High-Res Groundwater Monitoring Tracks its Success: Over 40 years ago, a former industrial site in the City of Guelph, Ontario, was contaminated by toluene; the chemical plume has since leached into the underlying fractured bedrock aquifer. Today, the site is home to a unique research project headed by the University of Guelph Morwick G360 Groundwater… Continue Reading »
With the help of our Model 703 Waterloo Emitter Operating Principles video series, let’s review how the Waterloo Emitter works, some tips for application, and the advantages it provides to remediation professionals. The Waterloo Emitter has been shown to be very effective at cleaning up sites contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, so let’s focus… Continue Reading »
The theme of the 2013 Solinst Symposium was “High Resolution, Depth-Discrete Groundwater Monitoring – Benefits and Importance”. A common topic of discussion was the need for high resolution, depth-discrete data sets in order to better characterize and develop conceptual models for contaminated sites. Continue Reading »
Kent’s presentation focused on a small scale (~10 m x 10 m plot) study in which he developed three distinct site conceptual models for a fractured bedrock site, using different depth-discrete hydraulic and tracer transport measurements. Continue Reading »
While completing his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo, Patryk designed packer testing equipment to be used for conducting hydraulic tests in fractured rock, for contaminant transport studies. Continue Reading »
Jessica’s presentation focused on the field work that she has completed at the site. The goal of her research was to use a high-resolution method of measuring head at depth-discrete zones in order to calculate vertical gradients across the site. These vertical gradients were used to delineate hydrogeologic units in the subsurface. Continue Reading »
Contaminant mass flux is the measurement of the concentration and flow of contaminants from a source area, represented as mass per unit area per unit time. Contaminant flux measurements show how much, how fast, and where a contaminant is moving – more than you can get from traditional groundwater grab samples. Kirk started his presentation… Continue Reading »
To begin his presentation, Rick discussed the current trends in groundwater remediation. Over the past decade, in situ methods have greatly increased in popularity. Although the use of these approaches is growing, Rick pointed out some limitations. Geological heterogeneity is a limitation to determining hydrogeological aspects of a contaminated site, and how a reagent will… Continue Reading »
Gary Wealthall gave a very informative talk on dense non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) source zones. He provided an overview of the characteristics of a DNAPL zone, and tools and techniques that can be used to characterize a source zone. Because of their low solubility, high density and viscosity, DNAPLs tend to persist due to mass… Continue Reading »
Jim Barker focused his discussion on how contaminants behave in the capillary fringe. The capillary fringe is the zone of soil immediately above the water table. Groundwater is pulled up from the water table by capillary action, filling the pores at the base of the zone. As a result, part of the capillary fringe can… Continue Reading »
