Prediction of the Travel Time of Contaminant Spills to Royal Spring, Scott Co. Ky.

  • Currens, James (PI)
  • Paylor, Randall (CoI)

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.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date11/1/025/31/04

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