Field Evaluations of the Quality of Effluent from Confined Dredged Material Disposal Areas. Long-Term Effects of Dredging Operations Program

摘要

The effluent discharged from confined dredged material areas during filling operations is considered a dredged material discharge under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The Corps of Engineers has recently developed modified elutriate testing procedures for predicting the quality of effluent, to include both dissolved and particle-associated contaminant concentrations. As a part of this effort, field evaluations were conducted at five confined disposal areas to assess the effluent quality and compare field data with laboratory predictions. The comparisons serve to verify the accuracy and precision of the predictive techniques. For all five sites evaluated, the laboratory test adequately predicted the dissolved and particle-associated concentrations of contaminants in the effluent. The predictions were also generally conservative, i.e., higher than the measured field data.