Jeff Carnahan, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at EnviroForensics, and David Gillay, a partner in the Indianapolis office of Barnes & Thornburg, will lead a panel of experts in a presentation of new regulatory and environmental industry developments at the 2015 FETTI Conference in October. They will discuss Long Term Stewardship (LTS) in a presentation titled “Quantifying the Cost of Post-Remedial Long-Term Stewardship Obligations during Project Planning Phases.” The presentation will take place the second day of the conference, Thursday, October 8th from 9:15-10:30 A.M. Gillay will speak on legal considerations, and Carnahan will offer a real-life example where LTS played a role in remedial decision-making. Gillay and Carnahan will be joined by representatives from USEPA in Washington, Wisconsin’s Remediation & Redevelopment program, and Indiana’s IDEM Remediation Services, who will discuss the current regulatory perspectives on LTS.
LTS comes into play at sites where cleanup activities leave residual impact behind, making long-term management of contaminated areas necessary to protect human health. LTS is particularly important in risk-based cleanups and closures, where eliminating human health pathways is the basis for closure. Recently, environmental policy at the State and Federal regulatory levels have supported guidelines that require specific LTS plans. The issue, however, is that LTS can require long time periods over which it must be carried out, which leads to high associated costs. Because of these high costs, decisions are now frequently made to clean up more contamination during initial remediation to lessen LTS requirements. These factors have now made it essential to consider LTS costs prior to finalizing remedial strategies. State and Federal regulators are also taking another look at older sites that have already achieved closure to decide whether acceptable LTS measures are in place.
Every year, nationally recognized speakers and experts in environmental fields come together for the FETTI Conference. The seminar, held in Chicago, includes presentations on a variety of relevant and current environmental issues. This year’s conference will run October 7-9 and will include 14 presentations on topics ranging from GMOs to ethics in environmental/toxic tort decision making.