1. Spokane River Urban Waters Progress
By Arianne Fernandez
WA Dept of Ecology
June 2012

2. Overview How were sampling locations chosen?
How were sampling techniques chosen?
Rationale
Comparisons
What were your findings?
Did the data set meet objectives? If not, any data gaps?
What would you do differently in hindsight?
What more needs to be done to refine the assessments?

3. Urban Waters Objectives
Find and eliminate sources of contaminants of concern
Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB): 303(d) listed
Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE)
Dioxin/Furan
Lead, Cadmium, Zinc

4. Location Decision Points
2005 Ecology fish study
Direct dischargers already working on source reduction.
2007 Parsons and Terragraphics Spokane River PCB Stormwater Loading Analysis
Historical Analysis
Potential sources
*Adaptive Management

5. PCB Location choice Confounding Factors Low-level tracing
Small sources
Historical contamination
Not all data is comparable
Air deposition
“PCB-free” myth
Contaminant in everyday products
Regulatory limits
Stormwater
Human dimension

6. Spokane Urban Waters

7. Liberty Lake Pilot Project
Purpose – Verify techniques and begin to fill CoC knowledge gaps before entering the city of Spokane to source trace.
PCB Questions
How well do grab sampling techniques work?
What is local urban background for:
New residential
Old residential
Industrial
Sanitary vs. stormwater
Conclusions
Sampling techniques worked.
In all media.
Similar concentration in sanitary sewer and stormwater.
Higher concentration in residential sewer water than industrial sewer water.
Higher in old residential sewer water than new residential.
Bonus: Found and facilitated elimination of two illicit discharges to Liberty Lake.
*Flesh out these observations with more data points as we source trace in the city of Spokane.

8. PCB Source Tracing Plan
Start in city of Spokane (PCB Source Assessment)
Up-the-pipe stormwater and CSO tracing.
Union basin
Combined sewer overflow #34
Erie basin
Business visits by SRHD Local Source Control Specialist, Sandy Phillips.
Historical analysis
Outfall sampling
Sewer tracing
Road data provided by Bing Maps

9. How were sampling techniques chosen and compared?
1. What are others doing?
2. Pros and Cons List
Grab samplers
Passive samplers
Sediment sampler
Composite sampler

10. Sediment Sampling Stormwater is notoriously difficult to capture and
gain “solid” information
Needed a device that…
Captures a lot of sediment
Causes no damage to system
Captures adequate volume of
fine particulate < 63 microns.
Inexpensive
Easily portable
In-line

11. Sediment Sampler Capture Concept
Flow

12. Sediment Sampler Validation
Validation study completed Spring 2012
Grain size distribution similar to centrifuge sampler
> 1800 grams captured

13. Up-the-pipe Source Tracing
Union Basin (Green)
Erie Basin (Blue)
CSO 34 (Purple)

14. Union Basin Sample Locations 14 Sample ID Collection Date Matrix
Total PCB-8082 (ng/Kg or ng/L)
Total PCB-1668 (ng/L)
Season
Storm event Precip. from Felts Field (in)
Sample Type
Upstream Trent Ave Branch
TRENT-TPC
6/25/2009
sed
5,820 --
SUMMER na
Comp. scoop
Trent_ ST
1/24/2011 sw
188
WINTER
0.49
Grab
5/16/2011
86.5
SPRING
0.29
Crestline-Springfield Ave Branch
COOK - SPRG
980,000
CR/ADM
8/12/2009
226
0.27
CRSPADM
2/16/2010
324.7
No data
6/4/2010
14.1
0.56
7/2/2010
114
223
0.28
1/13/2011
33.4
0.33
3/28/2011
 QA/QC in progress
Napa St-Springfield Ave. Branch
NAPA-SPRG
9/9/2010
285
FALL
0.06
103
745
7/29/2011
17,000
Union Outfall
UNIONLPT
6/8/2009
73.0
10/2/2009
58.2
0.11
460
0.12
4/29/2010
60.6
0.48
255
1/7/2011
55.3
0.19
7/13/2011
QA/QC in progress 
0.42 14

15. City Parcel Area Progress
Over 8,000 tons of heavily PCB-contaminated soils and waste materials were dug up and removed from this site. The cleanup action is now complete at this property.

16. PCB Hot Spots

17. Additional outfall pattern highlight
Differ from Union Basin outfall:
Tetra/Penta/Hexa dominant vs
Hexa/Hepta dominant
*Adding PMF or PCA analysis may be useful
*Patterns help determine if more than one source

18. PCB Stormwater
Collected TOC, DOC, TDS, TSS, turbidity

19. Additional Work and Findings
GIS tool enhanced source tracing and spatial analysis.
Inadvertent production in everyday products significantly above local limits (ppb and ppm vs. ppq).
Air Deposition Literature Review – Air deposition may contribute to local stormwater load.
NE Lakes Background Study - Refined knowledge of air deposition influence to sediment and fish.

20. General Conclusions
Business visits have limited effectiveness for finding PCB sources.
Source tracing contamination at low concentrations presented unforeseen challenges for regulators and the regulated community. These include:
Lack of knowledge for clean, ultra trace sampling techniques.
Lack of knowledge regarding how to perform quality control on results.
Current regulations do not recognize the low-level, full congener analytical method (1668) for compliance.

21. General Conclusions PCB sources to the Spokane river are more diffuse
than originally suspected.
The Spokane River watershed is unique and may
be compounding the issue of elevated PCB in fish
tissue. Unique properties include:
Low TSS and high dissolved fraction of PCB
Large urban watershed discharging to small waterbody
Ready aquifer exchange that modifies PCB congener behavior
Highly porous soil over fast moving aquifer
Redirection of stormwater from river may help eliminate air deposition as a source.

22. Did we meet data objectives, any gaps?
Yes
Source reduction vs. source tracing

23. Lessons Learned-abbreviated
Focused more resources sooner on tools that assimilate all local data for a fate and transport model and source tracing (help identify data gaps and sources)
Pros and cons of using a dataset for multiple purposes and while collecting multiple parameters
PCB behaves differently depending on the physical and chemical characteristics of a watershed, and our system is very unique. Plus, concentrations are so low that those physical factors probably play a bigger role now. This was not always apparent in the beginning since we found point sources such as Kaiser and IEP in the past.

24. What more needs to be done to refine the assessments?
Fate and transport model
Air deposition data
Flow and flow-weighted data
GIS tool for faster source tracing and organizing large amounts of data for spatial analysis
Data consolidation across agencies and facilities
Long-term monitoring in river with additional sites and techniques tailored to our unique system
Congener pattern identification using PCA or PMF software.
Build product list with concentrations and congener patterns for inadvertently produced PCB.

25. Recap How were sampling locations chosen?
How were sampling techniques chosen?
Rationale
Comparisons
What were your findings?
Did the data set meet objectives? If not, any data gaps?
What would you do differently in hindsight?
What more needs to be done to refine the assessments?