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About SURF

Our History

Faced with decades-old treatment programs with high resource needs and no endpoints in sight, SURF was initiated in late 2006 to promote the use of sustainable practices during environmental cleanup activities with the objective of balancing economic viability, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, and the enhancement of the quality of life in surrounding communities.

Since its founding, SURF has brought together the best and the brightest in the environmental remediation field, and has led the evolution of sustainable remediation from conceptual discussions to standard operating procedure.

SURF members were the first to consolidate broad-based institutional knowledge into an exploration of sustainable remediation drivers, practices, objectives, and case studies. This groundbreaking White Paper was published in a special edition of the Summer 2009 Remediation Journal. SURF continued to expand on the topics explored in the White Paper, publishing its Framework for Integrating Sustainability into Remediation Projects, Guidance for Performing Footprint Analyses and Life-Cycle Assessments, a compendium of metrics, and a call to improve the integration of land remediation and reuse. SURF’s current efforts focus on Groundwater Conservation and Reuse, the international perspective on sustainable remediation, and ways to capture and evaluate the societal benefits of contaminated site cleanup.

From our humble beginnings as a group of just 20 individuals, SURF now regularly communicates with thousands of green and sustainable remediation practitioners, has inspired the creation of over a dozen international sustainable remediation groups, and holds semiannual membership meetings in partnership with the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences Foundation (AEHS) East and West Coast conferences.

Our Mission

SURF is dedicated to advancing sustainable remedies and practices on a local and global scale through collaboration, education, and innovation.

Faced with decades-old treatment programs with high resource needs and no endpoints in sight, SURF was initiated in late 2006 to promote the use of sustainable practices during environmental cleanup activities with the objective of balancing economic viability, conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, and the enhancement of the quality of life in surrounding communities. SURF’s current efforts focus on Groundwater Conservation and Reuse, the international perspective on sustainable remediation, and ways to capture and evaluate the societal benefits of contaminated site cleanup.

Our Vision:

We envision a world that is healthy, resilient, and improved by remediating degraded environmental conditions through sustainable practices.

The Sustainable Remediation Forum (SURF) promotes the use of sustainable practices during the investigation, construction, remediation, redevelopment, and monitoring of degraded environments, with the objective of balancing economic viability, conserving natural resources and biodiversity, and enhancing the quality of life in surrounding communities.

Our Board of Trustees

Gerlinde Wolf
President
Katie Elich
Vice President
Paige Molzahn
Secretary
Haley Young
Treasurer
Colleen Canfield
Haley & Aldrich
Jay Smith
Philips
Evan Starr
Department of Transportation Volpe Center
Breanna Moak
CDM Smith
Keith Thomsen
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Partnerships

To expand our reach on advancing the practice of sustainable remediation SURF is a proud partner of the following organizations

Alliances

SURF is part of the International Sustainable Remediation Alliance (ISRA) to work globally on issues relating to sustainable land management.

International Sustainable Remediation Alliance (ISRA)

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Whether you believe that the mother of invention is necessity
or curiosity, it is clear that interest and innovation in
sustainable remediation is growing.