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Potsdam's Clarkson to partner with U.S. DoD to come up with remediation plan for historically contaminated sites

Posted 1/29/16

POTSDAM -- Clarkson University will be an academic partner with the U.S. Department of Defense at the first ever Emerging Contaminants Summit in March, helping to identify and hopefully remedy …

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Potsdam's Clarkson to partner with U.S. DoD to come up with remediation plan for historically contaminated sites

Posted

POTSDAM -- Clarkson University will be an academic partner with the U.S. Department of Defense at the first ever Emerging Contaminants Summit in March, helping to identify and hopefully remedy contaminated sites of historical operation.

Associate Professor Michelle Crimi of Clarkson University's Institute for a Sustainable Environment said this process to regulate sites of historical operations can be long and expensive. This is why researchers are working to find solutions to remediate contaminants and manage exposure before regulations are put in place, she said.

"It's important to be ready with the tools to manage these sites and by developing the tools early on in the game, hopefully we'll be able to ramp up and roll these out cost-effectively and quickly," Crimi said.

The conference will be held in Westminster, Colo., and will focus on the latest developments in the detection, fate and transport, risk assessment, treatment and regulation of emerging contaminants.

The Emerging Contaminants Summit aims to address mitigating the presence of contaminants across all environmental media, including surface water, groundwater, drinking water, wastewater, recycled water, soils and sediments, Clarkson said.

Crimi's research examines cleaning up contaminated groundwater. She works with undergraduate and graduate students who primarily do laboratory work to develop and evaluate new remediation technologies.

One of the emerging contaminants projects students are working on now focuses on treating perfluorinated contaminants using a horizontal treatment well, Crimi said. Perfluorinated compounds get into the groundwater from substances such as firefighting foams.

Clarkson is collaborating on this project with the Department of Defense, Southern Nevada Water Authority and Arcadis.

"We're working on developing a technology that will absorb those compounds out of the water and the goal is to treat that absorbent," Crimi said.