USEPA Environmental Response Team

the Office of Air and Radiation, Superfund, Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and

Toxic Substances, and the Office of Water. Recommendations are also made to

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Food and Drug

Administration (FDA), Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and

Department of Defense. Currently, the Superfund Program, created by

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act

(CERCLA) and administered by the Office of Emergency and Remedial Response

(OERR), has made use of risk assessment to a greater extent than other agencies.

Superfund uses risk assessment to define hazardous substances and amounts of

release that must be reported to the USEPA, rank risks posed by hazardous waste

sites and identify "action priorities" among sites, and evaluate the effectiveness of

options for remediation. "An important and unique feature of Superfund risk

assessments is the consideration of exposure to many chemicals simultaneously."

Specific policies on risk assessment are in the National Contingency Plan (NCP),

the body of regulations implementing CERCLA and its amendments. Risk

analysis is also currently used for regulatory decision-making under six major

environmental laws and a number of minor laws.

USEPA Environmental Response Team

Document: "Ecological risk assessment guidance for superfund: Process for

designing and conducting ecological risk assessments." United States

Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Response Team, Edison, NJ.

(USEPA 1997a).

Contact: David Charters, Ph.D., USEPA Environmental Response Team,

Edison, NJ.

Significance: Unlike the USEPA framework documents, this guidance is a

step-by-step procedure for assessing ecological risk at CERCLA sites nation wide.

Many USEPA regional guidance documents and state documents borrow from the

procedures in this document and its earlier 1994 version. Much of the detail in

this document is specific to superfund sites and therefore not directly transferable

to the dredged material management process. However, the techniques approaches

for developing conceptual models, using a screening analysis step, and developing

Scientific management decision points are useful in the dredged material

management process.

Summary: In this document, the USEPA provides guidance for conducting

scientifically sound ecological risk assessments that are consistent with other risk

assessments within the Superfund Program. This guidance is directed to site

managers (e.g., On-Scene Coordinators (OSCs) and Remedial Project Managers

(RPMs)) as well as other parties conducting ecological risk assessments. The

goals of an ecological risk assessment, as stated in this document, are to:

"identify and characterize the current and potential threats to the

environment from hazardous substances" and "to identify clean-up levels

that would protect those natural resources from risk."

Appendix A Summary of Federal, State, and Regional Guidance