there is a lack of clear guidance or 

 establishment of standards in the 

 regulations, it was necessary to go "one 

 step beyond" the regulations and 

 define standards or acceptable levels of 

 impact against which field results 

 could be tested. 



The decision as to an impact being 

 acceptable or unacceptable ultimately 

 depends on " best professional judgement ". 

 Best professional judgement is defined 

 here as the summation of all 

 evaluation processes that apply to a 

 project or protocol including public 

 review, EPA and USACOE evaluation 

 of test data, monitoring requirements, 

 outside technical committees, and 

 consultants. In addition to the 

 scientific, technical, and operational 

 evaluations, this judgement also has a 

 social, political, and economic 

 dimension. Ideally, best professional 

 judgements change over time as they 

 benefit from cumulative experience 

 and new information. The 

 development of the monitoring plan 

 presented in this document has 

 benefitted from over 15 years of NED 

 experience with several public and 

 technical program reviews. The 

 knowledge base and "evolution" of this 

 judgement ultimately is determined by 

 managers responsible for dredging and 

 disposal regulation. If the review 

 process is ignored or bypassed, the 

 best professional judgement process 

 obviously is violated. By necessity, 

 these tiered monitoring plans are 

 developmental and subject to review, 

 criticism, and undoubtedly substantial 

 revision in the future. 



document will attempt to organize the 

 discussion of each of these tiered 

 monitoring frameworks around the 

 following principles: 



• A focus on central questions and/or 

 testable null hypotheses; 



• The recognition and identification 

 of sources of uncertainty; 



• Data gathering activities structured 

 around statistical models that 

 incorporate null hypotheses and 

 assumptions about uncertainty and 

 variability; and, 



• The evaluation of data in terms of 

 their ability to address central 

 questions and/or hypotheses. 



Associated with this plan are still a 

 great many details to be clarified and 

 underlying assumptions which may be 

 faulty; these will be identified 

 whenever possible. The important 

 point to bear in mind is that this is a 

 working document that will change 

 along with the focus of the DAMOS 

 program as our base of knowledge 

 increases; it is our responsibility to 

 admit and address honestly our 

 knowledge or technical limitations to 

 insure that our future judgment is not 

 clouded by the illusion of scientific 

 "certainty" or rigor where it really does 

 not exist. 



Following the recommendations of 

 Bernstein and Zalinski (1986), this 



An Integrated, Tiered Approach to Monitoring and Management of Dredged Material Disposal Sites 



