Transport and Transformation of Contaminants Near the Sediment-Water Interface addresses the issue of contaminated bottom sediments and their potential adverse impacts on water quality. This state-of-the-science book covers regulatory management perspectives, physical processes, chemical and biological processes, and process synthesis/modeling. Specific topics discussed include EPA's Sediment Quality Criteria program from a regulatory perspective; flocculation, deposition, and resuspension of fine-grained sediments; approaches for measuring vertical sediment flux near the sediment-water interface; equilibrium models for metal speciation in natural sediments; the partitioning of organic chemicals in bottom sediments; and the development and application of models of sediment and associated contaminant transport in surface waters. The significance of recent studies suggesting that interaction of contaminated bottom sediments with the overlying water play an important role in the long-term recovery of aquatic systems makes Transport and Transformation of Contaminants Near the Sediment-Water Interface essential for water quality engineers, environmental chemists, and environmental toxicologists. The volume provides important information for consultants, regulators, researchers, and graduate students as well.

Contaminated bottom sediments and their negative impacts on water quality are a major problem in surface waters throughout the United States as well as in many other parts of the world. Even after elimination of the primary contaminant sources, these bottom sediments will be a main source of contaminants for many years to come. In order to determine environmentally-effective and cost-effective remedial actions, the transport and fate of these sediments and associated contaminants must be understood and quantified. This book details how to best approach contaminated sediments, allowing readers to better assess and address water quality and health issues, water body management, and potential remediation methods. Understand and Address Major Environmental Threats to Our Water Sediment and contaminant transport is an enormously rich and complex field that involves physical, chemical, and biological processes as well as the mathematical modeling of these processes. While many books have been written on these broad topics, Sediment and Contaminant Transport in Surface Waters takes a more focused approach, highlighting areas that have been investigated but not covered thoroughly elsewhere. This volume emphasizes the erosion, deposition, flocculation, and transport of fine-grained, cohesive sediments; the effects of finite rates of sorption on the transport and fate of hydrophobic contaminants; and the effects of major events such as floods and storms. Despite these emphases, the overall goal of the text is to present a general description and understanding of the transport of sediments and contaminants in surface waters as well as procedures to quantitatively predict this transport.

In the transfer of chemical species through the aquatic environment the association with fine sediment particles is often of crucial importance. The n~ture, permanence and kinetics of this association is, in many cases, unknown yet it is central to any effort concerned with predicting the pathways of pollutant transfer and the fluxes along them. It is often unclear to precisely what surface, if any, a pollutant is attached. The transfer of species between surfaces and solution may be chemically or biochemically controlled. These processes may take place within a host framework which has a time and space dependent structure. The natural straining of this framework resulting from physical and chemical processes moves porewater and the dissolved species in it. Thus, to adequately predict the natural transfer of species within a cohesive sediment system the physical, biochemical and chemical processes must be dynamically coupled. This informal colloquium examined topics relevant to the associ ation of pollutant and sediment. These included the mineral particle surfaces and the surrounding ionic associations, methods of describing the particles and the physical, chemical, biochemical and biological processes operating in association with fine sediment substrates. The physical processes of sediment transport were deliberately excluded.