ITRC Update

By: Frank Camera
Bureau of Environmental Evaluation & Risk Assessment

The Department has been participating on the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Cooperation Workgroup (ITRC), which is made up of representatives from 27 state environmental agencies, USEPA, and other non-regulatory stakeholders. The overall goal of the ITRC is to speed the efficient, safe, and effective cleanup of waste sites by accelerating the regulatory acceptance and commercial use of innovative characterization and remediation technologies. The ITRC believes that this goal can be achieved by improving the interstate and intrastate technology regulatory acceptance process.

This year's efforts will focus on state engagement. Just what is state engagement? The ITRC has defined State Engagement as: "solidifying state commitment to interstate collaboration in evaluating technologies and accepting performance data in an individual state." While it is quite evident how the guidance documents produced by the ITRC can be applied at specific sites, the importance of the broader value of the ITRC should also be stressed. This broader value would be as a forum for states and stakeholders to exchange information, learn from each other, and create and an atmosphere that reinforces the use of innovative technologies.

In New Jersey, state engagement is being implemented in the following manner:

• ITRC presentations are currently being given to the Site Remediation Program staff at Bureau staff meetings. These presentations include an introduction to the ITRC, as well as a brief description of selected products.
  
  
• Through information exchange, site-specific innovative technologies will be matched with ITRC products.

In-Situ Bioremediation Technologies

During the first two years of the ITRC, one of the ongoing work groups has been the In-Situ Bioremediation (ISB) Team. As a result of their work, much information has been compiled on state regulatory practices in approving the use of in-situ bioremediation technologies/methods. This year the Team has worked on adding several guidance documents to the ITRC collection. They include Principles and Practices for Natural Attenuation of Chlorinated Solvents, which is a description of practices to be used to recognize and evaluate the presence of natural attenuation of chlorinated solvent contamination.

Through their work on these documents, the ISB Team has identified a number of other complementary efforts that are being conducted by other organizations. Foremost is the Remedial Technologies Development Forum (RTDF) work in demonstrating natural attenuation at specific sites. The purpose of the RTDF is to identify what government and industry can do together to develop and improve the environmental technologies needed to address their mutual cleanup problems in the safest, most cost-effective manner. The RTDF fosters public and private sector partnerships to undertake the research, development, demonstration, and evaluation efforts needed to achieve common cleanup goals. Currently, the RTDF is demonstrating three technologies at Dover Air Force Base.

Together, the Industrial members of the RTDF - Beak, DOW, Dupont, GE, ICI, Novartis, and Zeneca - have joined with the ITRC to provide extensive training on natural attenuation to states, stakeholders, and the consulting and engineering community. More specifically, the course provides technical briefing on how to identify if natural attenuation is occurring and if it can continue to occur at a specific site.

National experts in the field of biotreatment present the latest developments in natural degradation processes. The physical, chemical and biological mechanisms for degrading chlorinated solvents in groundwater are discussed, as well as tools for the documentation and evaluation of natural attenuation projects based on case studies. The training combines presentation and discussion with "hands on" problem-solving work sessions.

For more information on the ISB Team, please contact Paul Hadley at (916) 324-3823 or Andrew Marinucci, Ph.D. at (609) 984-9784.

For general ITRC information, a web site is accessible at http://www.westgov.org/itrc. In addition, this web site will shortly be linked to the SRP web page. The following DEP-SRP staff can also be contacted: Brian Sogorka at (609) 633-1344, Matt Turner at (609) 984-1742, John Prendergast at (609) 984-9757 or Frank Camera at (609) 633-7840.