Environmental Effects of Dredging: Wetland Animal Bioassay of Saltwater Dredged Material.

摘要

The Clean Water Act requires that the environmental evaluation of dredged material prior to discharge or impacting the waters of the United States include the effects of disposal on contaminant concentrations through biological processes. This resulted in a need for Corps of Engineers Districts to be able to predict the potential contamination of animals that may be associated with each of these potential disposal alternatives: open-water disposal, upland disposal, and/or wetland creation. The following is a summary of a wetland animal solid-phase bioassay test applied to sediment collected from the waterway at Black Rock Harbor (BRH), Bridgeport, Connecticut. This test procedure was designed to evaluate the potential movement of toxic heavy metals and other contaminants from dredged material placed in a wetland (reduced) environment into sediment-dwelling intertidal invertebrates as a first step that may be used to evaluate contaminant mobility to animals that may colonize the dredged material. No inference on the movement of contaminants through the wetland food web is offered at this time. JMD.