The 1998 Annual Conference on Hazardous Waste Research has been set for May 19-21, 1998, in Snowbird, Utah. This year’s conference theme is "Bridging Gaps in Technology and Culture." Conference co-sponsors are U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, National Mine Land Reclamation Center, Center for Environmental Technologies at the University of Utah and Utah State University, Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station, Mine Waste Technology Program, and the Waste-management Education and Research Consortium.

The R2D2 program has provided substantial new research dollars to the center and is an important force in the retraining of defense personnel who have left defense jobs due to governmental downsizing. The center’s researchers are moving toward commercialization of developed technologies with several field projects to demonstrate new concepts.

With the ever-increasing number of users of the Internet and, more specifically, the World Wide Web, center personnel plan to increase availability of center resources through this medium. In addition to the myriad of center resources that have already been put on the Web, future plans include electronic publishing of the center’s conference proceedings and on-line conference and workshop registration. Efforts to publish peer-reviewed papers in the electronic Journal of Hazardous Substance Research are underway. Plans are to publish 20 to 40 manuscripts each year in electronic format. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Adobe Acrobat will be utilized to publish the journal. Through use of electronic media, this document can be published quickly and inexpensively and have the capability to provide hyperlinks to references as well as graphics, video, and sound. These features can be used to allow users to run simulation models.

During the past eight years, significant progress has been made in developing the capability of the consortium faculty to conduct research in support of Superfund and problems associated with contaminated soil. As a result, many more consortium faculty are actively conducting hazardous substance research now than before the center was established. These faculty are supported with center funds and/or funds from other sources. Because of technological developments associated with the research and growth in faculty expertise, there are more opportunities for site specific-projects. Some of these are funded through the center while others are funded directly.