December 12 Event — “Alternatives for Managing the Nation’s Complex Contaminated Groundwater Sites”

by | Dec 7, 2012 | PROTECT Webinar Series

Presenter: Michael Kavanaugh, chair of the report-authoring committee.

Dear PROTECT Community,

You are invited to join a public webinar on Wednesday, December 12 at 1:00pm ET, exploring Alternatives for Managing the Nation’s Complex Contaminated Groundwater Sites, a new report from the National Research Council of the National Academies.

How to Join:
To attend the webinar – you must register here.

For those of you in the Boston area, you are welcoming to attend the webinar in Snell 424 at 1:00pm ET.

Topic Information:
Across the United States, thousands of hazardous waste sites are contaminated with chemicals that prevent the underlying groundwater from meeting drinking water standards. While many sites have been closed over the past 30 years through cleanup programs run by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. EPA, and other state and federal agencies, the remaining caseload is much more difficult to address because the nature of the contamination and subsurface conditions make it difficult to achieve drinking water standards in the affected groundwater. This report estimates that at least 126,000 sites across the U.S. still have contaminated groundwater, and their closure is expected to cost at least $110 billion to $127 billion. About 10 percent of these sites are considered “complex,” meaning restoration is unlikely to be achieved in the next 50 to 100 years due to technological limitations. The central theme of this report is how the nation will deal with the complex hazardous waste sites where contamination remains in place at levels above drinking water standards.

The full NRC report is available for free online.

This study was supported by a contract between the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.