New York Great Lakes Protection Fund Awards
Small Grants
1998

Ten projects were recently selected to receive grants through the New York Great Lakes Protection Fund Small Grants Program. The program is administered by the Great Lakes Research Consortium, in cooperation with the NY Department of Environmental Conservation and the NY Great Lakes Basin Advisory Council, with earnings that accrue from New York State's investment in the regional Great Lakes Protection Fund. The program was developed to provide "seed" money for new, cooperative approaches to researching and protecting the environmental quality of the Great Lakes. Projects are designed to help build new environmental research, education or remediation capacity in the state by providing small grants to initiate new programs or techniques, gain experience or obtain preliminary data so that projects can compete for additional external funding in the future. This year's selected projects range from research on developing remediation strategies for cleaning up toxic waste sites to the education of high school students about Great Lakes reptiles and amphibians. Following are brief descriptions of the projects which have been funded this year.

Dr. Donald D. Adams, of SUNY-Plattsburgh and colleagues will be working on the Management of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Artificial Wetlands Processing Wastewater. Emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are thought to contribute to the problems associated with global warming. Artificial wetlands which are constructed to process wastewater may be emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The purpose of this project is to measure the effects of wetland plants on reducing seasonal greenhouse gas emissions during the treatment of domestic wastewater flowing through artificial wetlands. The project will also develop better collaboration and foster communications between faculty and students between Clarkson University and Plattsburgh State University.

Dr. Ruth D. Yanai, of SUNY-ESF will focus her research on Soil Restoration in PAH-Contaminated Sediments: The Role of Vegetation in Reducing Bioavailable PAH Concentrations. High levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH's, pose a threat to natural and economic resources of the Great Lakes because of their potential to endanger human and wildlife health. Dr. Yanai and her associates hope to show the potential for reducing the amounts of PAH entering public waterways in New York State by phytoremediation, a relatively new clean-up technology that uses plants to remediate PAH contaminated soils. The goal of this research is to describe soil development associated with the ecological restoration of recently deposited sediments dredged from New York's canal systems. Through the publishing of these results, the public will gain an improved understanding of the potential for reductions in human health risk through vegetation reestablishment and soil development.

Dr. Sarah J. Meyland, of the Citizens Environmental Research Institute has received funding for her Great Lakes Pollutant Discharge Mapping and Education Project. In 1996, New York state approved the Discharge Notification Act, which requires all facilities that have a permit and discharge into the state's surface waters to post a sign identifying the outfall point and provide citizens with information about how to find out more about the discharge. Runoff from heavy rainfall or snow melt causes an increase in the volume of untreated wastewater to sewage treatement plants. Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are deliberate discharge points used to release untreated sewage which can't be processed by the sewage treatment plant during periods of high flow. There is no law to control the flow from CSOs. Sanitary sewer overflows, or SSOs, illegal by EPA standards, are points where untreated sewage flows from failing infrastructure or manhole covers. This project will map where SSOs and CSOs are entering directly into Lake Erie and its tributaries in Erie County, and distribute it to interested Great Lakes stakeholders. Topographical models will be used along with the map at public events, schools and workshops to help educate the public on how to reduce the impact from these sources of pollution.

Dr. Peter K. Ducey, of SUNY-Cortland, will begin research on Analysis of Herpetofaunal Distributions in Wetlands of the Eastern Great Lakes: Public Participation Phase. This project will be the initial portion of a larger research project which will address the status and distributions of the amphibian and reptile populations in the wetlands of the eastern Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River in relation to environmental conditions and human land-use patterns. This initial portion begins widespread collaborations, public education and data collection efforts. By establishing public outreach and participation at the start, it is hoped that a truly collaborative project involving scientists, policy makers, and the people affected can be developed. This project will encourage public participation by providing high school science classes with teaching materials, instructions, classroom visits by biologists, and a comprehensive, interesting web site. The high school classes and their teachers will be encouraged and instructed in collecting survey data for amphibian and reptile populations. Dr. Ducey and his fellow investigators expect that the completed project will result in a set of baseline data for the distributions of herpetofaunal populations of the region, an analysis of these distributions in relation to specific environmental and land-use variables, a better informed general public, and a collaborative network of university researchers, state biologists, and volunteers.

