HEADLINES
- 5th International SedNet Conference 27th-29th May
2008
- ICPDR joining SedNet
- Joint Danube Survey 2
- SedNet Session at NATO Pilot Study
Meeting
- Pollution of Sediments of the SAVA
River
- Contaminated Dredged Marine Sediments: Developing a
management framework
- 'Living with sediments'
project
- REUSED
- New Publications from DGE
- Call for abstracts
- Upcoming events
5th International
SedNet Conference 27th-29th May 2008
hosted
and co-organised by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo,
Norway
Urban Sediment Management and Port
Redevelopment
In urbanised areas sediments in
rivers, harbours and marine coastal zones are often historically contaminated as
a result of industrial activities, dockyard and harbour operations as well as
discharges of municipal wastewater and urban surface water run-off. These
‘legacies of the past’ complicate the redevelopment of harbour areas and the
waterfront of cities for housing or commercial purposes. A proper sediment
management strategy is required that takes into account environmental risks
associated with the sediments as well as identifying appropriate remediation
options for use in the urban environment. Furthermore, European legislation
increasingly requires the involvement of stakeholders, who may have conflicting
viewpoints and concerns. How to manage such complexity? What challenges with
regard to the management of contaminated sediments have been met and what
experiences gained in port redevelopment cases and urban areas?
This will be
the topic for the 1st and 2nd day of the SedNet
Conference.
Sediment in River Basin Management
Plans
The 3rd day of the
SedNet Conference will be dedicated to the state-of-the-art on sediment
management in river basin management planning. One of the main objectives here
is to encourage presentations from ongoing, major EC projects such as AquaTerra,
Modelkey, RISKBASE etc. Which sediment related results of these projects may (or
should) find their way into river basin management plans or their future
updates?
Also an update will be given of the 4th SedNet Conference on
sediment management as essential element of River Basin Management Plans, which
took place in Venice in 2006. What are recent developments in European River
Basins, are sediments considered in management plans? What are experiences and
challenges? Are there needs towards European policy?
Call for
Abstracts
We would be pleased to receive
abstracts for oral and poster presentations in which case studies, especially
from Scandinavia, will be explicitly welcomed. The SedNet steering group will
select the most appropriate oral presentations that best address the aims of the
conference. Furthermore, the SedNet steering group will invite some key note
speakers.
Please see www.sednet.org for the template for submission
of abstracts by e-mail to the SedNet secretariat:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Abstracts should be
submitted by October
29th, 2007.
The
Programme
Poster sessions will be held
during all days. Oral presentations will be divided into 3 to 4 sessions each
day. The social programme will include an Ice-Breaker at the Viking Ship museum
in Oslo, an excursion to the Oslo Fjord and a Conference dinner. We anticipate
the conference programme to be available by December.
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ICPDR joining
SedNet
The ICPDR (International
Commission for the Protection of the Danube River) is an international
organization consisting of 13 cooperating states and the European Union. Since
its establishment in 1998, it has grown into one of the largest and most active
international bodies engaged in river basin management in Europe. Its activities
relate not only to the Danube River, but also the tributaries and groundwater
resources of the entire Danube River Basin. Recently ICPDR joined as member of
the SedNet Steering Group.
The ultimate goal of the ICPDR is
to implement the Danube River Protection Convention, and make it a “living”
instrument. Its mission is to promote and coordinate sustainable and equitable
water management, including conservation, and improvement and rational use of
waters for the benefit of the Danube River Basin countries and their people. The
ICPDR pursues its mission by making recommendations for the improvement of water
quality, developing mechanisms for flood and accident control, agreeing on
standards for emissions and by assuring that these measures are reflected in the
Contracting Parties’ national legislations and are applied in their policies.
Further to this the Contracting
Parties to the ICPDR agreed that the International Commission should serve as a
common platform for the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive in
the Danube River Basin. Current activities of the ICPDR focus on coordination to
develop the Danube River Basin Management Plan (DRBMP).
