Cleanup Standards Scientific Advisory Board Meeting

November 29, 2001

  

The following CSSAB Members were present:  

Kevin Reinert                                        Ron Neufeld
Don Goodman                                       Annettte Guiseppi-Elie
Mark Mummert                                     William Dreibelbis
Mark Urbassik

Environmental Protection staff were present:  

Thomas Fidler                                       John Stephenson
Bill Pounds                                            Dave Hess
Jim Shaw                                              Ken Bowman
Lee McDonald                                      Sam Fang
Ken Okorn                                            Carol Young
Dan Snowden                                        Dave Crownover

Guests Present:  

Bill Cluck                                              Chuck Campbell
Barbara Hall                                         Joseph McNally

Call to order  

The meeting was called to order at 9:30 a.m. William G. Dreibelbis was introduced as a new board member.  Kevin Reinert was nominated as Board Chairperson.  The motion was seconded, and the vote was affirmative.  Tim Rea was nominated as Vice-Chair, the motion was seconded and the vote affirmative.  Tom Fidler stated that there are two board positions yet to be filled.  He expressed interest in having one of the positions possibly filled by a representative of a county health department or planning agency.  

The CSSAB meeting dates for the year 2002 were set as, April 9, August 22, and December 5.  The meeting minutes of March 26, 2001 were reviewed, corrected and approved.  

Tom Fidler and David Crownover made a presentation on DEP’s Environmental Futures Program and explained how it is incorporated into the DEP’s planning process.  Tom asked the Board to give any comments to him on the process.  

Kevin Reinert reported on the activities of the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Team.  The members of the team are; Craig Robertson, Ronald Buchanan, Annette Guiseppi-Elie, Kevin Reinert, William Dreibelbis, Chuck Campbell, Bruce Fishman, Tom Fidler, Randy Roush, Sam Fang, and Bob Gadinski.  Kevin explained that the process for screening potential indoor air quality concerns targeted contamination in both soils and groundwater, and the processes for each medium are depicted on flowcharts (part of the meeting handouts).  He stated that to the team’s surprise, after analyzing the data, soil and not groundwater was the medium of greatest concern.  After the presentation, Kevin asked for comments at the meeting or they could be mailed to him.  Ron Neufeld asked how situations where vapor modeling is in conflict with actual indoor air conditions would be managed.  He explained the challenge of gaining representative results from indoor air sampling because of interferences from other indoor sources.  For this reason, soil gas sampling and modeling of indoor air concerns from sources outside the building, may be the preferred approach.  When questioned if false positives or negatives were a problem with sampling, Kevin stated that false positives were an issue with indoor air sampling.  Mark Urbassik asked if the team had considered the combined exposure of soil and groundwater on receptors.  Kevin explained that the team had not considered such combined effects as of that date.  Mark Mummert asked whether someone going through this new process now will receive liability relief.  Tom Fidler stated that the process will be used as part of the Statewide Health Standard, but that it will be first proposed for draft guidance and then public comment considered before it becomes final guidance to be used as part of the Act 2 program.  If the screening process indicates the need for sampling, and sample results exceed the recommended IAQ MSCs, mitigation or further site specific analysis would be required.  Based upon the demonstrated results of mitigation or further analysis, liability relief would be available.  Kevin stated that odors were considered in the process but it was determined that the proposed process values were below the published odor thresholds in almost all cases.  Kevin presented the issue of rounding the values of MSC (soil) to two significant digits.  As an example, the IAQ team rounded the MSC (soil) value from 0.37 to 0.4, where the Statewide Health MSC for soil is 0.5.  Further he requested the board consider that due to accuracies, if 0.4 is really any different than 0.5. If so, benzene would be treated differently in the proposed process.  The board discussion supported the process of rounding, and specifically in the case of benzene, rounding to 0.4.  Tom expressed interest in applying this new process to some current cases being reviewed under Act 2.  Kevin encouraged this. He stated that the team will be issuing a report of its findings in the winter of 2002.  

Bill Pounds gave a brief update on proposed Safe Fill Regulations.  He stated that the regulations would likely be proposed in the January-February 2002 timeframe.  

Tom Fidler introduced the presentation of the revised surface water interface guidance.  Mark Urbassik asked what were the major differences in what the PENTOXSD model considers vs what the previous Land Recycling Guidance considered.  Lee McDonald, DEP stated that the basic differences are that PENTOXSD considers stream mixing and background conditions.  

The meeting was adjourned.