1 / 21

Maxwell Gade Graduate Student Syracuse University

THE FALSE POSITIVE CONUNDRUM: IDENTIFYING FALSE POSITIVES OF CONTAMINATION FROM LANDFILLS IN SEMI-ARID TO ARID WESTERN WATERSHEDS. Maxwell Gade Graduate Student Syracuse University. Dr. Donald Siegel Professor, Earth Science Syracuse University.

demetrius-kelly
Download Presentation

Maxwell Gade Graduate Student Syracuse University

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. THE FALSE POSITIVE CONUNDRUM: IDENTIFYING FALSE POSITIVES OFCONTAMINATION FROM LANDFILLS IN SEMI-ARID TO ARID WESTERNWATERSHEDS Maxwell Gade Graduate Student Syracuse University Dr. Donald Siegel Professor, Earth Science Syracuse University

  2. Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, 2010

  3. Wind River Formation

  4. Valley Fill

  5. Landfill contamination has a unique fingerprint Baedecker and Back, 1979

  6. Major Reactions • Organic matter oxidation • Carbonate mineral dissolution • Ion exchange • Sulfate reduction • Iron oxide reduction • Ammonium generation under anoxia

  7. Landfill Leachate Indicators • Alkalinity • Sodium • Chloride • Absence of Sulfate • Dissolved Organic Carbon

  8. As an assemblage natural variability is very large and has no logical trends

  9. Highest Possible Concentration

  10. Total Iron is not thermodynamically reasonable Orders of Magnitude Higher Orders of Magnitude Higher Maximum Possible Maximum Possible Total metal analyses cause false positives Plausible Plausible

  11. Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, 2010

  12. Sand Draw Case Study

  13. Water levels in wells have not varied in years

  14. Figure 4 Sodium-sulfate Water

  15. Water isotopes Fall on Completely Different Line than Modern Water Siegel, 2009

  16. Some Water is Thousands of Years Old

  17. Sand Draw Sample Comparison

  18. Sand Draw Sample Comparison

  19. Conclusions • The chemistry in ground waters contaminated with leachate must be consistent with landfill geochemical processes • The local variability of constituents needs to be assessed in a hydrological context • To avoid false positives samples should be filtered, using only dissolved constituent values

More Related