Sediments are an integral part of
river basins and play an important role within the river basin management in
terms of their quantity and quality. That is why this issue got high on the
agenda of the ICPDR, and a thorough analysis of the Danube sediment quantity and
quality was agreed to be elaborated for the EU WFD Programme of Measures. In the
Danube countries there is a long-term history of sediment research, however, for
establishing a sound sediment management collection of experience from other
river basins is very helpful. Therefore, joining the SedNet network will surely
be very supportive to the Danube experts for accomplishing an ambitious task of
a basin-wide sediment analysis. On the other hand, experience from such a
complex river basin, as the Danube certainly is, may be valuable for sediment
related activities throughout Europe. The cooperation with SedNet commenced in
2006 when ICPDR took part at the RoundTable discussion in Venice, Italy,
entitled "Sediment Management - an Essential Part of River Basin
Management Plans", where the Danube was
presented as one of the four case-studies. At present, the collaboration of
ICPDR, SedNet and UNESCO is focused on development of a sediment balance for the
Danube River Basin.
ICPDR is represented in SedNet
Steering Group by Dr. Igor Liska, Technical Expert for Water Quality and Water
Management at the ICPDR Secretariat in Vienna.
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Joint Danube Survey
2
The Joint Danube Survey 2 is the
world’s biggest river research expedition in 2007. Its main goal is to produce
highly comparable and reliable information on water quality and pollution for
the entire Danube River and many of its tributaries. The Secretariat of the
International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR)
coordinates the implementation of JDS 2.
Launched on August 14, 2007 from
Regensburg, Germany, the three boats of the JDS2 travel 2,375 km downstream the
Danube River, through 10 countries, to the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine
until late September. A thorough sediment analysis is part of the JDS2
activities. The news of the JDS 2 can be viewed on www.icpdr.org/jds
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SedNet Session at NATO Pilot Study
Meeting
SEDNET representatives offered
four technical presentations on the goals and objectives of the initiative and
some of its technical projects at the fifth and final meeting of the NATO
Science for Peace and Security Pilot Study meeting held in Ljubljana, Slovenia
from June 18-22, 2007. This meeting dealt with the sediment sites as well as
some questions of contamination by persistent organic pollutants (POP’s).
Nineteen technical papers fell under the broad topics of sediment
characterization and sediment remediation. 13 countries gave Tour de Table
presentations–summaries of the state of the development of waste and
contaminated land programs and/or related research in their respective
countries. The United States is the lead country for the Pilot Study, and 16
other countries participated in the meeting.
The purpose of the pilot study
(Prevention and Remediation of Contaminated Soil and Groundwater in Selected
Industrial Sectors) was to explore techniques and technologies for preventing
and avoiding discharges to soil and groundwater as well as measurement and
remediation for a specific industry sector or site type. It sought to engage
industry and other private sector organizations at the transnational level in
sharing and evaluating technical information. In reviewing case studies as well
as experience from the previous NATO pilot study on contaminated land and other
sources, this pilot study strived to assess or benchmark “what is easy to
clean,” “what is difficult to clean,” and “what is impossible, at reasonable
cost, to clean.” The unique contribution of the pilot study is measured by its
ability to synthesize information regarding best practices, successes and
failures, and uncertainties for the sectors of interest.
An agenda for the meeting and a
report containing all abstracts from the meeting will be available on the NATO
website at www.nato.int/science under Nationally Funded Projects.
In addition, a record of all the presentations from this meeting will be
available later in 2007 at www.cluin.org/ljubljana.
