Contaminated Sediments Topic of Congressional Hearing
July 18, 2001
Associate Director for Education, Dean of Graduate Studies and Senior Scientist John Farrington of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has been invited to testify July 19 before a Congressional committee on strategies to address sediments contaminated with PCBs and other toxic chemicals. The hearing, before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, will begin at 9:30 a.m. in. in Room 2167 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC.
Dr. Farrington served as chair of the recent National Research Council Committee on Remediation of PCB-Contaminated Sediments. During his testimony he will highlight some of the recommendations and conclusions made in the committee’s report entitled “A Risk Management Strategy for PCB Contaminated Sediments.” Farrington, a chemical oceanographer, has studied and been involved in issues associated with contaminated sediments for the past thirty years.
John Farrington has been a member of the Institution staff since 1971. During this time he served as an adjunct research professor in the Center for Bio-Organic Studies at the University of New Orleans from 1979 to 1981, and from 1988 to 1990 was the Michael P. Walsh Professor and Director of the Environmental Sciences Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he remains an adjunct professor. He is well known for his research on petroleum geochemistry, PCBs and other industrial chemicals in the marine environment, and environmental quality issues.
Other invited speakers include the Honorable Linda Fisher, Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; the Honorable Dominic Izzo, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works); Dr. Danny Reible, Director of the Hazardous Substances Research Center at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Dr. John Connolly, President and Senior Managing Engineer of Quantitative Environmental Analysis in Montvale, NJ; John Davis, a chemist in the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Office of the Attorney General, New York, NY; and Sharon Ruggi, Councilwoman, of Ft. Edwards, NY.