Monitoring of Water and Contaminant Migration at the Groundwater-Surface Water Interface

Abstract

The Department of Defense (DoD) and other government and private entities are in the process of identifying, assessing, and remediating a large number of terrestrial hazardous waste sites. Many of these sites are located adjacent to harbors, bays, estuaries, wetlands, and other coastal environments (Chadwick, Kito, Carlson, and Harre, 2003a). There is a general requirement to determine if contaminants from these sites are migrating into marine and surface water systems at levels that could pose a threat to the environment. Currently, these problems are evaluated by the use of hydraulic head measurement in shoreside wells and numerical models that provide theoretical predictions of flow and contaminant migration. However, these measurements and models are of limited utility in areas adjacent to marine systems where tides, waves, and strong density gradients make it difficult to establish boundary conditions. In addition, current techniques for verifying the model predictions are inadequate. The overall objective of this project was to field demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of two technologies for characterizing coastal contaminant migration. The specific objectives of this demonstration were to achieve the following: Demonstrate that the Trident probe can be used to help delineate areas where groundwater seepage is occurring and contaminant of concern (CoC) concentrations in those areas Demonstrate that the UltraSeep system can be used to quantify the flow of groundwater and concentration of contaminants that may be impinging on the surface water system Demonstrate the technology to end users to determine the utility of these tools for making decisions at DoD coastal landfills and hazardous waste sites Quantify costs associated with the operation of each technology.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA607246

Entities

People

  • Amy Hawkins
  • Bart Chadwick

Organizations

  • Naval Information Warfare Systems Command

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Alkenes
  • Base Closures
  • Cost Analysis
  • Data Analysis
  • Department Of Defense
  • Environment
  • Environmental Pollutants
  • Environmental Protection
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Hazardous Waste
  • Hazardous Waste Sites
  • Measurement
  • Mobile Laboratories
  • Surface Waters
  • Test Methods
  • Volatile Organic Compounds
  • Water

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Environmental Engineering.
  • Marine Ecological Systems Migration