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Pollution of Sediments of the SAVA
River
By Radmila
Milačič, Janez Ščančar, Milena Horvat, Ester Heath, Simona Murko, David Kocman,
Tea Zuliani
Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan institute,
Jamova 39, 10000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
http://sarib.net/
The Sava River (945 km) is the
biggest tributary to the Danube River. The 95551 km2 large catchment
is extended over Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. In the
development of the river basin management plan all countries are already
collaborating under the International Commission for the Protection of the
Danube River (ICPDR) guidance. Although the methodological bases for data
collection have been reasonably unified, data on the ecological character of the
river basin, inventory of pollution sources, dangerous substances,
socio-economic parameters, cost and benefit implications have been lacking due
to insufficient financing and recent warfare. Within the 6th FW EU
project: Sava River Basin: Sustainable Use, Management and Protection of
Resources (SARIB) specific tools based on combination of chemical analysis and
biological effect methods have been developed and validated for the estimation
of the pollution of sediments and impact on aquatic biota. Geographical
distribution of pollution was identified and historical trends defined.
Integrated prediction model about the behaviour of hazardous chemical substances
was combined with the socio-economic prediction model to serve as a base for the
elaboration of scenario, remediation measures and best practice techniques.
In order to assess the
geographical distribution and historical trends in sediment contamination of the
Sava River Basin, sediments were analysed in 20 selected sampling sites along
the Sava River from its origin to its outfall into the Danube River. The extent
of pollution was estimated by determination of the total element concentrations
and by the identification of the most hazardous highly mobile element fractions
and anthropogenic inputs of metals to sediments. For comparability of data to
other river basins, the sediment fraction < 63 µm was analysed. To asses the
mobile metal fraction extraction in 0.11 mol L-1 acetic acid was
performed, while anthropogenic inputs of elements were estimated on the basis of
normalization data to aluminium concentration. According to the Water Framework
Directive the following elements were investigated in sediments: mercury,
cadmium, lead and nickel, as well as organotin compounds. Furthermore, copper,
zinc, chromium, arsenic and phosphorous were also analysed.
In addition,
selected persistent organic pollutants (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorinated pesticides) were also
determined in sediments. The choice of pollutants followed the recommendations
of the Water Framework Directive.
Among metals, mercury was found to
be present in elevated concentrations in the sediments of the Sava River
(concentrations in general ranged from 0.2 to 0.6 mg kg-1). Analysis
of total mercury concentrations in sediments along the Sava River indicated that
the concentrations are in general in most of sampling sites exceeded Interim
Sediment Quality Guidelines (ISQG) values. (According to Canadian Sediment
Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life, 1999, ISQG correspond to
the threshold level effects below which adverse biological effects are not
expected). At sampling sites Košutarica and Gradiška (Croatia) and Šabac
(Serbia) total mercury concentrations exceed even probable effect levels (PEL)
values. (According to Canadian Sediment Quality Guidelines for the Protection of
Aquatic Life, 1999, PEL characterize concentrations of pollutants that may
affect the aquatic life).
Results also indicated that the Sava River is
moderately polluted with chromium and nickel in sampling site HE Moste in
Slovenia (basin of the hydroelectric power plant) (185 and 70 mg
kg-1, respectively) and in sampling sites in Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Serbia from Srbac up till Šabac. In the latter locations the
concentrations of total chromium ranged from 170 to 380 mg kg-1, and
for nickel from 80 to 210 mg kg-1. Concentrations of chromium were
higher than those of PEL values. Normalization data to aluminium indicated the
anthropogenic inputs of chromium and nickel in sediments. The origin of
pollution with metals is most probably related to industrial activities.
However, the data of the extraction in 0.11 mol L-1
Phosphorous concentrations in the sediments along
the Sava River tend to increase from origin toward the inflow to the Danube
River. The highest concentrations was observed in the accumulation basin of the
Hydropower plant Vrhovo, Slovenia(1200 mg kg-1) and in agricultural
areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia (about 900 mg
kg-1), most probably due to the use of phosphorous-containing manures
in agriculture. High phosphorous concentrations (about 1000 mg kg-1)
were found also in sampling sites Oborovo (influence of the municipal sewage
system of the Zagreb city) and at sampling point in the center of Belgrade
before Sava merge with Danube River.
