TOPIC: Environmental Management/Strategy of Urban Sediment Impacted Watersheds in New York/New Jersey Harbor – A Global Analog
LOCATION:
Montclair State University - Center for Environmental and Life Sciences Building - First Floor
1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, NJ, USA 07043
Park in Red Hawk Deck - 5th floor. Parking for four hours is $5.75.
PROGRAM
5:30 Registration & Networking
6:00 Dinner & Business Meeting
7:00 Technical Presentation + Q & A
COST
$30 for members
$10 for student & unemployed members
$40 for non-members
Montclair University Student are free with Valid student ID
Pay at door by cash or check, payable to “AHMP-NJ” – only pre-registered attendees
About the Speaker: Eric Stern is a Research Associate in the MSU School of Science and Mathematics, and the Graduate Program in Environmental Management. His applied interests includes integrated contaminated sediment management, Urban and Regional Sediment Management as it applies to sustainable practices in complex watershed systems and applications of regional sediment processing facilities, beneficial use applications of dredged material and post-treated contaminated sediments, sediment sustainability, development of integrated system approaches to managing contaminated sediments coupled with innovative decontamination treatment technologies (ex and in-situ) and multi-media beneficial use applications. Eric spent 24 years in US Government both with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an Oceanographer/Environmental Scientist and USEPA Regional Contaminated Sediment Program Manager. Eric is also Principal of Environmental Adaptive Strategies (EAS), LLC, a strategic consultancy which focuses on strategic realignment of services based on value added benefits, timely execution and understanding of the regulatory landscape in the sediment and waste management disciplines.
About the Topic: Sediments and their societal relationship to contaminated sediment management can be a complicated paradox.
It may be that the cost and complexity of urban contaminated sediment projects can be daunting and overwhelming to policy makers. Hence, without understanding the linkage between the long-term benefits of sediment management and restoration, they move on to more resolvable and politically rewarding challenges.
Sediment impairments can take decades to mature to regulatory action and a century to environmentally restore. We tend to conceptualize contaminated sediment management in terms of linear objectives: port maintenance, human health and ecological risk, remediation options and beneficial use if applicable. This line of thinking has led to localized scopes seeking single action solutions, having to address competing multiagency objectives, countless studies, litigation over costs and allocation of responsibility, protracted timelines and, consequently, few real successes.
Connections to the larger environmental issues are needed to interest policy and decision makers to facilitate a greater interest with contaminated sediments and how it benefits a multi-disciplinary scientific, stakeholder, corporate investment community to overcome the disconnect of contaminated sediments in urban systems. One may then ask: Is it really about sediments?
