Summary of Sediment Quality

The Clean Water Act (PL 92-500) and the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (PL 92-532) both require sediment quality analyses. In response to this, the DMEF was prepared and adopted (1998) by the following agencies: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Northwestern Division, Seattle and Portland Districts; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 10; Oregon Department of Environmental Quality; Washington State Department of Ecology; and Washington State Department of Natural Resources. The DMEF provides a consistent technical framework to provide guidance for the evaluation of dredged material proposed for unconfined in-water disposal.

The DMEF provides a comprehensive discussion of sediment quality analyses for the lower Columbia River in their description of the Lower Columbia River Management Area. The Bi-state study provides the most comprehensive survey done to date on the Lower Columbia River sediments, however, the data was collected in the early 1990's.

Sources of information concerning the quality of sediments in the Columbia River Estuary are available from a variety of sources:

Bi-State Water Quality Data
~ Sediment chemistry data (1,045KB zipped) collected by Tetra Tech as part of the 1991
~ Reconnaissance Survey and the 1993 Backwater Areas Reconnaissance Survey can be downloaded from the LCREP website (www.lcrep.org/bistatedata.htm) or from the EPA Region 10 website (www.epa.gov/r10earth/data/crbdata.html).

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District
~ The Corps of Engineers has, on file, the results of sediment testing complete by the Port of Astoria for their various dredging projects. This information is also available at the Port or at CREST.
~ Sediment testing was completed by the Corps for the Columbia River Channel Improvement Study in June 1997.
~ The Dredged Material Management Plan and Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Appendices: Columbia and Lower Willamette River Federal Navigation Channel - Appendix I provides a list of sediment evaluations conducted by the Corps of Engineers. It includes a brief discussion of the testing results.
~ Published and unpublished surveys done by the Portland District Corps of Engineers

Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST)
CREST has a variety of reports and documents discussing sediment quality in the Columbia River. Including sediment reports from local port dredging project.

Other
~ USGS Surveys
~ Contaminant specific surveys