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Beneficial use of dredge material decision tool: RESES project report
Citation:
Williams, K., K. Margeson, S. Paczuski, K. Auker, AND J. Hoffman. Beneficial use of dredge material decision tool: RESES project report. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-20/409, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
The impact of this research is the revision of a decision tool created by Region 5 through collaborative translational research methodologies to achieve their goals: a tool will facilitate collective decisions that demonstrate how dredge can be beneficially used to restore habitats, provide economic benefits, and increase ecosystem services.
Description:
Shipping of goods and commodities is one of the dominant uses of the Great Lakes. Navigation channels in rivers and harbors must be routinely dredged to mandated depths to facilitate this shipping. In practice, there has been a long-term use of open lake disposal or placement in confined disposal facilities. This option is no longer available in some places, requiring new solutions for dredge material placement such as beneficially using the dredge material in habitat restoration or brownfields remediation. To that end, USEPA Region 5 developed a decision-support tool to help communities characterize and quantify the\ economic and social dimensions of beneficially using dredge material so these dimensions can be more easily weighed alongside economic considerations. Region 5 has been working with USEPA Office of Research Development scientists to help refine the tool and enhance usability through conducting a series of workshops with different groups of stakeholders involved in dredging decisions. Based on the results of the workshops and related research efforts, a user-friendly interface was created for the tool and an instruction manual that describes how to use the tool was developed. Furthermore, the tool was refined to better characterize specific types of habitat restoration, decision criteria, and social benefits. This tool will facilitate collective decisions that demonstrate how dredge can be beneficially used to restore habitats, provide economic benefits, and increase ecosystem services.