The two-year $499,999 2001 South Carolina Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)/EPSCoR Program is supported with $500,000 non-Federal matching funds and is enabling researchers at the University of South Carolina to develop the knowledge base on contaminant transport, deposition, and dispersion processes necessary to build realistic risk assessment models that incorporate the dynamic nature of estuarine environments. Additionally, researchers are developing a broadly applicable methodology for the purification and detection of harmful algal bloom (HAB) toxins.

Drs. Miguel Goņi and George Voulgaris of the Department of Geological Sciences and Dr. John Ferry of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at USC are the investigators of a multidisciplinary research team investigating the effects of urbanization of coastal areas, specifically focusing on the association of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with the sediment phase. Their research is aimed at addressing two key issues that affect the ability of environmental managers to assess the effects and mitigate the impacts of enhanced pollutant loadings in estuaries: the determination of the sources and mode of contaminant introduction in coastal areas, and the estimation of pollutant residence times in estuaries.

Drs. Goņi, Voulgaris and Ferry aim to address these issues through intensive sampling, analysis, and modeling of the fluxes and compositions of PAHs in coordination with a suite of physical and chemical measurements of fluid flow and sediment dynamics. Their research will provide diagnostic as well as predictive information on the transport, deposition and dispersion of contaminants in estuaries and the researchers expect to improve their current risk assessment and risk management capabilities by incorporating the measured chemical and physical variables into a three-dimensional water quality model similar to the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code developed and implemented by the EPA.

Drs. Wally Scrivens and Steve Morgan of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at USC are collaborating with Dr. Peter Moeller of the Marine Biotoxins Program at the National Ocean Service (NOS) and Dr. Henry Alegria of the Department of Chemistry at Newberry College on a project to develop a broadly applicable methodology for the purification and detection of HAB toxins. Their immediate objective is the development and synthesis of specialty polymeric stationary phases for the purification of saxitoxin and its analogues, as it is believed that such stationary phases can be made to be selective for a particular HAB toxin or class of toxins.

South Carolina is fortunate to have a variety of high quality educational programs on which to build a base for reform, including the EPA/EPSCoR program. Included in this award is the Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP) to develop the human resources base and enhance academic research competitiveness in environmentally related science, engineering and mathematics in South Carolina.

Recent Achievements