HGL Sediment Remediation SME Selected as Kickoff Speaker for EPA/SAME Webinar Series

On September 25, 2019, Shane Cherry, P.G., HGL’s Principal Scientist and Subject Matter Expert (SME), served as the kickoff speaker for a new webinar series hosted by EPA and the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) to expand on recent Design and Construction Issues at Hazardous Waste Sites (DCHWS) symposiums. The webinar, held through EPA’s Contaminated Site Clean-Up Information (CLU-IN) website, was a follow-on to Mr. Cherry’s keynote presentation at the November 2018 DCHWS symposium titled Harnessing Natural River Processes to Remediate 120 km of the Big River in Jefferson County, MO. His webinar presentation focused on HGL’s ongoing project for EPA Region 7 at the mining-impacted Big River watershed. Mr. Cherry described an extensive modeling effort completed by HGL using HEC-RAS and HEC-HMS to inform remedial planning and analysis, and he presented some of the innovative remedial technologies under consideration, including sediment traps, bank stabilization, and innovative ways to apply conventional technologies aligned with natural river processes. He also described the pilot testing that HGL has been conducting to determine the effectiveness of several of these technologies.

Mr. Cherry then compared the remedial strategy for the Big River watershed, a large river channel with remote contaminant sources, to HGL’s remedial strategy for the Spring River watershed, a smaller mining-impacted watershed with more dynamic tributary channels and contaminant sources closer to affected streams. By comparing the approaches, Mr. Cherry illustrated how HGL was able to adapt a strategy for a larger site to a smaller one. For additional information about the webinar, please visit the following website: https://clu-in.org/conf/tio/DCHWS1/. The mission of the DCHWS symposiums is to facilitate engagement between government and private sector professionals to address issues affecting hazardous waste site cleanups.