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EPA Announces Experts Selected to Review Computer Model to Study the Housatonic River

Release Date: 03/16/2001
Contact Information: Angela Bonarrigo, EPA Community Affairs, 617-918-1034

BOSTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced the seven members who will serve on the first Peer Review panel for the Housatonic River. The panel will meet on Wednesday, April 25 and Thursday, April 26 at the Cranwell Inn, 55 Lee Road in Lenox, Mass.

The panel is a group of independent experts in the field of modeling. These experts will examine EPA's model predicting the transport and bioaccumulation of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the Housatonic River below where the East and West Branches join. The panel addresses only the science on which decisions are based, not the decisions themselves. The modeling effort is one of the tools EPA will use to decide how to cleanup river sediments and adjacent floodplain soils along this section of the river.

The first step in the modeling effort (the Modeling Framework Design) is part of the extensive work EPA has done to understand the nature and impacts of PCB contamination on the river. The design report, completed by EPA last fall, outlines the agency's proposal for constructing the quantitative model of the fate, transport, and bioaccumulation of PCBs in the Housatonic River. This is the first in a series of modeling documents that will be subjected to peer review.

"We are looking forward to the insights that can be provided by this expert panel on our proposed modeling approach," said Ira Leighton, acting regional administrator of EPA's New England office.

The panel will hold a discussion on the specifics of the model which were posed as questions to the panel when it was created. There will be time for comments from observers. To attend the workshop as an observer, register by calling the Marasco Newton Group, Housatonic Peer Review toll-free line: (866) 689-7968; by facsimile at (703) 525-3712; or e-mail at housatonic@marasconewton.com no later than Monday, April 16, 2001. Space is limited, and reservations will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The Peer Review panel members are:

Eric Adams, Ph.D., Senior Research Engineer, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Frank Bohlen, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, Connecticut.

Doug Endicott, P.E., Environmental Engineer, Great Lakes Environmental Center, Traverse City, Michigan.

Marcelo Garcia, Ph.D., Director, Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois.

Wilbert Lick, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California.

John List, Ph.D., President, Flow Science, Pasadena, California; Professor Emeritus of Environmental Engineering Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

Peter Shanahan, Ph.D., President, HydroAnalysis, Inc., Acton, Massachusetts.

The full text of the peer review charge, the Modeling Framework Design (MFD), and related documents, including external comments on the MFD received during the comment period are available on the EPA's web site at: www.epa.gov/region01/ge.

Other experts will be selected to review the risk assessment studies being undertaken by the agency to evaluate cleanup options for the river.