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Updating the Sediment Management Standards

The Washington Department of Ecology's Sediment Management Unit has halted efforts to update the Sediment Management Standards, Chapter 173-204 WAC. While rulemaking activity has been halted, this page contains background information useful for understanding some of the issues that were to be included in the proposed revisions to the Sediment Management Standards ("SMS").

Sediment Management Standards Rulemaking Halted

The Department of Ecology has decided to halt Sediment Management Standards rulemaking and refocus resources on implementing the current SMS rule. On Dec. 30, 1999, Director Tom Fitzsimmons signed a letter explaining the decision not to proceed with the rule revisions. The completed letter is linked below and an excerpt is presented here.

"Over the last several years the Department of Ecology (Ecology) has pursued a multi-track strategy for meeting the technical, institutional and policy challenges associated with preventing and cleaning up contaminated sediments. This includes implementation of sediment cleanup and source control projects, strengthening institutional relationships and revising the scope of the Sediment Management Standards (SMS) rule. During the last several months, Ecology has re-assessed the overall environmental effectiveness of this strategy. Based on that review, we have decided to take a different tact to meeting these challenges. Specifically, we are halting the SMS rule amendment process to focus our resources in areas that will allow us to (1) make greater progress on project implementation, (2) strengthen working relationships with other agencies, and (3) measure the environmental results of our actions."

Letter on decision not to proceed with Sediment Management Standards rule revisions (PDF file, 65K, click here for help viewing electronic documents)

Updated January 7, 2000


SMS Implementation Committee Meetings - Agenda, Summaries, and other handouts. Materials listed below have been presented to the Sediment Management Standards Implementation Committee (an advisory group, consisting of members of state and federal agencies, tribes, local government, ports, business, environmental groups, and the public). The meeting materials below are listed in reverse chronological order (most recent meeting materials first).

Many of the files below are in Word 97 format (files with the ".doc" extension). If you don't have a wordprocessor or browser with capability of reading Word 97 documents, you can follow this link to download a free Word 97 viewer that allows viewing and printing of Word documents. A few of the documents available on this site are in Portable Document Format (PDF). Users may need to download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print these documents. If you do not have Acrobat Reader 4.0 or later, you may need the latest update to properly view the documents in PDF format. This is free software available from Adobe.

If you have any questions about the Sediment Management Standards or would like help finding any background materials, please contact Peter Adolphson at 360 407-7557 or e-mail pado461@ecy.wa.gov for assistance.

CANCELED - SMS Implementation Committee Meeting - Wednesday, September 22, 1999

The September 22, 1999 SMS Implementation Committee meeting has been canceled. We intended to describe the proposed rule and how comments on the June 1999 draft amendments will be addressed when preparing the proposed rule. A summary of the July 30 SMS Implementation Committee meeting is linked below. Please review the summary and let us know if we have correctly summarized key points and concerns. Also, attached is the draft issue paper on calculating urban bay background concentrations. It was prepared by Lon Kissinger in response to questions raised at the June 30, 1999 SMS Implementation Committee meeting. If you have questions on the paper, please contact Lon at (360) 407-6237.

Wednesday, July 14, 1999 SMS Implementation Committee Meeting

The SMS Implementation Committee met on July 14. Discussion topics included sediment cleanup, updating marine sediment standards and freshwater sediment standards. A meeting agenda is linked below. A summary of the June 30 SMS Implementation Committee meeting is also linked below. Please review the summary and let us know if we have correctly summarized key points and concerns.