Contaminated Sediments - Remediation

The sediments underlying many of our nation’s major waterways are contaminated with toxic pollutants from past industrial activities. Cleaning up contaminated sediments is expensive and technically-challenging. The goal of this project is to assist the user with the identification and selection of a cleanup approach for contaminated sediments. This project produced a Web-based technical and regulatory guidance document, “Remedy Selection for Contaminated Sediments (CS-2), that contains a decision framework to aid the user in identifying the most favorable clean up technologies for a given site with a clear step-wise process that considers site-specific factors. The decision framework and supporting technology overviews of monitored natural recovery, enhanced monitored natural recovery, in situ treatment, capping (conventional and amended), and removal (excavation/dredging) allow the user to understand up-to-date information about each technology, its relationship to the decision framework, and relative performance monitoring parameters. An Internet based training course focused on how to properly implement the guidance has also been provided.