Data of the analysis of organotin
compounds (OTC) indicated that sediments of the Sava River are not polluted with
butyltin, phenyltin or octyltin compounds.
PAHs increases downstream Sava
River and peaks around Brčko. Exceeded concentrations of persistent pesticide
p,p-DDT were found in two locations (Galdovo: 2,562 ng g-1 and
Košutarica (1,288 ng g-1). Besides this chlorinated pesticide, HCB
was determined in augmented values in two locations: Šabac (1,101 ng
g-1) and Beograd (90,823 ng g-1), the later one was
present in extremely high concentration. Analyses of PCBs showed no
contamination of the Sava River sediments with these compounds.
acetic acid
showed that the percentage of the easily soluble metal fraction of chromium and
nickel were low (below 0.3 % of total chromium and below 16 % of total nickel,
respectively). Analysis of the easily soluble concentrations of other elements
were in general below 10 %. Exceptions were cadmium (30 – 50 %) and zinc (5 – 40
%). Despite high percentage of the easily soluble cadmium content, these
concentrations do not represent environmental hazard, since the total cadmium
concentrations were low.
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Contaminated Dredged Marine
Sediments: Developing a management framework
In conjunction with The Crown
Estate and Natural England, Defra (the UK Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs) is leading a 3-year initiative to provide a management framework
to address contaminated marine sediments in the UK.
Years of historic
industrialisation at the coast and within the ports of the UK have given rise to
a legacy of pollution and contamination in the bottom sediments, and these pose
both environmental and social risks. Increasingly these sediments need to be
dredged in order to support ever increasing port developments and associated
maritime trade.
The framework will provide stakeholders with guidelines for
the management of contaminated marine sediments in UK waters and
will:
- Promote objective, transparent
assessment of all disposal options and Best Practice Environmental Option (BPEO)
based on the principles of sustainable development (including the polluter pays
principle and the precautionary principle) on a case by case basis.
- Act as a focus for existing work
and good practice (not to duplicate work being done elsewhere e.g. The London
and OSPAR Conventions, PIANC, CEDA etc.) including investigating the need to
promote planning for treating and reusing contaminated dredged material.
- Define a simultaneous and
inclusive consultation process rather than deciding on disposal solutions by
approaching one regulator at a time, and to identify where regulations are
preventing the BPEO being used and highlight examples where flexibility in
regulations allows the common sense approach to prevail.
A Steering Group has been
constituted to oversee the programme. The project is being co-ordinated on
behalf of the sponsors and the Steering Group by Kevin Black of Partrac Ltd. The
6 Tasks, won in open competition, are being undertaken within the
programme.
More information can be found at www.defra.gov.uk/marine/sediment/index.htm.
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‘Living with Sediments’
project
Sediment management: challenges
and solutions
2nd International project meeting held on 10-11 May 2007 in the
Netherlands
The Living with Sediments project
started in 2006 and is sponsored by the research program on water issues, called
’Living with water’. Together with the consortium partners, TNO, the Netherlands
Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, organises the project. The Living
with Sediments project starts from the notion that sediment management has
become a complex issue over the years. With this in mind the Living with
Sediments project aims at approaching the sediment issue from the concept of
sustainable development. The main pillars of the philosophy behind the project
are:
- A system approach that takes the
natural (water, soil, sediment and environmental) and social (regulations,
stakeholders, institutions, etc.) system into account.
- Stakeholder participation;
different stakeholder views on the sediment issue can be identified. These
differences should be recognized and respected and can be used to create joint
solutions.
- Collective knowledge gathering and
development; gathering and developing knowledge based on questions from the
stakeholders creates a shared knowledge base from which the problem can be both
defined and addressed.
In the context of this project an
international exchange of knowledge and experiences about sustainable sediment
management, the system approach, including stakeholder involvement is organised.
In two workshops people (researchers and practitioners) from national cases are
involved and are brought in contact with international experts and practitioners
from the SedNet Community and the USA. The project wants to facilitate the
exchange of knowledge and experiences between researchers, between practitioners
and between researchers and practitioners on an international level, in two
workshops.
