Management Plan to Address Contaminated Sediments in Areas of Concern

Great Lakes Legacy Act

Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOCs) pose significant health risks to people and harm ecosystems through the recirculation of historical or "legacy" pollution discharged to industrial rivers and harbors. EPA has developed this Management Plan to accelerate cleanup of the 30 AOCs in the U.S. and those shared with Canada. The plan will be updated on a periodic basis.

Objectives

EPA is committed to accelerating AOC cleanups. The multi-agency AOC cleanup goal in the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan is to take all necessary actions by 2014 that will lead to delisting five AOCs. EPA has set an additional interim goal to work aggressively with partner agencies to complete this work at four AOCs by 2012. Delisting involves the removal of Beneficial Use Impairments that serve as indicators of AOC degradation.

Implementation Strategy

To achieve these goals, EPA implemented a new management approach during FY 2010. The agency is intensifying efforts to recover funds needed to clean up AOCs from responsible parties and to assist state and local governments seeking matching funds to qualify for assistance under the Great Lakes Legacy Act. EPA has also developed a publicly-available database on the status of AOCs that is a tool for prioritizing actions and tracking progress.

Great Lakes AOC Contaminated Sediment Management Plan (PDF) (4pp, 11" x 17", 66K About PDF) February 2012

Key Actions

The EPA Great Lakes National Program Manager and other senior EPA managers are working with state environmental agency directors to identify sources of funding and other resources available to implement actions needed to delist AOCs. The first annual meeting for this purpose was held on August 12, 2010, and will be followed by quarterly conference calls. The focus of these discussions is to allocate resources in base agency budgets and to explore opportunities for funding AOC cleanups through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
The EPA Great Lakes National Program Manager is meeting periodically (at least quarterly) with senior managers in Regions 2, 3 and 5 and Headquarters to pursue commitments for the AOCs not currently being addressed.
The EPA Great Lakes National Program Manager, working with the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and the US Department of Justice , is aggressively pursuing responsible parties using EPA’s regulatory and enforcement authorities to stimulate cleanups and to recover costs, consistent with the polluter pays principle.
The EPA Great Lakes National Program Office is working closely with states, municipalities and other potential partners to help secure the non-Federal funds needed to satisfy Great Lakes Legacy Act match requirements.

Progress to Date

Using this management approach, EPA has completed sediment hotspot cleanups at the following sites since fall 2009: