24 



re-evaluation is appropriate, 

 interpretation of environmental 

 monitoring results will continue to be 

 an exercise in futility and of little use 

 to the resource manager. 



At the majority of the DAMOS 

 disposal sites in New England, there 

 are no notably unique commercial or 

 socially-important living resource 

 concentrations other than some 

 common demersal fish and lobster 

 populations. These populations of 

 motile organisms will demonstrate 

 some temporary, near-field 

 perturbation during actual dredged 

 material disposal operations. Most 

 disposal mounds become subsequent 

 enhanced sites of secondary benthic 

 production following the initial 

 disturbance and actually serve to 

 concentrate lobster and demersal fish 

 populations. However, even if this 

 enhanced secondary benthic 

 production did not occur, the area of 

 sea floor affected by disposal mounds 

 is so minuscule on a regional basis 

 that it would be impossible to measure 

 any detectable effect on these living 

 resources at the population level. 



or indirect impacts on a forage 

 resource. The committee did not 

 devote time to this issue, because the 

 one premise about which everyone felt 

 confident from more than 10 years of 

 DAMOS monitoring was that the 

 disposal mounds at the eight 

 containment sites are stable, and 

 erosion is not occurring to any 

 measurable degree. A principal 

 concern being addressed in the two 

 tiered plans for open-water (i.e., non- 

 capped) and capped disposal mounds 

 presented below is the potential for 

 transport of sediment-associated 

 contaminants from the mound to the 

 food web, where it ultimately could 

 affect humans through seafood 

 consumption. Another concern 

 addressed by these plans is that 

 disposal activities not have adverse 

 ecological consequences such as 

 decreasing productivity of resource 

 species. 



The continuous, background 

 physical monitoring that occurs almost 

 every year during the DAMOS 

 program addresses concerns about off- 

 site net transport of sediments. 

 Identification of offsite transport 

 would violate the initial assumption 

 that these locations are containment 

 sites and require the development of 

 tiered strategies to address potential 

 impacts upon fishery or socially 

 important (i.e., whale-watching 

 industry) resources through either 

 smothering (e.g., oysters), toxic effects, 



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



