) when temporal factors are important (such as the “four day average concentration not to be exceeded more than once every three years on average” used in chronic Water Quality Criteria compliance), or (3) when concerns over the spatial representativeness of the data collection are relevant. Using an artificial dataset, we will examine how several different spatial averaging approaches (e.g., spatially-weighted bootstrap, random walk, floating domain averaging), relevant to both human and ecological risk assessment for calculating soil and sediment concentrations, should be assessed against screening values or risk-based cleanup goals.

Risk-Based Design of Engineered Barrier at the New Bedford Intermodal Center, New Bedford MA

Kevin J. Scully, P.G., L.S.P., EA Engineering, Science, & Technology, Inc., 333 Turnpike Road Southborough, MA 01772, Tel: 508-485-2982, Email: Kscully@eaest.com
Scott Alfonse, City of New Bedford, 133 William Street New Bedford, MA 02740, Tel: 508-979-1487, Email: scotta@www.ci.new-bedford.ma.us

The New Bedford Redevelopment Authority (NBRA) has commenced initial steps to redevelop a 32-acre railroad site adjacent to downtown New Bedford into a regional Intermodal Center.  The four main Contaminants of Concern (COC): PCBs, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), and the heavy metals arsenic and lead.

Preliminary cost estimates ($12 million) for excavation and offsite disposal of site COC was deemed to be prohibitively expensive.  The initial estimates for the construction of a site engineered barrier and cap was $4 million.

Due to site grading restrictions for railroad use and requirement to maintain site elevations at boundary rail crossings, stringent Massachusetts Contingency Plan engineered barrier thickness requirements made the optimum use of the rail area problematic. 

EA Engineering, Science, & Technology, Inc (EA) responded to this challenge with a two- pronged approach.  First, EA utilized a focused, iterative, “what if” risk assessment as a design tool to determine the minimum area of the site that required coverage to achieve a level of risk that was acceptable.  Second, EA applied a rigorous statistical comparison site-wide X-ray fluorescence and gas-chromatograph field screening data to a limited EPA data-set of validated confirmatory sample analysis.  The result was a demonstration of strong correlation between the two data sets and a demonstrably positive bias in the field screening data.  EA used these results to justify the risk based design that significantly reduced the area of the site requiring the more stringent MCP engineered barrier.

The result of these two efforts was the justification to reduce a significant portion of the site requiring coverage and a more significant reduction in required thickness across large areas.  These two modifications resulted in a cost saving for engineered barrier/cap construction of over $2,500,000 from initial cost estimates.

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