Edward Garvey

Garvey worked at Exxon Research & Engineering from 1978 to 1983 and was Henry Shaw's top researcher on the tanker initiative. Exxon paid in part for his graduate studies at Columbia University; during that time, Garvey worked with Columbia University's climate researchers Wallace Broecker and Taro Takahashi. After leaving Exxon, Garvey has worked for various consulting firms and his main client has been the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Edward Garvey is a Technical Vice President with the Louis Berger Group in Morristown, NJ, providing technical direction for the contaminated sediments and hazardous waste efforts of the firm nationwide. He is an environmental geochemist and a licensed professional geologist (PA), with extensive experience in geochemical investigative techniques, environmental forensics, and Superfund Megasite investigations. Dr. Garvey holds a B.Ch.E (Cooper Union) in Chemical Engineering and M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Geological Sciences from Columbia University. His research interests include the integration of geochemical and geophysical data to establish sediment and contaminant transport, the geochemical study of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as PAHs, PCBs and dioxins and the geochemical study of heavy metals, such as lead and mercury. He has extensive experience in the application of environmental forensics by combining sediment core dating and other geochemical study techniques with high resolution analytical techniques to identify current and historical contaminant sources to the environment. Among his accomplishments are the technical direction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) investigation and remedial decision for the Hudson River PCB superfund site (PCBs), the USEPA investigations of the Lower Passaic River and Newark Bay (NJ) Superfund sites (dioxins, PCBs, PAHs and heavy metals), the Onondaga Lake Superfund site for the NYSDEC (mercury and PCBs) as well as the successful investigations of numerous smaller sites throughout the US. He is currently providing technical direction for New York City’s investigation efforts in the Gowanus Canal and Newton Creek, NYC (PAHs, PCBs and heavy metals) pertaining to combined sewer overflow discharges. He has coauthored over sixty-five presentations and journal articles on contaminant fate and transport. Dr. Garvey served for five years (2002 to 2007) on the New York Academy of Sciences NY/NJ Harbor Consortium, a panel convened by the academy at the request of USEPA to review contaminant issues for New York Harbor. Dr. Garvey is a member of the board of the directors for the Hudson-Delaware chapter of Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (2011 to present). He is also an adjunct professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Manhattan College in the City of New York. His research has been conducted as part of his work as a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of New York, the City of New York and others, with the largest fraction from the USEPA. Dr. Garvey currently has no federal research funding.