Can the environmental effect of sediment remediation be documented?

Abstract

This is one of the key questions that will be addressed at an international workshop at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, July 6–7th, 2010. After decades of dredging, there is no doubt that society needs sediment remediation to keep our waterways open and offer facilities for our ever increasing shipping activities. However, the environmental benefits from sediment remediation project are not always obvious. Many large remediation projects are presented to the public as important contributions for the improvement of the coastal environment. In retrospective, documenting the environmental improvement has been shown to be challenging. This is partly a result of the lack of appropriate monitoring methods, the time frame of monitoring as well as the remediation methods applied. Many remediation methods will initially result in increased contaminant transport, while the benefits often only emerge after several years. During this period, active diffuse sources can reduce the resolution of long-term monitoring efforts. Experiences from several large-scale projects and field studies form the basis for a workshop organized by the International Network for Sediment Research (INSR). The Leader of INRS, Dr. David Werner at the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University, has taken this initiative in cooperation with the independent, not-for-profit organization Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments (CL:AIRE) in the UK and sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust. Prof. Richard G. Luthy of Stanford University, one of the members of INSR, will speak on “National Research Council (NRC) study report on the effectiveness of dredging at Superfund sites in the USA: Lessons learned and implications and directions for future work.” The workshop further contains 5 sessions which are open for platform and poster presentations: