MANAGEMENT AND REMEDIATION OF WOOD WASTE IMPACTED SEDIMENTS AT AQUATIC CLEANUP SITES IN WASHINGTON STATE: LESSONS LEARNED AFTER 20 YEARS OF CLEANUP

摘要

The timber industry in Washington State has played an important role in the state’s economic and industrial development, with mills producing pulp, paper, plywood and other timber products. The state’s waterways provided the most economical means to transport and store timber, resulting in the accumulation of harmful wood waste in or near productive littoral zones. Unlike traditional contaminants there is rarely a simple metric that accurately characterizes harmful effects due to the inherent natural variability of wood waste deposits. Through the cleanup of multiple sites Ecology has been able to further refine the understanding of several wood waste issues such as what volume of wood waste is harmful to the benthic environment, what are the tools and methods that best define the extent and environmental impacts depending on the age and origin of the wood waste and how to correlate conventional chemistry results with bioassay results.