[CPEO-MEF] ITRC is a great example of One Cleanup at work says EPA

[cpeo <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

For Immediate Release

Contact: Roseanne Black, (540) 557-6101, roseanne_black@wpi.org

ITRC is a great example of One Cleanup at work says EPA

Marianne Horinko, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
announced EPA’s One Cleanup Program at the spring meeting of the
Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) in Washington, D.C. During
her speech to ECOS commissioners, she praised the Interstate Technology
& Regulatory Council (ITRC) as an example of the kind of cross-agency,
cross-government cooperation and coordination that the new One Cleanup
Program intends to cultivate.

While the One Cleanup Program focuses on transcending narrow EPA cleanup
divisions, ITRC brings together people from the entire environmental
community—state regulators, federal agency representatives,
private-sector participants, and citizen stakeholder groups—to develop
consensus-based technical and regulatory documents and training courses.
Both ITRC and the One Cleanup Program seek to share innovative solutions
across programs and government levels to improve and expedite site
cleanups.

Horinko extolled ITRC for putting this across-the-board cooperation into
practice. “State-led workgroups such as ITRC have helped teams of
experts develop and disseminate technical innovations. ITRC is a great
example of One Cleanup at work. I encourage EPA and state officials to
work with and support ITRC. And I personally want to thank ECOS for
supporting the vision of ITRC and supporting the individuals in state
government who participate in ITRC.”

The ITRC Diffusion Samplers Team is a good example of how an ITRC
technical team collaborates with the larger environmental community to
facilitate deployment of an innovative technology. The Diffusion
Samplers Team works with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, EPA, U.S.
Geological Survey, and private industry to compile, analyze, and
disseminate information on the nationwide deployment of diffusion bag
samplers. The Diffusion Samplers Team contributed to a USGS
publication—User’s Guide for Polyethylene-Based Passive Diffusion Bag
Samplers to Obtain Volatile Organic Compound Concentrations in Wells.
The team has also written simplified guidance for the preliminary
assessment of a site’s suitability for long-term groundwater monitoring
using polyethylene diffusion bag samplers (PDBs) and a more extensive
report that includes guidance and recommendations for using PDBs for
long-term groundwater monitoring. A more comprehensive guidance
document, which includes a cost model and case studies, will be
completed in 2003.

The team has developed its own Web site, the ITRC Diffusion Sampler
Information Center (http://ds.itrcweb.org), where visitors can access a
current listing of deployments nationwide, keep current with news,
retrieve articles from an extensive library, and post and exchange
information on the development and use of diffusion samplers. Via the
Internet, ITRC has educated hundreds of technical and regulatory
personnel on the appropriate use of diffusion samplers. The Diffusion
Samplers Team has also spread the word about diffusion samplers with a
Diffusion Sampler Resource CD, containing nearly 70 articles and
presentations on various diffusion samplers, as well as an ITRC training
video and an AFCEE/Parsons field sampling video. You can request copies
of the CD at itrc@wpi.org.

The publicity, outreach, and education provided by the ITRC Diffusion
Samplers Team over the past few years have resulted in an increased
awareness, understanding, and acceptance of this technology. Annual cost
savings of over 50% have been documented when PDB sampling replaced
conventional methods for long-term monitoring, and savings as high as
70% can be anticipated at many sites.

The Diffusion Samplers Team is one of 15 currently active ITRC technical
teams that produce guidance documents and conduct training on the
deployment and regulation of innovative environmental technologies. ITRC
technical teams have produced more than 40 guidance documents, all of
which are available online on the ITRC Web site at www.itrcweb.org.
Click on “Guidance Documents” and then select from the 18 topical areas
in which ITRC has focused its efforts. ITRC technical teams also produce
training based on their technical documents. In its five years of
offering both Internet-based courses and classroom training, ITRC has
reached over 15,000 participants throughout the United States and the
world.

Since ITRC started offering Internet-based courses in 1999, the
organization in cooperation with EPA’s Technology Innovation Office has
trained more than 11,000 people. These two-hour courses are a convenient
way for environmental professionals across the nation and the world to
receive tools and resources on their desktops. Registration information
is available at www.itrcweb.org by clicking on “Internet-Based
Training.” Course registration opens four to six weeks prior to each
course offering. These courses are delivered via the Technology
Innovation Office Web site at www.clu-in.org/studio/.

ITRC will serve as a model for the One Cleanup Program as it seeks to
broaden the focus of disparate EPA divisions, bring more environmental
participants to the table, and enlarge the audience for innovative
solutions. Through its consensus-based documents and training courses
and its professional network, ITRC disseminates technical knowledge and
builds a more consistent and uniform understanding of how environmental
technologies should be deployed and regulated. These products and
services are being used throughout the environmental community—by state
regulatory agencies, federal agencies concerned with environmental
cleanup, environmental consulting firms, and technology vendors—to make
quality, expedited decisions when determining the appropriateness of
environmental technologies as part of effective site characterization,
monitoring, and cleanup.

The ITRC Board of Directors is cochaired by Brian C. Griffin
(bcgriffin@cox.net), a senior program advisor with the Southern States
Energy Board, and G. Ken Taylor (taylorgk@dhec.state.sc.us), director of
the Hydrogeology Division of South Carolina’s Bureau of Land and Waste
Management.

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