Environmental Screening Method for Dredging in Contaminated River

Abstract:

Dredging in a contaminated river has been widely accepted to have an impact on the environment; however environmental risk assessment analysis could be costly, time-consuming and difficult to perform. Therefore, a screening method acting as a preliminary risk assessment analysis to screen potential contaminated areas is necessary. The aim of this study is to demonstrate a new screening method for risk assessment analysis in a scenario where economy, time and simplicity factors had been a concern. The development of this method is based on a variation of standard Ecological Risk Assessment. An analysis will be performed on two elements. Firstly, the level of contaminants in the water, groundwater and air (known as the media) and, secondly the behavior of environmental indicators during monitoring of historical dredging. This analysis is performed in order to establish the degree of contamination in an area that is about to be dredged, in where the publicly accessible contamination level in the media and the historical dredging monitoring data will be utilized. Eight dredged sites in Peninsular Malaysia are selected as the case studies of this research. This research showed that Sungai Perlis has a very high total risk value, which could have a fatal impact on its biodiversity if dredging is performed with negligence at this location. This research could provide an opportunity for Malaysia to increase its efforts to avoid dredging impacts without being constrained on time, cost and simplicity factors.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 567)
• Pages: 50-55
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.567.50
• Online since: June 2014
• Authors: Norpadzlihatun Manap*, Nikolaos Voulvoulis
• Keywords: Contaminated Sediments, Dredging, Ecological Risk Assessment, Environmental Screening, Risk Management (RM)

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