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PCB transport and fate modeling at New Bedford Harbor, MA
Citation:
Hayter, E., L. Burkhard, K. Gustavson, J. Smith, J. Gailani, Elainet Stanley, D. Lederer, AND E. Iorio. PCB transport and fate modeling at New Bedford Harbor, MA. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The U.S. Army Engineer New England District (NAE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Region 1 requested that the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Environmental Laboratory (EL) perform a numerical modeling study for the purpose of developing a PCB transport and fate model that will allow multi-decade evaluation of the selected post-remediation scenario in New Bedford Harbor (NBH). A detailed description of the modeling study (including a description of the numerical models used in this study) that was performed to accomplish these two tasks is given in this report.
Description:
The post-remediation scenario selected by USEPA was constructed in the LTFATE modeling system that was used to perform this modeling study as follows: a) The bathymetry in the NBH portion of the model domain was updated using the latest bathymetric survey provided by EPA; b) In the Upper harbor, the concentration of total PCBs in the bottom sediment in the subtidal and mudflat areas was set equal to 10 ppm; c) In the Outer harbor, the concentration of total PCBs in the bottom sediment was set equal to 1 ppm; d) The sediment PCB initial concentrations in the nonremediated areas of NBH was re-interpreted using the 2014 LTM PCB data provided by EPA; e) In the Lower Harbor, the PCB bed concentrations was set to 15 ppm in the areas where dredging has been performed and 8 ppm everywhere else; f) The concentration of total PCBs in the lower harbor CAD cell (LHCC) capping material was set equal to 1 ppm.