ENV-96-155 TOWARD EFFECTIVE ECOLOGICAL RISK-MANAGEMENT OF REFINERY CORRECTIVE ACTION

Description:

Remediation of complex industrial sites, such as refineries, for ecological purposes can be unnecessarily costly, if cleanup standards disregard regional or local background conditions and the relative quality of on-site ecological habitats. Ecological habitats in urban industrial areas are often degraded due to decades of human activity and landscape alteration. Remediation beyond background levels to high-quality habitat conditions, therefore, may not be reasonable. Conventional ecological risk assessment (BRA) approaches axe not always well suited for cleanup decision making at complex industrial sites. At the screening level, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA)-type ERAS may focus on hypothetical chemical risk, assuming frequent exposures within diverse and undisturbed ecosystems, rather than actual exposures that may be less significant given industrial and disturbed area conditions. Chemical risk is based on laboratory-derived toxicity benchmarks that may not be very meaningful at actual sites. In addition, conventional methods offer little guidance as to how to use chemical risk information to make timely and effective risk management decisions. Likewise, these methods for estimating chemical risk are of limited practical value when trying to take current and future land use considerations into account.