Remedial Project Manager
Environmental Protection Agency
Bio:
Doug Bacon (B.S. in Environmental Biology) is a risk management leader with over 27 years of Superfund leadership experience at EPA Region 8 and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. He oversees mine waste and munitions response actions in Utah. Doug excels at community and stakeholder engagement, including risk communication about impacts to property and natural resources. He has led multiple large-scale assessments of groundwater impacts and treatment options. One project especially meaningful to him is the ongoing management of response actions at a 2,000-acre industrial wetland near Great Salt Lake. He has led a multidisciplinary team working to unravel the fate and transport of arsenic and selenium to protect migratory birds that use the habitat. Doug has been instrumental in advancing cross program regulatory collaboration, drawing on his knowledge of multimedia environmental regulations to ensure the protection of public health and the environment at active and inactive mining facilities. Doug continues to excel as a team leader and consensus builder, focused on practical solutions and delivering successful projects.
Doug and his wife enjoy exploring Colorado’s wide-open spaces. They hope to find a mountain retreat by a lake or creek to indulge Doug’s love of fishing and the outdoors. In the meantime, they’re exploring restaurants around Colorado to find the next great BBQ.
Title: Why is Selenium in South Shore Bird Eggs on the Rise?
Abstract: Check Bias at the Water’s Edge: What have two decades of monitoring taught, challenged, and shifted in terms of wetlands management approaches under EPA’s Superfund Program?
Situated between Kennecott Utah Copper’s refining and smelting operations and the south shore of the Great Salt Lake lies an approximately 2,000-acre wetland, inadvertently created within a highly industrialized area. In this corner of the northern Salt Lake Valley, complexities and uncertainties have shown that evaluating potential risk to avian receptors is not so easily understood. Complex hydrogeology, groundwater and surface water interactions, drought cycles and fluctuating water levels, temperature variability, shifting species diversity, variable dietary pathways, evolving regulatory dynamics, and ongoing investigatory science continues to drive the need to adapt study designs.
Over the course of this presentation, we will explore the drivers to the changing study design and explore opportunities to check our biases at the water’s edge. As new studies come online, perhaps the challenges experienced will guide new questions to be asked. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure the habitat remains protective for the foraging and nesting avian community.
We should continue to ask: Have we asked the right questions? Are we testing the right pathways? Is our data robust and able to stand up to the rigor necessary to render decisions?
