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URBAN RIVER RESTORATION INITIATIVE
| 题名： | URBAN RIVER RESTORATION INITIATIVE |
| 作者： | Elvin R. HEIBERG III |
| 关键词： | URBAN RIVER ; RESTORATION |
| 摘要： | The broadest environmental cleanup program in the United States is called "Superfund". The enabling law is the "Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act" ("CERCLA"). The program has focused since 1980 on major hazardous waste sites. There have been a number of successful cleanups under this massive program. The remedies depend in large part on identifying and assessing penalties against those causing the blighted site conditions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) executes this program, using billions of dollars annually from both the U.S. Treasury and the assessed polluting parties. However, experience has shown that the more complex "Superfund" sites take decades to solve. The "transaction costs" (usually including large legal bills) and delays for the public to realize the cleanup have been extremely great. Polluted rivers, generally in urban areas, have proven to be the most complex of these sites. The pollution has usually occurred continuously since the industrial revolution. Most of the polluters have simply disappeared. A variety of pollutants generally exist in layers and pockets that have grown over the decades, and adjusted by tidal flows, storms, navigation dredging, and so forth. Cleanup dredging of the river bed, or of "hot spots", is often seen as exacerbating the health threats. Adjacent wetlands are often involved, and are considered today as potentially extremely valuable if repaired or restored. Another complication, even where the major polluters have "cleaned up their act" (adjusting to modern legal requirements), many localities still pour "combined sewer overflows" into the affected rivers. Tidal action and floods complicate the difficult restoration task. To solve these river pollution challenges, a new program is taking form: the "Urban River Restoration Initiative" (URRI). The first pilot project is underway in its planning phase for the Passaic River. The Passaic is perhaps the earliest and most polluted affected river in the U.S., well back into the 19th Century. This river rises in northern New Jersey, and flows through a heavily populated area, with waters eventually entering New York Harbor. A successor firm among perhaps 1000 polluting agencies decided that awaiting a "Superfund" solution would leave the firm with too much uncertainty. Instead, that firm proposed a novel approach that combines the enforcement "muscle" of the EPA with the river basin expertise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Those two agencies, teaming with other Federal, state and local entities, are focusing on this cleanup as a pilot project for the URRI concept. A second pilot project is emerging for the Willamette River, which enters the huge Columbia River near Portland, Oregon. As these two demonstration projects move forward, the U.S. will consider others of its 100 or so badly polluted rivers for a similar approach. The time savings using the URRI concept will be years, if not decades. The dollar saving will be tens of millions of dollars, and the public will be served much earlier by the restore drivers. |
| 总页数： | Proceedings of the 30th PIANC-AIPCN Congress. Sydney Australia. 22-26 Sept. 2002. pp6 |
| 报告类型： | 科技报告 |
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