Dr. Philip K. Hopke, of Clarkson University, and colleagues, are working on the Development of an Automated Dry Deposition Sampler to Directly Measure the Dry Depositions of Dioxins. The goals of this project are to design an automated dry deposition sampler that can be used to directly measure dry deposition and to develop analytical techniques to analyze the deposited material for dioxins. The proposed approach is to redesign the automated dry deposition sampler based on proven techniques used in commercial rain samplers. Instead of doors and multiple motors and covers, a roof system and actuator design will be used. It is anticipated that this preliminary work will lead to significant future work to both refine the design of the sampler and deploy the sampler to make dry deposition measurements.

Dr. James P. Nakas, of SUNY-ESF is looking into the Use of Novel Enzyme Technology for Removal of Aromatic Pollutants and Colorants from Waste Streams. He and his associates propose to explore the use of the oxidative enzyme, laccase, for the bioremediation of selected Great Lakes point-source contamination sites. Specifically, they intend to use this enzyme to construct a new bioreactor, which is a chamber containing a special barrier that filters water and breaks down chemicals. These will be tested for ability to remove toxic phenols, chlorophenols, aromatic amines, related colorants and selected pesticide residues from input wastewater streams. Successful results may have positive implications for larger project collaborations, leverage of external funding for anticipated pilot-plant demonstrations, and policy developments based on implementation of biocatalytic membrane reactors for point-source remediations.

Dr. Ashish Gupta, of SUNY-Buffalo will work on Pollution Prevention in the Great Lakes: An Industry-University Crossdisciplinary Course Development Project. The survival of the chemical process industry in the Great Lakes Region is threatened by the two challenges of international competition and stringent emission regulation. The industry meets the waste reduction targets by pollution abatement strategies that result in substantial cost to industry. This cost is forcing the US industry to adopt a new paradigm called pollution prevention. This approach integrates pollution abatement strategy into the process design stage itself, which leads to manufacturing processes that minimize waste generation. To accomplish this reengineering process, a new generation of design engineers with the skill to incorporate environmental considerations is needed. The goal of Dr. Gupta and his colleagues is to design, develop and teach a case-study based course on pollution prevention in the Great Lakes. The purpose of developing and teaching this course is to initiate technology transfer from research institutions to industry, and to enhance the adoption of integrated waste reduction approaches into regional industry.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Chiarenzelli, of SUNY-Oswego leads research into The Potential for Lake Effect Precipitation to Redistribute Organic Contaminants to Inland Ecosystems.
One area significantly effected by lake-effect precipitation is the Tug Hill Plateau region of New York State. This region lies within 30 kilometers of Lake Ontario and is characterized by a rapid increase in elevation from about 80 meters at Lake Ontario to about 300 meters at the plateau. The change in elevation results in cooling of the Lake Ontario derived winds followed by large scale precipitation often resulting in accumulations of more than 100 cm of snow per event. The hypothesis to be tested in this project is whether Lake Ontario is a significant source of persistent organic compounds and whether these compounds are accumulating in areas affected by lake effect precipitation. The project is designed to provide an assessment of whether atmospheric redistribution of persistent organic compounds are related to lake-effect events. It will form the basis for an expanded research proposal to gain a better appreciation of the redistribution of persistent organic compounds resulting from volatilization.

Dr. Karen Vermillion, of St. Regis River Association and associates, will work on Loosening the Social and Environmental Knots in Big Hollow Brook.. This project will involve local community teachers, and scientific expertise in the assessment of water quality in a small watershed on the St. Lawrence River. Members of the Association will contact local landowners to help them assess how well their septic systems are working and will help fund improvements to those septic systems found to be failing. Each member teacher will also teach a course about real-life application of engineering and scientific expertise to environmental remediation. Field work in the courses will bring students to landowners and involve them in the project. In the Spring of 1999, adult and student labor will be organized and financial resources will be provided for septic improvements. The Association hopes that this will lead to the re-opening of swimming facilities and the reintroduction of brook trout to Big Hollow Brook.

Dr. Tao Tang, of Buffalo State and colleagues will work on Assessing Impact of Urban Land Use to Sediment and Pollutant Discharge in the Buffalo River Drainage Basin, New York. This project will investigate the relationships of urban land use in the Buffalo River Drainage Basin and major pollutant and sediment discharges into the Buffalo River using remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) analyses. The objective is to establish links and correlation between the urban land use pattern and the pollutant and sediment discharges along the river, and to answer the question: what kind of land use creates what kind of discharges of pollutant and sediment?