Project Title: Phosphate-Based Heavy Metal Stabilization Technologies for Contaminated Sediments and Dredge Material
Principal Investigator(s): Dr. Taylor Eighmy, Bradley Crannell, Dr. Clinton Willson, Dr. Danny D. Reible, Ming Yin, Dr. Les Butler, Dr. Frank Cartledge

Accomplishments
Scheduled Tasks:

1. Complete analysis of all sediments and phosphate sources. Including elemental (NAA/XRF) and mineralogical (XRPD) analysis.
2. Annual meeting with project advisory board
3. Finished establishment of the phase 1 tank study at JEL
4. Establishment of the phase 2 and 3 studies at UNH
5. Base-line analysis of phase 1 diffusion profiles at LSU

Progress on Tasks

1. Analysis of all sediments and phosphate sources have been completed including the elemental analysis using NAA/XRF of all of the materials and XRPD analysis of 80% of the sources.
2. The annual board meeting has been rescheduled for January, 2003
3. The construction of phase 1 tank studies have been completed at the Jackson Laboratories. This includes establishment of a constant monitoring of incoming estuarine waters for salinity, redox, pH, conductivity, and temperature.
4. Tanks for the phase two systems along with cooling baths, and pumping systems have been established and test run. Diffusion experiments and amphipod testing will begin during the month of November, 2002.
5. Radiation safety approvals for the phase three systems have been initiated, upon completion of these approvals construction will commence.
6. Base-line analysis of the phase 1 diffusion profiles has been completed. These are the diffusion profiles, which establish a starting point to predict future changes in the sediment chemistry with depth as a result of metal diffusion and the various capping scenarios.
7. A new partnership with LSU and the Environmental Protection Agency has been completed to increase the scope of this project. It is to include one additional contaminated sediment (Anacostia River) in each of the pilot-scale phases to be test against several of the phosphate capping scenarios. The proposal will also be carrying the project further by using the best of our capping procedures in a field trial on the Anacostia River.

Difficulties Encountered
Two of the tank systems at the Jackson laboratories have filtration systems to prevent infaunal colonization. Initially design filtration systems for the tanks were very expensive to operate, so new reusable filtration systems were substituted in the system. Other tanks were receiving a large amount of sediment through the building pump system, therefore, a preliminary settling tank needed to be installed in the tank systems. Thirdly, to answer concerns about the potential for heavy metals escaping back into the great-bay from the experiments, an activated carbon filtration unit has been placed on the effluent.

Anticipated Success in Meeting Project Objectives in Scheduled Project Period
Phase 3 portion of the project remains behind schedule, however, the phase 1 portion of the project is now fully on time. Two work-study students will be assisting with the project this semester and will allow for the project to be brought back onto schedule. It is anticipated that the project will still be completed on time.

Preliminary Results

1. Base line sediment pore-water profiles for the phase 1 experiments have been completed and examples of them are presented in Appendix B. These sample cores were collected 30-days after the tanks were completed and running with estuarine water. This was done so that the sediments would have time to reach an equilibrium with the new environment, but no significant diffusion would have begun. The complete data set is not provided because of the large volume of data collected. The data has shown that distinct pore water concentrations are observable for most of the major cations. Several heavy metals are easily observed in the pore waters of the contaminated sediments including: Cu, Cr, and Zn. Lead was not observable at the current detection limit of 0.05 ppm in any of the pore water samples. Chromium and Cadmium data were only available for a few samples above detection limits. We are actively working with Resource Laboratories of Hampton, NH to achieve lower detection limits for this data. There were no discernable differences at this point between clean sediment capping materials, and phosphate base capping materials. This is to be expected at the beginning of the study. The only exception to this is a slightly elevated level of copper in the phosphate cap material. While this data is extremely useful for geochemical modeling of the sediment and barrier pore waters, diffusion results will be based upon the total metal contents derived from XRF data collection at the CAMD facility.
2. NAA analysis of the two contaminated sediments, two clean sediments, and four phosphate materials has been completed. Detectable metal concentrations of Cr, Cu, Zn, and Ni concentrations are present in the contaminated sediments. Cadmium was below detection limits in both samples. These samples will be reanalyzed with more sensitive techniques to determine the concentrations of Cd present. For most all heavy metal elements of interest, Newtown Creek sediments have significantly higher concentrations than the Anacostia River sediment.
3. The LSU portion of this project primarily consists of utilizing and applying innovative analytical methods to better understand the migration of heavy-metals through the sediment and barrier layers. Preliminary analysis of several samples has been completed at the CAMD facility. These figures are presented in Appendix D. The initial results have indicated that the CAMD facility will be able to detect heavy metal concentrations of Cd, Cu, Cr, Zn, and Pb above background noise levels. Because of the different excitation wavelengths, Pb signals will be obtained in a separate scan and analysis. This means that the cores analyzed at the CAMD facility should not have significant problems with detection limits inside the complex matrixes of the sediment and barrier materials.

Tasks and activities for next reporting period

Tasks for the next reporting period

1. Complete the second sampling of the phase 1 experiments for diffusion profiles.
2. Annual meeting with project advisory board
3. Finished establishment of the phase 2 and phase 3 studies
4. LSU analysis of the phase 1 base-line sediment cores.

Work plan to accomplish tasks

1. The annual advisory board meeting will be held in January at a time that is amenable to all interested parties.
2. The phase 2 portion of the project will be accomplished with the assistance of Envirosystems of Hampton, NH. They will assist primarily with the analysis of the 10-amphipod tests which will conclude each set of break-through experiments.
3. The phase 3 portion of the project will be initiated after the appropriate approvals for using radioactive materials have been completed. To speed this process all non-radioactive equipment and experimental apparatus will be established prior to approval.
4. LSU will be analyzing the initial metal profiles from the phase 1 experiments. This will require close scheduling with the CAMD facility located on the LSU campus.

Concerns or difficulties
Anticipated difficulties during this reporting period are primarily related to catching up from being behind schedule in the phase 3 experiments. This will be accomplished through the use of additional personnel on the project.

Expenditures
Overall expenditures have been within the anticipated range for work accomplished to date. Though more complete chemical analysis for the phase 1 tanks have been conducted increasing the analytical costs significantly. The new partnership with LSU and the EPA has brought significant new assets to help with these costs and the additional labor costs that are being incurred to bring the project back on schedule.