Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) proposes work that will provide the
Royal SpringWater SupplyProtectionCommittee(RSWSPC)with a tool to minimize loss of
the use of Royal Spring as a water supply when a chemical spill occurs in the
groundwater basin. The proposed project consists of two parts. A series of maps will be
created from quantitativetracingthat will showthe travel time of awater-soluble .
contaminant from various regions of the basin, at low, medium, and high flow conditions.
Also, qualitative traces will be made to refme the groundwater basin boundary where it is
poorly delineated. The project will take approximately 18 months to complete in order to
obtain data through a variety of flow conditions.
A project of this scope will be useful because flow velocity and distance of a spill
from the spring the principal factors that affect travel time of a contaminant. In low flow
conditions, a pollution spill in the upper part of the basin may take days to reach Royal
Spring. In high flow conditions, a spill in the same location may take only a few hours to
reach the spring because of greater flow velocities. The project will primarily address
flow of dissolved contaminants, although contaminant flow velocities may vary because
of contaminant density, solubility in water, and the duration of the contaminant release.
By knowing when and where a spill occurs and referring to the appropriate traveltime
map for the prevailing flow conditions, treatment plant operators will be able to
calculate contaminant arrival time and contaminant plume duration at the spring. With
this information, the plant shutdown time may be minimized. In the event that an
incident is not reported until after the contamination has reached the spring, the findings
will still be useful for determining how long the treatment plant took in a contaminant
and when the plume may pass.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 11/1/02 → 5/31/04 |
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