The first international workshop
was held on 16-17 November 2006. This workshop focused
on:
- Societal involvement: how to
involve society (the larger citizenry?) in dealing with sediments (this also
concerns stakeholder involvement) what (kind of) knowledge do they need/want and
how do they perceive the sediment issue (this also concerns issues such as
trusting government institutions);
- Regulation concerning sediment, in
what way is regulation constructed? What is the approach towards dealing with
sediments in different countries?
The second workshop was held on
10-11 May 2007. 22 people from 6 different countries participated in this
workshop. The questions addressed and
discussed were:
- what do the project leaders of
sustainable sediment management projects need? (concerning
information, science and skills)
- what are the obstacles in their
projects?
- how can we help
them?
For a full report and the
presentations of both the first and the second workshop please visit
www.levenmetbagger.nl
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REUSED
On June 20-22, 2007, the REUSED
4th European Conference on Contaminated Sediments took place in Antwerp,
Belgium.
The Proceedings from that
Conference are now available for sale for Euro 265,- (incl. VAT). The
Proceedings consist of 16 full written papers on 100 pages divided into subjects
such as Politics, International Experience, Case Stories, Research and
Surveying.
For ordering a copy of the proceedings see www.reused.nl
Several conclusions drawn
after the REUSED Conference:
- Delegates at the 4th European
Conference on Contaminated Sediments in Antwerp formulated some important
conclusions at the end of the Conference.
- The theme of the Conference
"Public-Private Cooperation in Sediment Remediation" was fully supported and
lead to the conclusion that Europe needs more Public-Private cooperation in
tackling the Contaminated Sediments problem. Thereby only efficient assessment
and effective management in a "public-private way" can lead to successful
remediation of contaminated sediments.
- It was found that European
legislation must be better defined where it concerns sediments. There is good
legislation for waste, draft legislation for soil and for water, but where is
the legislation for sediments, especially contaminated sediments? In such
legislation transport of treated or even untreated sediments between European
Countries must also be better arranged.
- Public-Private cooperation works
in some European Countries, such as in the host country Belgium, but it takes
too long and some other countries are not active enough to make use of this
opportunity. Important issues in this respect are standardization of Quality and
Quantity Assessment Methods and European Standards for Monitoring and Aftercare.
They will give clarity when benchmarks are done between the European
Countries.
- The 4th European Contaminated
Sediments Conference was held at the Havenhuis of the Port of Antwerp, main
sponsor of the conference and was organized by the REUSED Foundation of the
Netherlands. The next REUSED conference will be held in Springtime 2008 in
London and will focus on the Remediation of the Olympic Games 2012 Canal
Development Area with support from British Waterways.
More info on: www.reused.nl
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New Publications from DGE
(Dutch-German Exchange on Dredged Material)
Status of
ecotoxicological assessment of sediment and dredged material in
Germany and The
Netherlands
Manz, W., Krebs, F.,
Schipper, C.A. and den Besten, P.J. (Hrsg.)
(2007): DGE Report V.
Download report (eng., pdf, 3 MB).
Status of ecological assessment of
dredging and relocation sites in Germany and The
Netherlands
Leuchs, H., Oosterbaan, J.
and de Jonge, J. (Hrsg.) (2006): DGE Report IV.
Download report (eng., pdf, 1,41 MB).
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Calls for
abstracts
5th
International SedNet Conference 27th-29th May 2008
hosted and co-organised by the
Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo, Norway
Themes: Urban Sediment
Management and Port Redevelopment / Sediment in River Basin Management
Plans
Abstracts for oral and poster presentations in which case studies,
especially from Scandinavia, will be explicitly welcomed.
Please see
www.sednet.org for the template for submission
of abstracts by e-mail to the SedNet secretariat:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Abstracts should be
submitted by October
29th, 2007.
