Hazardous Materials in the Hydrologic Environment The Role of Research by the U.S. Geological Survey (1996) / Chapter Skim
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2 Overview of the Federal Effort in Hazardous Material Regulation and Remediation
2 Overview of the Federal Effort in Hazardous Material Regulation and Remediation
Pages 8-22
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From page 8... ...
The primary role of the USGS in reducing public risks associated with hazardous materials is to provide scientific support, primarily to other agencies. As the nation's leading geoscience agency, the USGS provides analyses of Me fate and transport of hazardous substances through natural environments Eat are crucial to assessing risks and devising remediation strategies.
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From page 9... ...
This act, of course, has its roots in the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the initial federal legislation regarding water quality control, which defined the federal role concerning water quality monitoring and research. Public concern over hazardous substances increased throughout the late 1970s and early 198Os as the Love Canal incident became national news and policymakers began to confront the technical complexities of regulating these substances (Barke, 19884.
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From page 10... ...
The report concluded that areas related to ground water consistently ranked medium or low in terms of the relative risk they pose to human health and the environment. The report found that active hazardous waste sites ranked relatively high in cancer risks but relatively low in non-cancer human health risks and ecological effects.
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From page 11... ...
The report furler concluded that RCRA sites, Superfund sites, underground storage tanks, and municipal non-hazardous waste sites were among areas of high EPA effort but relatively medium or low risk (Environmental Protection Agency, 1990~. Methods for evaluating risks posed by environmental contamination also began to change significantly in the late 1980s.
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From page 12... ...
The main investigative approaches involve carefully controlled field and laboratory experiments, and sensitivity analyses with mathematical models. Returning again to the study of dispersion, examples of research on process discovery include the many laboratory experiexperiments designed to establish "characteristic" values of dispersion lengths for different types of media, and field studies to quantify correlation structures that give rise to macro-scale dispersion.
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From page 13... ...
The study of coupled flow processes (complex problems where, for example, mass transport depends upon fluid flow and fluid flow depends upon mass transport) , however, remains at the process discovery stage and will require extensive research to sort out a large array of complex effects.
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From page 14... ...
Nuclear Waste Hydrology Program, Department of Defense Environmental Contamination Program. Note: The values for the Federal-State Cooperative Program are estimated by assuming that approximately 14 percent of the total FederalState budget, He future reported by Gilbert et al.
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From page 15... ...
By this latter definition, research constitutes a relatively small proportion of the activities of the Water Resources Division. Activities related to hazardous materials science and technology that concentrate almost exclusively on research are found mainly in the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program, which involves researchers in USGS district offices and the national centers.
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From page 16... ...
Mallard, USGS, Reston, VA. many projects under Me Federal-State Cooperative Program that have a substantial research component.
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From page 17... ...
Programs of Be USGS related to hazardous materials science and technology are dominated by field studies that have as their goal the discovery and description of surface and ground water flow and mass transport processes. This focus is understandable, given the historical roots of research within the Water Resources Division, and the distributed character of the organization where many researchers work in district offices.
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From page 18... ...
Clearly, the assessment of what research will be most important in the next decade depends upon the selection of rational criteria that might serve to identify critical research. To a large extent, the "consumer" of the research determines the prioritization of research foci or areas.
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From page 19... ...
Critical research also may advance specific goals or missions of the agency, or the public and political perception of what the agency mission is all about. To date, individual researchers within the hazardous waste programs bear the major responsibility for determining the direction and focus of future studies.
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From page 20... ...
FROM PROCESS DISCOVERY TO APPLICATION: TElE ROLE OF THE USGS As pointed out above, the research programs of the USGS related to hazardous materials are focused on studies of surface and ground water flow and mass transport processes. The endpoints for this research the applications are: i)
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From page 21... ...
Ironically, laws passed between 1952 and 1977 to control air and water pollution caused many industries and municipalities to turn to land disposal for wastes, an action that has contributed to some of the most difficult problems of ground water and soil contamination now faced. Estimates of the number of contaminated sites in the United States range in the hundreds of thousands, with a variety of contaminants present in the soils and ground waters.
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From page 22... ...
; and 3) improvements in the way information gained from scientific studies can be used to reach decisions about appropriate actions in cases where cleanup is likely to be difficult and costly.
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