Joe Ryan, Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, Director of the Environmental Engineering Program, and Environmental Studies Program faculty member, will give a talk on Monday, March 31, 2008 on "On the Long Road to Jericho: Abandoned Mine Cleanups, the Clean Water Act, and Environmental Good Samaritans". The talk will be from 12:00 - 1:00 pm in the CSTPR Conference Room.

The talk is free and open to the public and will be held at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research's conference room. Click here for directions.

This will be a "brown bag seminar". Feel free to bring your lunches if you wish.

Abstract: Would-be environmental Good Samaritans motivated to remediate abandoned mine sites are currently stymied by liability imposed by the Clean Water Act. Western legislators have unsuccessfully tried to amend the Clean Water Act to allow these cleanups for a decade.  Ironically, the major opposition to Good Samaritan legislation has been environmental groups.  Rather than wait for the federal legislation, Pennsylvania created and funded their own Good Samaritan legislation, in apparent violation of the federal law.  In Pennsylvania, Good Samaritans are cleaning up abandoned mines and improving water quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not intervened.  This talk will review environmental Good Samaritan efforts and suggest future strategies for western states.

Link to PowerPoint Presentation

Biography: Joe Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, the Director of the Environmental Engineering Program, and a faculty member of the Environmental Studies Program. He has been teaching and doing research at the University of Colorado since 1993. Before 1992, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder, and he still works closely with U.S.G.S. scientists on many of his research interests. He obtained his B.S. in Geological Engineering at Princeton University in 1983 and his M.S. (1988) and Ph.D. (1992) in Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests focus on role of surfaces and "colloids" (very small mineral and organic particles) in the fate and transport of contaminants in natural waters. Most of his research is motivated by "real" problems, like plutonium at Rocky Flats, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons released in an oil spill, mercury in the Everglades, microbes in groundwater, off-road vehicles causing erosion in the James Creek watershed, and metals released by abandoned mines in the Lefthand Creek watershed. He teaches courses that echo these interests: Water Chemistry, Aquatic Organic Contaminants, and Aquatic Surfaces and Particles. Recently, Joe has served as a technical advisor for two community groups dealing with water quality problems in Boulder County, the James Creek Watershed Initiative and the Lefthand Watershed Oversight Group, with the assistance of funding from the University of Colorado's Outreach Committee.