7th
International Symposium on Sediment Quality Assessment
(SQA7)
Harbour, Estuary, and Lake
Assessment and Management, to be held on 28-30 November 2007 in Hong
Kong.
Major scientific themes that will be addressed include: origin,
transport and quantity of sediments; sediment management in lakes and rivers;
estuary and harbour management; risk assessment of contaminated sediments; new
methods and modelling of sediments in changing environment; sediment and water
quality.
Abstracts are welcome – deadline for submission is
September
30th, 2007.
Further info at
www.aehms.org.
CEDA
Dredging Days 2008: Dredging Facing Sustainability, 1-3 October 2008, Antwerp,
Belgium
The conference, organised by
the Belgian Section of CEDA aims to raise a wider awareness of the stakeholders
to the efforts made by the dredging world – sponsors of dredging projects,
dredging contractors, shipyards and consultants - to sustainable development.
Papers are invited on the
following subjects:
- How to tackle sea level rise –
dredging for coastal flood protection;
- Dredging as a key player in the
energy discussion;
- Creating estuarine wetlands –
vital ecosystems for sustainable development;
- Dredging in sensitive areas
-
balancing between socio-economic development and nature conservation
-
improving technology to achieve “no impact”;
- Efforts to reduce emissions in the
dredging industry.
The deadline for submitting
abstracts is December
15th, 2007.
For detailed information
please visit the CEDA Dredging Days website: www.dredgingdays.org
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Upcomming
events
2007:
4-5
October 2007: New Delta Conference – Striking a
new balance between ports and nature, Brussels/Antwerp, Belgium
More info at
www.newdelta.org
11-12
October 2007: RISKBASE WP5 – workshop on risk
management of the soil-water-sediment system at river basin scale, preventive
approaches and policies. Venue: Vienna, Austria. More info at
www.riskbase.info
15-18
October 2007: 23rd Annual International
Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water Analysis, Site Assessment, Fate,
Environmental and Human Risk Assessment, Remediation and Regulation, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. More info at www.UMassSoils.com
23-24
October 2007: Conference Contract Management
for Land Reclamation, London, UK. Organised on behalf of the Central Dredging
Association (CEDA) and the International Association of Dredging Companies
(IADC). Further information at www.dcm-conference.org
7-9
November 2007: CEDA Dredging Days, Conference
and Exhibition “The day after we stop dredging - dredging for infrastructure and
public welfare”; Ahoy' Rotterdam, the Netherlands. More information:
www.dredging.org
12-14
November 2007: Risk Assessment in European River
Basins – State of the Art and Future Challenges, Leipzig, Germany. More info at
www.ufz.de
28-30
November 2007: SQA7 Conference: Harbour,
Estuary, and Lake Assessment and Management, Hong Kong.
Major scientific
themes that will be addressed include: origin, transport and quantity of
sediments; sediment management in lakes and rivers; estuary and harbour
management; risk assessment of contaminated sediments; new methods and modelling
of sediments in changing environment; sediment and water quality.
Further
info at www.aehms.org.
2008:
27-29
May 2008: 5th International SedNet
Conference, hosted and co-organised by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute,
Oslo, Norway.
Urban Sediment Management and Port Redevelopment / Sediment in
River Basin Management Plans. Call for Abstracts: see www.sednet.org
16-21
June 2008: 4th International Conference on
River Restoration, Venice – Italy. Organised by the European Centre for River
Restoration More info at http://www.ecrr.org/conf08.htm
10-12
July 2008: International Symposium on
Sediment Management, Lille – France.
More information can be found at
www.sednet.org.
1-3
October 2008: CEDA Dredging Days 2008: Dredging
Facing Sustainability, Antwerp, Belgium. www.dredgingdays.org
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Next SedNet Newsletter will be
published in December 2007.
SedNet
secretariat:
Mrs. Marjan
Euser
TNO Built Environment and
Geosciences
Laan van Westenenk 501
P.O. Box
342
NL-7300 AH Apeldoorn
The
Netherlands
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